Abigail Lambke, Avila University
Audio Player
As I write this introduction, I cannot shut out the sounds of ongoing construction outside my home. It is necessary maintenance work on the waterline, it impedes my ability to concentrate, it is loud, and it might wake the baby. Is it noise? Could it be quieter? How might I make meaning from the loud sounds of drilling, clanging, beeping, and general rumbling outside my walls?
In listening to this audio essay, you will encounter such rhetorical dimensions of noise, as I explore how loud sounds are either permitted or restricted through systems of privilege. My rhetorical feminist approach to noise draws from Cheryl Glenn, Lispeth Lipari, and Thomas Rickert so as to attune to how systems of privilege sonically advantage the powerful and disadvantage others. Moving between technological sounds that are allowed to be loud and people who are compelled to be quiet, I argue that feminist theory is necessary to account for how loudness connects to masculinity and quieting to domination. But far from decrying all loud sounds, or even just those that are male-identified, this project attempts to listen from a “space of emptiness” (Lipari 99), recognize joy in sonic expression, and sustain hope through a practice of techno-sonic rhetorical feminism.
Published February 12, 2025
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