Sonic Intimacy

For a world too often rupturing the basic intimacies of social life, James meticulously details the operations of sonic life support systems for Black Britain—a constant remaking of “getting down below” the propulsions of racial capitalism through deploying vibes, hypes and grimes as the medium through which black wisdom, wholeness, craft and mutuality are sutured into the sound of collective breath. * AbdouMaliq Simone, Senior Professorial Fellow, Urban Institute, University of Sheffield, UK *
In Sonic Intimacy, Malcolm James reads the infrastructures, mechanics, and geographies of sound to theorize black sonics as sites of relation, conjuncture, impermanence, and diaspora. Here, bass-mediated vibes and deep jungle grooves interrupt normative governmentalities while sound systems, digital transactions, mobile recordings, and video-shares are rendered sites of creative innovation. In pairing sonic intimacies with technologies of expression, James draws attention to the way black cultural texts work across, and subvert and unsettle, market time-space. I admire the affective-political waveforms moving through this text. * Katherine McKittrick, Professor of Gender Studies, Queen’s University, Canada *
This is a relentlessly thoughtful and intelligent historical survey of how the role of music in black life has been transformed technologically, ethically and politically. Malcolm James’ provocative and probing analysis sets a new standard for future work on sound, space and the politics of race. * Paul Gilroy, Professor of Humanities, University College London, UK *
Sonic Intimacy is an extraordinary exploration of the intricate relationships between sound, space and sociality. It charts a crucial but wholly under-explored slice of our recent cultural history with theoretical acuity and political sensitivity; making a significant contribution to the study of music culture in general, to contemporary cultural studies and to the genealogy of the sound system assemblage in particular. * Jeremy Gilbert, Professor of Cultural and Political Theory, University of East London, UK *