PhD | ‘Resounding Gender: Sound in Gendered Human-Nonhuman Entanglements’ – Luca Soudant

PhD | ‘Resounding Gender: Sound in Gendered Human-Nonhuman Entanglements’
PhD candidate: Luca Soudant
Supervisors: Sarah de Mul, Aagje Swinnen, Louis van den Hengel

My research interest was triggered by Doritos’ (a crisp brand) proposal to design a “lady-friendly” crisp: specifically designed for women and crunching less loudly. The brand claimed that women do not like to take much acoustic space while eating crisps and therefore need a less crunchy crisp. After a backlash of cynical and angry outlets on social media, of which many framed this sound design as sexist, Doritos withdrew from producing the “lady-friendly” crisp.

The relationship between gender and sound has been studied, predominantly with a focus on the sound of the human voice and gender relations in music, which falls short of theorizing sound in gendered human-nonhuman entanglements, such as in the act of eating a crisp. Therefore, to profoundly understand the complexity of gender as a power mechanism, I will study the cultural construction and performativity of gender in sonic relations humans have with objects in a Western context. Here, one can think of tapping high heels and growling motor vehicles. The main research question is: How is gender formed through sound in human-nonhuman entanglements? To answer this question, I study a selection of objects that, in interaction with humans, produce specific sounds. Theoretically, I use queer, posthuman, and sonic materialist approaches. I apply different methodologies such as (auto)ethnography and semiotic analysis. The PhD project also takes shape as artistic research: it seeks an interaction between making and thinking, in which artistic creation with sound is a crucial component of doing the research and that takes sound seriously as a political domain where gender exclusion, oppression, and violence can be studied and contested.