The Acculturative Costs of Rhythmic Belonging

In this essay, I examine the workings of rhythm, intensities, and affect through narrative memoryscapes of acclimating to life in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Specifically, I distinguish underlying rhythmic characteristics of each city, analyze how repeated exposure to Israeli rhythms and intensities progressively alter my relations to others, and look at how experiences of rhythmic dissonance affect my acquiescence to dominant rhythms. I begin by offering a brief theoretical framing of rhythmanalysis in its conceptualization of everyday rhythms as a means of analyzing culture and of marking identification in its reliance on social processes. I then examine affect and rhythm's use in analyzing emergent experiences, before they are assigned static representations. In particular, I draw attention to affect’s ability to focus on potential agencies that arise in moments of relational intensities as walking and cycling bodies enter new assemblages in public spaces.