Re-sounding Power: Sonic Geographies of Resistance

Sessions - Calls for Participants

Special session: “Re-sounding Power: Sonic Geographies of Resistance”

 *With apologies for the quick turnaround on the abstract (Feb. 9)*

Geographers are increasingly attentive to the ways in which sound operates as a modality of power, emotion, and knowledge (see, for example, Boyd & Duffy, 2012; Gallagher, 2016; Kanngieser, 2012; Revill, 2016; Smith, 1994). Indeed, the discipline has grown through closer engagement with sonic methodologies that foreground sound, rhythm, auditory techniques, and oral/aural epistemologies (Butler, 2006; Cameron & Rogalsky, 2006; Edensor 2010; Gallagher, 2015; Matless, 2005; Robinson & Martin, 2016). Responding to the CAG conference theme of “resistance,” this special session will examine the political agency of sound and auditory spaces in the context of resistance (Revill, 2016). Acts of resistance, however fleeting, always make soundprints of some kind. What do they sound like, and how might geographers better position themselves to hear or produce sonic spatialities of resistance?

Related questions guiding this special session theme include: How does a sonic sensibility contribute to geographical theorizations of resistance? What can greater attentiveness to soundscapes (Schafer, 1977) tell us about power (including resistance, protest, and other forms of activism)? How have the soundscapes and rhythms of social movements changed over time? What are the colonial histories of listening, and what kind of work is required to decolonize listening? How are researchers employing sonic methods to challenge dominant ways of knowing within and beyond their own disciplines?

Contributions might address any of the following themes (and beyond):

-sonic spatialities and temporalities of resistance

-Re-making place through sound/listening

-emotional and embodied spatialities of sound; sound/listening and affective or vibrational relationships

-aurality in Indigenous world views and ways of knowing

-decolonizing settler listening and/or colonial soundscapes; sound and the colonial present  

-music and: protest, resistance, decolonization

-sonic pasts; critical historical soundscapes; sonic archives

-sonic case studies of resistance (e.g. Winnipeg General Strike, Red River Rebellion)

-earwitnessing environmental change and/or environmental justice

-material and discursive spatialities of voice; voices of/and/in resistance

-sound/listening and violence; weaponization of sound

-more-than-human soundscapes; resistance to anthropocentric listening

-political potential of amplification or silence

-sonic methodologies, techniques, and ethics

-sound art as resistance; role of auditory media in shaping spaces and interpretations of resistance

-soundscapes of hope, dignity, and/or repair

This session also welcomes a variety of presentation formats, from the more traditional academic paper presentation to creative performance, provided they critically engage with the session theme. Participants are encouraged to animate their presentations with auditory media or (for the truly adventurous) are invited to share sonic/musical performances as part of their contribution to the session. Please make it clear in your e-mail if you hope to use a format outside the traditional paper presentation, so that I can work with the conference hosts to facilitate your creative participation.

If you wish to participate in this session, please contact Katie Hemsworth (katiehe@nipissingu.ca) with an abstract and tentative title by February 9, 2019.

Works Cited

Boyd, C., & Duffy, M. (2012). Sonic geographies of shifting bodies. Interference. A Journal of Audio Culture, 2.

Butler, T. (2006). A walk of art: the potential of the sound walk as practice in cultural geography. Social & Cultural Geography, 7(6), 889–908.

Cameron, L., & Rogalsky, M. (2006). Conserving Rainforest 4: aural geographies and ephemerality. Social & Cultural Geography, 7(6), 909-926.

Edensor, T. (Ed.) (2010). Geographies of Rhythm. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Gallagher, M. (2015). Field recording and the sounding of spaces. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 33(1), 560–576.

Gallagher, M. (2016). Sound as affect: Difference, power and spatiality. Emotion, Space and Society, 20, 42-48.

Kanngieser, A. (2012). A sonic geography of voice: Towards an affective politics. Progress in Human Geography, 36(3), 336–353.

Matless, D. (2005). Sonic geography in a nature region. Social & Cultural Geography, 6(5), 745–766.

Revill, G. (2016). How is space made in sound? Spatial mediation, critical phenomenology and the political agency of sound. Progress in Human Geography, 40(2), 240-256.

Robinson, D., & Martin, K. (Eds.). (2016). Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Wilfred Laurier Univ. Press.

Schafer, R. M. (1977). The tuning of the world. New York: Knopf.

Smith, S. J. (1994). Soundscape. Area, 232–240.