Outside In: Chorus and Clearing in the Time of Pandemic and Protest

Outside In: Chorus and Clearing in the Time of Pandemic and Protest

Julie Beth Napolin

A sonic ensemble, this essay describes how the COVID-19 pandemic cleared the way for heightened protest against racial violence. Both the pandemic and Black Lives Matter address the acoustical threshold between the inside and outside, being a call to listen rather than simply to hear. Arguing that the call exceeds the confines of the first-person subject, particularly in its chants for justice, the essay moves through auditory fragments of pandemic and protest. These fragments are connected through the fact of air, breathe, and the recognition of a shared world and its chorus.

2020

race, Listening, protest, sound, African-American literature

10.6092/issn.1971-8853/11269

Epidemiology and Health

Korean Society of Epidemiology

Sociology (General), Social Sciences