[Commlist] Call for Papers: The Soundtrack (Special Issue: ‘Sounding South Asia: From Silence to Noise’)

Call for Papers: The Soundtrack


Special Issue: ‘Sounding South Asia: From Silence to Noise’


We invite abstracts of 300–500 words by 15 October 2022at the latest.


Abstracts can be mailed to (soundtrackspecialedition /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(soundtrackspecialedition /at/ gmail.com)>


View the full CFP here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/the-soundtrack#call-for-papers 
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/the-soundtrack#call-for-papers>


Co-edited by Shweta Khilnani, Ritwick Bhattacharjee and Saikat Ghosh


For Don Ihde, as long as humans find themselves living in and breathing 
through air, sound becomes, for them, an existential singularity. In 
fact, this air itself, Ihde continues, is ‘not neutral or lifeless’ but 
finds animation in and with ‘sound and voice’. It is, finally, this 
vibrant tract of air (for what else is sound?) which relates and marks 
the human in its existential prospects by not only producing an ambience 
of the world but also, simultaneously, being subjected to reciprocal 
manipulation by humans who invariably seek constructive teleologies.


The active manipulation of sonic regimes, in a sense, weaves together 
auditory and other sensory experiences materialized through the 
intersection of media and technology. Obviously, one need not restrict 
the technological to the modern and see it, as Heidegger would have it, 
within the prospects of its techne. Nevertheless, as soundscapes do 
become increasingly mediated by respectively advancing forms of 
technology, the question that needs asking is: how do they influence our 
ability to hear and respond to sound? The affordances of sound-based 
technologies allow hitherto ignored sounds and silences to materialize 
within novel forms of mediatized narratives, turning largely silent 
cultures of communication into multisensory experiences.


Outside of such mediated curations, sonic patterns also aid in 
constituting the dynamic of civic and community lives in populous 
spaces. In such instances, the spatial order is propelled towards 
intersecting levels of crises by the subjective experience of disruptive 
sonic patterns. These patterns themselves emerge from cultures and 
practices nurtured and validated within aspirational and competitive 
frames of collective life. But they are registered in the civic 
consciousness as noise, nuisance and, infrequently, even as indivisible 
remainders of affects that cannot be fully accommodated within the 
present order. These sounds, however, are not empty punctuations; in 
fact, they interrupt the abstract flow of clock time with narratives, 
both real and imagined.


Through this special journal edition, we wish to study these 
constitutive roles of sonic imaginations and how they ‘rework culture 
through the development of new narratives, new histories, new 
technologies and new narratives’ (Sterne). The larger context of this 
effort is the recent social and cultural transformations in South Asia, 
reflected in its emerging spaces, its continuously negotiated and 
redefined spatialities, and the soundscapes that have come to 
characterise such dynamics. Contemporary South Asia offers experiences 
and concepts that are ulterior to the conventional discourses of 
urbanization or gentrification. Political mediations, resettlements of 
industry and labour, and the continuous development of local 
infrastructure in provinces as well as metropolises are often translated 
into kaleidoscopic sonic patterns of life that are far from settled in 
any historical sense of the term. Neat distinctions between urban and 
non-urban spaces are not even available within municipal jurisdictions. 
Hence, the sense of order is both fluid and fragile.


The abstracts can pertain to the following list of possible subjects.

However, they don’t have to be limited to these areas by any means:

• Urban soundscapes

• Sonic dimensions of public piety

• Curated sonic environments/ sonic mediations

• Sound and the law

• Viral sounds

• Invisible/underground sounds

• The mythopoetics of sound.


Guest editors


Shweta Khilnani is an assistant professor of English at SGTB Khalsa 
College, University of Delhi. Her Ph.D. dissertation is on the nexus 
between the literary, the affective and the political with respect to 
digital narratives. She is interested in the study of popular and visual 
cultures. Among her publications are a co-edited anthology titled 
Science Fiction in India: Parallel Worlds and Postcolonial Paradigms, 
Imagining Worlds, Mapping Possibilities: Select Science Fiction Stories 
(2020) and Laughing Matters: Stand-up Comedy and Enjoyment in Late 
Capitalism (2020), besides several academic papers and book chapters.


Ritwick Bhattacharjee is an assistant professor at the Department of 
English, Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Khalsa College, University of Delhi. His 
research has been located around fantasy, philosophy, phenomenology, 
horror fiction, science fiction, Indian English novels and disability 
studies. He is the author of Humanity’s Strings: Being, Pessimism, and 
Fantasy and a co-editor for Horror Fictions of the Global South: 
Cultures, Narratives and Representations (with Saikat Ghosh) and What 
Makes it Pop? Introduction to Studies in Popular Fiction (with Srinjoyee 
Dutta). He has two upcoming books: Science Fiction in India: Parallel 
Worlds and Postcolonial Paradigms (co-edited with Shweta Khilnani) and 
Reclaiming the Disabled Subject: Representing Disability in Short 
Fiction (co-written with Someshwar Sati and G. J. V. Prasad). He has 
been awarded the Professor Meenakshi Mukherjee Memorial award for his 
essay titled ‘Politics of translation: Disability, language, and the 
inbetween’ published in the book Disability in Translation: The Indian 
Experience.

Saikat Ghosh is an assistant professor of English at SGTB Khalsa 
College, University of Delhi. He has taught courses on Marxist cultural 
theory, popular fiction, modernism and psychoanalysis. He is the 
co-editor of Horror Fiction in the Global South: Cultures, Narratives 
and Representations. He writes extensively on the politics of higher 
education.


General Editor


Benjamin Wright

University of Windsor, Canada

(bwright /at/ uwindsor.ca) <mailto:(bwright /at/ uwindsor.ca)>


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