Interspecies Bodies and Watery Sonospheres: Listening in the Lab, the Archives and the Field

Abstract

Abstract In this text, the author brings together scientific interspecies communication experiments, artistic practice and feminist posthumanities to inquire into the transformative role of sound and listening. Departing from an archive with recordings of human-dolphin language experiments, this research attends to sound as evidence and listening as a situated knowledge practice, with ethico-political implications that trouble Western, visually oriented knowledge systems. By imploding interfaces into situations of shared surfaces, the author directs attention to the logics of the skin to bring forth matters of care and suggest how listening might contribute to more careful and attentive modes of knowing.