Abstract

The sonic operative is a propositional formulation of what the dissertation outlines as a situated, implicated, and contextually grounded work of sound by which to craft activist response. I come up with this formulation to think with possibilities emerging in practices invested in a sonic format of justice seeking action. Using the post-Soviet contexts of dictatorship, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and ecocide, I examine the ways in which labours of change extend to a field of sonically working efforts. Specifically, I study sites of activist involvement through which sounded actions perform the force of revolt against what is broadly defined as the Russian regime in its predatory formations and ecologies of harm.

The argument is laid out through a set of four operational modalities differentiated as the offender, the carer, the magician, and the prophet to approach sounds in their ways of performing political participation. I gather evidence from a range of case studies that share an activist stance and space of ethics, and that reveal an existing arena of insurrectionary activity. Each case gives expression to the experience of crises directly linked to Russia’s authoritarian, imperial, and capitalist politics and to the potency of the contingent moment of sounded resistances committed to causes and consequences of these politics. Spanning the spaces of activist presence across Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Russia, the dissertation makes a claim to an ecology of sonic deeds, a politics of participation by which to collaborate and craft a form of caring relation.