Taking and Making Place Through Sound: From the Phonotope to the Phonocene

Abstract

Although the spatiality of sounding and listening practices has been broadly and deeply discussed within humanities in general and sound studies in particular, the implications of such “place-taking” and “place-making” characteristics remain highly relevant nowadays. Starting from Peter Sloterdijk’s concept of the phonotope, through which sound and space are closely related in the production of social, it will be argued, following philosopher and ethologist Vinciane Despret, that the importance of sound for “making place” matters far beyond human-centered thought. In what she calls the Phonocene, Despret invites us not only to listen to others, humans and nonhumans, but also to compose with multiple modes of existence, through the sonic. In short, the Phonocene addresses the importance of sonic thinking, which, for instance in sociology, challenges hegemonic and anthropocentric practices of knowledge production. Experimenting with “thinking-with sounds” within social sciences and philosophy thus implies not only to understand the spatiality inherent to the practices of sounding and listening, but to engage with those practices critically, as they are also always “situated,” in the sense of Donna Haraway, and therefore, in the midst of multiple “interests,” as understood in Actor-Network Theory, including a multiplicity of human, nonhuman, and more-than-human actors.