Turntable Epistemologies: Queering Sound System Migrations in the Reagan/Thatcher Era

我的项目是跨学科的，涉及表演研究、酷儿研究、批判民族志、散居和黑人女权主义文化研究。我确定了我的工作与三个广泛的理论领域相交。首先是一组关于黑人散居音乐和声音研究的学术辩论。大量工作将种族政治与声音和技术联系起来（Chude-Sokei 2005; Nelson 2002; Weheliye 2005）。这些干预措施解决了黑人流散音乐如何在白人民族音乐学和声音研究中变得难以辨认。通过对声音化身、科幻小说和非洲未来主义的深入研究，科多沃·埃顺（1998）和爱德华·乔治（1996）等学者提供了对非洲流散存在的重新想象。这种扩大表明黑人音乐不仅仅是生活和制作的，而且实际上产生了独特的想象和世界，反映了关于谁被理解为人类的更广泛的辩论。朱利安·恩里克斯（2011）对牙买加舞厅音响系统的研究提供了一个严谨的民族志描述，并说明了这些系统如何在听觉、肉体和流散的文化领域中运作和回响。在他的学术基础上，我通过追踪美国和英国音响系统的来龙去脉，强调了音响文化的路线和循环。我的研究询问了更大的理论辩论，即如何在黑人散居和西方进步叙事中心的技术进步的背景下研究声音。在绘制声音系统文化在美国和英国黑人酷儿空间的回响时，这项工作的一个目的是了解酷儿人群如何接受和改革声音系统。我的第二个关注领域是黑人酷儿研究和表演研究。该项目努力解决有关音乐和酷儿研究之间关系的争论，关于声音的人种学研究如何被酷儿化，以及黑人酷儿移民是什么样子的。为了探索这些线索，我与汇集了种族、性别、阶级和酷儿理论的学者进行了交谈（Holland, 2012; Munoz, 1996,1999； E. Patrick Johnson 2001, 2003）。我的项目探讨了我们如何分析黑人酷儿的短暂表现方式。在我的研究中，我重新描绘了人们、思想和声音是如何旅行的，我将关于酷儿和移民之间联系的现有争论纳入其中。声音在本质上是迁移的，我通过声波和低音频率等隐喻来探索。在这里，我的项目从Omi'seke Natasha Tinsley（2008）中获得灵感，她挑战了Paul Gilroy（1993）的“黑人大西洋”这一有影响力的概念，通过对黑人酷儿的分析，丰富了谁被理解为“黑人大西洋”的一部分。我的工作朝着美国黑人和英国黑人女权主义奖学金的方向发展（Sharpe, 2006; Hartman, 2019; hooks 1994,2003; Carby, 1999,2019; Lewis, 2017），以分析美国和英国黑人酷儿、妇女和移民的性别社会政治条件。我计划探索里根和撒切尔时代，以及两个政权实施的政策如何影响黑人酷儿、妇女和移民的生活质量。然而，尽管存在这种敌对的氛围，黑人酷儿、妇女和移民帮助建立了另一种世界、空间和声音。值得注意的是，黑人女性和酷儿的贡献被排除在声音系统文化的主流叙事之外。我的项目通过将女权主义文化研究（麦克罗比，1999）作为分析框架，调查了一种不同的历史和时间线。在此过程中，我强调从黑人酷儿和女权主义的角度，在英国黑人文化研究（Hall， 1983年，1992年；Carby， 1999年，2019年；Gilroy， 1993年，2013年）和美国黑人文化研究（Moten， 2003年；Spillers， 2006年，Woods， 1998年）之间建立联系的重要性。

My project is interdisciplinary and engages performance studies, queer studies, critical ethnography, diaspora and Black feminist cultural studies. I identify three broad theoretical areas that my work intersects with. The first are a set of scholarly debates pertaining to Black diasporic music and sound studies. There has been an important influx of work connecting racial politics to sound and technology (Chude-Sokei 2005; Nelson 2002; Weheliye 2005). These interventions address how Black diasporic music is rendered illegible within white ethno-musicology and sound studies. By honing into sonic embodiment, science fiction, and Afrofuturism, scholars such as Kodwo Eshun (1998) and Edward George (1996) offer a re-imagining of an Afrodiasporic presence. This broadening shows that Black music is not just lived and made, but actually produces distinct imaginaries and worlds that reflect broader debates on who is understood to be human. Julian Henriques' (2011) study of the Jamaican dancehall sound system provides a rigorous ethnographic account and illustrates how these systems operate and resound within an auditory, corporeal and diasporic cultural realm. In building on his scholarship, by following the afterlife of the sound system in the U.S. and in the U.K., I highlight the routes and circulations of sound system culture. My research interrogates larger theoretical debates on how sound can be studied within the context of Black diaspora and technological advancement that decentres western progressive narratives. In mapping the reverberations of sound system culture in Black queer spaces in the U.S. and the U.K., one aim of the work is to understand how queer people received and reformed the sound system. My second focus area is Black queer studies and performance studies. The project grapples with debates pertaining to the relationship between music and queer studies, how ethnographic studies on sound can be queered, and what Black queer migration looks like. Exploring these threads, I converse with scholarship that brings together race, gender, class, and queer theory (Holland, 2012; Munoz, 1996,1999; E. Patrick Johnson 2001, 2003). My project addresses how we might analyse the fleeting performative ways of Black queerness. As my research remaps how people, ideas, and sound travel, I incorporate existing debates on the connection between queerness and migration. Sound is migratory in nature, which I explore through metaphors such as sound waves and bass frequencies. Here my project takes cues from Omi'seke Natasha Tinsley (2008), who challenges Paul Gilroy's (1993) influential concept of the "Black Atlantic", with a Black queer analysis that enriches who is understood to be part of the "Black Atlantic". My work moves in the direction of Black American and Black British feminist scholarship (Sharpe, 2006; Hartman, 2019; hooks 1994, 2003; Carby, 1999, 2019; Lewis, 2017) to analyse the gendered socio-political conditions for Black queers, women and migrants in the U.S. and the U.K. I plan to explore the Reagan and Thatcher era and how the policies put in place by both regimes compromised the quality of life for Black queers, women and migrants. Yet, in spite of this hostile climate, Black queers, women and migrants helped to build alternative worlds, spaces and sounds. Noticeably, the contributions of Black women and queers are left out of dominant narratives about sound system culture. My project surveys a different kind of history and timeline by tying in feminist cultural studies (McRobbie, 1999) as an analytical framework. In doing so, I emphasise the importance of drawing connections between Black British cultural studies (Hall, 1983, 1992; Carby 1999, 2019; Gilroy 1993, 2013) and Black American cultural studies (Moten, 2003; Spillers, 2006 Woods, 1998), from a Black queer and feminist perspective.