As part of the Sonic Commons explorations at CTHQ, Sonic Insurgency Research Group (SIRG) is developing a glossary of terms that unpack and critique the language of sound and power. Each month, between June-December, SIRG will share a new addition to the Sonic Index.

Sonic Index: An Abbreviated and Critical Glossary on Sound and Power

—by Sonic Insurgency Research Group (SIRG)

Josh Rios, Matt Joynt, Anthony Romero

Key to developing any critical framework is the establishment of conceptual imagery and descriptive vocabulary, which in this case comes from a long-term creative and research-based engagement with sound, power, the built environment, legal frameworks, and most importantly, the liberatory practices of sonic sovereignty. While articulating imagery and terminology may seem detached from the world of political struggle, it is important to note that the concrete conditions of lived life also condition the imaginary and that the conceptual world is inseparable from the material world. Working through sonic research and practice, we have arrived at a variety of ideas about sound and power, most of which have their origins in dialogue within and beyond our collective. A fundamental condition of a dialogic practice is its open-ended incompleteness. As a result, this glossary is partial. Not only is it limited to a handful of terms which can and should be expanded, but each definition is an invitation to dub, edit, remix and transpose the conversation. A key concern we share with many others is the ongoing crisis of our ever-shrinking public sphere. Where do we engage in revelry, audacity, occupation and even the creation of new resonant territories that refuse the colonialist, capitalist, and neoliberal order? While sound may have a close relationship to control in the form of audio surveillance, sonic weapons, and racialized listening practices, sound is also a powerful world changing tool. As a resource readily available to the marginalized it can disrupt enclosure, communicate solidarity, affirm a people in the face of strategic erasure, and make sense of what has been made senseless by racial capital and colonial extraction. Lastly, the terms in this glossary do not arrive in the singular form, but carry with them the reverberations of something else. They bounce off the world, returning indexed and multiplied by the barricade, mass protest, and skyscraper. As part of the Sonic Commons explorations at CTHQ, Sonic Insurgency Research Group (SIRG) is developing a glossary of terms that unpack and critique the language of sound and power. Each month, between June-December, SIRG will share a new addition to the Sonic Index.