Elephant in the Matrix Ethical Practice and Decolonial Praxis in Sonic Research

With the maturing of sound studies, and its intersection with critical studies, more attention is being given to the Anglo-Euro-centric and hegemonic legacy of acoustic ecology, as well as the cultural dimensions of sound studies. Discord between the practice of sound inquiry and sound ethnography has thus ensued, signaling the need to reexamine language and concept limitations, long-standing methods, approaches, and assumptions embedded in sonic research. In this paper we question the colonial foundations of sound studies in relation to researcher positionality and the conflicted task of attempting decoloniality from within the colonial institution that is academia. Beginning with a vignette, we position ourselves at the intersections of the discourse of coloniality and empire, and ask how sound studies, and indeed our own scholarship, mobilizes structures of power. Then we review major strands of decolonial scholarship within Canada and from key Latin American theorists, in relation to Canadian sound studies. And lastly, we offer what we call a speculative sonic framework for decolonial praxis: a set of suggestions for researchers that starts with the experiential more broadly, and the sonic more specifically, to mobilize decolonial praxis at the core of the research design.