Counter-carceral acoustemologies: Sound, permeability and feminist protest at the prison boundary

Abstract

This article provides an analysis of sonic protest strategies used by anti-carceral feminist coalitions in Melbourne, Australia. Our research demonstrates that sound is a particularly powerful boundary-crosser that can challenge the exclusionary spatial ordering of the prison. Under certain political and geographical conditions, the carceral soundscape, which increasingly restricts ‘who gets to hear what’, can be temporarily breached, altered and re-made by protest noise, rhythm and music, and radio technology. Counter-carceral acoustemologies create alternative ‘soundtracks’ of resistance that both reveal and momentarily displace carceral-spatial control, re-patterning the aural environment of the prison. Such breaches can be countered, however, by various modes of boundary fortification over time. We propose that a more nuanced understanding of carceral space and soundscapes—as relational and in flux—provides greater opportunities for denaturalizing the prison and challenging its seeming permanence in our political and cultural landscapes.

“We are prisoners, not inmates”: prison letters as liminal counter-carceral spaces

“…Scholars such as Shabazz ( 2014) have emphasised the concept of the "political progressive" in relation to a specific political prisoner. His category of political progressive includes internationally renowned inmates like Angela Davis or the Soledad brothers, and the same is true of Martin Sostre's letters (Schaich and Hope, 1977). My archive differs in that only a few prisoners are nationally known and includes a group of political and non-political prisoners who oppose prison management and, as a result, bring different critical content to their struggles.…”

The Critical Foundations of Visual Criminology: The State, Crisis, and the Sensory

“…Visual work in criminology has led to increasing exploration of the senses, more broadly, including acoustic, affective, haptic, olfactory and sonic approaches. Carceral acoustemologies of the past (Hemsworth, 2015) and the present (Paglen 2006;Russell and Carlton 2018) are focal points of recent work on the spatial geographies of prison. In her analysis of the historical records of Kingston Penitentiary in Ontario, Canada, Hemsworth (2015) demonstrates how sonic methods can help reveal much about carceral control tactics, such as the silent system of early prison governance, the sonic command of a prison bell sounding 32 times a day, or the imagined "conversation-tubes" of Bentham's panopticon.…”

“…Hemsworth (2015:28) draws our attention to voice recordings, ambient sound, echoes, and "aural exercises in deep mobile listening." Similarly, work by Russell and Carlton (2018) explores the effects and potential of counter-carceral practices against increased securitization and surveillance in carceral contexts. Investigating a number of historic feminist anti-carceral campaigns directed at women's prisons in Victoria, Australia, the authors reveal how sound produced by protesters on the outside (dance, music, noise, radio, etc.)…”

Indefinite stuckness: Listening in a time of hyper-incarceration and border entrapment

“…Some are forced or coerced and serve punitive or administrative purposes (Gill, 2013; Moran et al., 2012), such as prisoner transfers to administrative segregation cells or deportations. Other flows and connections across carceral boundaries generate and sustain practices of resistance and survival to the isolating and dehumanising effects of incarceration, such as ‘noise demonstrations’ outside prison walls (Russell and Carlton, 2018), or prison radio and podcasting projects such as Beyond the Bars and The Messenger outlined above. Far from uniform, carceral mobilities encompass ‘the messy, complex, contradictory, [and often] unmappable’ (Turner and Peters, 2016: 4) ways that people and other material (smuggled mobile phones, recording equipment) or immaterial objects (affects, sounds) move or are unable to move within, through, and across carceral systems and borders.…”

“…In this instance, we focus on comparatively analysing the content of these two broad/podcasts, rather than their affects and inter-relational qualities. We conceive of The Messenger and Beyond the Bars as ‘counter-carceral acoustemologies’, that is ‘ways of knowing and sharing knowledge about carceral existence and resistance [through sound], which challenge the dehumanization and normalization of the former’ (Russell and Carlton, 2018). Sound is crucial to our analysis, because it carries the perspectives, conversations, and testimonies of imprisoned people across the carceral boundary in both authorised and unauthorised ways.…”