Sound and Detention : Towards Critical Listening, Sonic Citizenship and Social Justice

In this book, over 40 contributors collectively tune in to how sound—and its absence—can function as a source of power that enables isolation, control and harm, as well as connection, healing and resistance.

Sound and Detention explores soundscapes in places, processes and systems of confinement in order to better understand experiences of imprisonment and to imagine alternatives to the carceral state. Bringing together over 40 contributors from five continents, the book tunes in to some of the manifold effects associated with the presence and absence of sound and music in prisons and places of detention: from isolation, harm and control, to connection, healing and resistance.

Scholarly texts feature alongside poetry, dialogue, memoir and experimental creative writing, as well as a diverse collection of audio productions on the book’s accompanying website. This plurality of form mediates the voices of artists, activists, thinkers and practitioners – some themselves currently or formerly incarcerated. Through deep engagement with the sonic realm and with questions of power, the contributors explore what it might mean to listen nearby – making space to hold distinct perspectives and positionalities in respectful simultaneity – while also amplifying resonances between sound, listening and broader questions of epistemic and social justice.