Afrosonic Life

Book excerpt: Afrosonic Life explores the role sonic innovations in the African diaspora play in articulating methodologies for living the afterlife of slavery. Developing and extending debates on Afrosonic cultures, the book attends to the ways in which the acts of technological subversion, experimentation and production complement and interrupt the intellectual project of modernity. Music making processes such as dub, turntablism, hip-hop dj techniques and the remix, innovate methods of expressing subjecthoods beyond the dominant language of Western “Man” and the market. These sonic innovations utilize sound as a methodology to institute a rehumanizing subjectivity in which sound dislodges the hierarchical ordering of racial schemas. Afrosonic Life is invested in excavating and elaborating the nuanced and novel ways of music making and sound creation found in the African diaspora.