Acoustic Justice

Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer, and theorist working with sound culture, voice, and questions of agency. His books Acoustic Territories, Second Edition (2019), Background Noise, Second Edition (2015), and Lexicon of the Mouth (2014), are all published by Bloomsbury Academic. He is the Editor of Errant Bodies Press, Berlin, and Professor at the Art Academy, University of Bergen, Norway.

This is yet another delightful read on sonic agency by Brandon LaBelle, highlighting this time what is at stake when we think of social and political transformation as an acoustic question. In Acoustic Justice, LaBelle takes the readers through thrilling discussions on 'hearing differently,' on 'generous infrastructure' and 'relating otherwise' – all of them involved in reconfiguring our capacity to act politically. LaBelle's unique approach offers insight into the temporal and situational realms of sound and listening that are fleeting yet necessary for any process of reimagining political possibilities. In the world today, marked by intense structural feelings of uncertainty and fragility, his theorizing of an impersonal, distributed, and collaborative political agency is not just refreshing but indeed very much needed. This book resonates across various fields of social sciences and humanities and is an essential reading for those interested in political theory, sound studies, resistance, and affect theory.

• 1. Holding, Healing, Attending: Towards Collaborative Living2. Acoustic Performativity: Practices of Composition3. Poetic Ecologies: Resonance, Imagination, Repair4. Skin-Work: Queer Acoustics, Borderspaces, Economies of Desire 5. Deaf Attention: Peripheral Visions, Spatial Meanings, Sensory Politics6. Acoustic Support