Abstract
The policing of space involves controlling movement, bodies, and minds to assert sovereignty, through the othering of Blackness. Drawing on Achille Mbembe’s ideas on a “Borderless World,” I explore how this control is intertwined with notions of space, time, life, and technology, particularly through the “plantation machine.” The creation of usable space coincided with the domination of a perceived wild, useless space, reinforcing property and value. Blackness is relegated to the useless yet becomes a resource for extraction, not just for wealth but for power over space and life. However, Blackness also offers alternative ways of spacing, particularly through sound and music, which propose new forms of inhabiting and relating to worlds. I begin with an analysis of the slave’s ear as a contested site policed like a border. With very specific methods of punishment for slaves’ ears, the laws of slavery symbolically and ontologically codified the ear. Unlike the voice, a site amply theorized, the ear allows us to open another kind conception of sound by way of a refiguring of what “voice” may be. In other words, the ear is a policed site because it is the ear that confirms sounds as audible, legible, and existent. Artists like Marshall Trammell, Hannah Kendall, Satch Hoyt, and Yvette Janine Jackson challenge dominant sonic frameworks, offering alternative sonic habitations of space. These works reimagine space, time, and life, opening unthought possibilities for inhabitation. Through these musical works, I demonstrate how blackness refigures space and music to open new ecological intersectionalities.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
The Arts in Social, Political, and Community Life
KEYWORDS
Inhabitation, Space, Soundscapes, Blackness, Sound Studies
