Soundscapes of police power

Keywords: policing, sound, race, class, technology
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Exercises of police power, whether expressed through spectacular acts of violence or routinized interventions into everyday life, always contain an important sonic element. Police have weaponized sound through the use of military technologies, but they also regularly intervene in everyday soundscapes in order to enforce racialized, classed, and gendered orderings of social life. Confusing noises, repetitive music, sirens, loud painful frequencies, yelled commands, explosions, informal interrogations, and even the intentional maintenance of silence are all sonic strategies deployed by the police. In this talk, I argue that attention to the contested sonic politics of policing can add texture to studies of state power, particularly in its most quotidian and routinized forms. The study of sound can help us understand these uneven geographies of policing while pointing to possibilities for resisting state power. In addition to outlining some of the sonic effects and affects of policing, I offer a series of methods for furthering the study of sound in relation to police power.