Mowitt, J orcid.org/0000-0003-4532-655X (2020) The Color of Noise. SubStance, 49 (2). pp. 133-149. ISSN 0049-2426
Abstract
Initially presented as a lecture in Hout Bay, South Africa, this article seeks to realize three aims. First, under the capacious heading of postcolonial sound studies, it attempts to think the articulation between racial difference and sound by probing the now common association of color and noise, for example, the “pink” noise routinely used as a sleep aid. Despite the existence of white and black noise, color is here attributed to signal characteristics in ways that also underscore the risks in reducing race to color. Second, responding to such risks, this article then seeks to examine a South African genealogy of the differentiation between sound and noise, a differentiation whose juridical (and thus political) instantiation draws essential and immediate attention to the figure of the neighbor, especially as the neighbor embodies a distinctly sonic nuisance. Race returns in this context as part of a spatial segregation that both “colors” noise, and draws attention to a prior sonicity, the “long scream” of those forced apart from others under Apartheid. This sonicity emerges as a problem for all thinking of noise that grasps it (whether phenomenological or juridically) as a form of nuisance. Third, in casting itself as an example of “investigative poetry,” this article broaches a collective inquiry on the politics of noise (both heard and unheard) in South Africa, and invites the participation of researchers distributed over cacophonous archives who hear themselves hailed by the conceit that sound is a problem whose quality as a radiant permeation requires the indiscipline of the critical humanities for its study.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 Johns Hopkins University Press and SubStance, Inc. This is an author produced version of an article published in SubStance. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Sound, noise, race, South Africa, neighbors, nuisance laws, Jean-François Lyotard, Karin Bijsterveld |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 03 Jul 2020 11:20 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 22:20 |
Published Version: | https://muse.jhu.edu/article/763141 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Johns Hopkins University Press |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:162821 |