| This project examines the productive collision of postcolonial theory, Irish Studies, and acoustic ecology -- a field that explores how sound mediates our relationships to place. It observes that postcolonial literatures are often peculiarly preoccupied with sound, and hypothesizes that this attunement stems from Homi Bhabha's so-called "postcolonial unhomely": Empire's strategic alienation of its subjects from visual or geographical space, typically by way of re-mapping and repurposing occupied territory. To compensate for this estrangement, I argue, some postcolonial authors turn to thinking place in acoustic space, an approach legitimated by 'sound theorists' like Marshall McLuhan and Jean-Luc Nancy who ask us to reconsider landscape as soundscape, an immersive auditory field. This strategy suggests sound's political and affective potential: music, accent, and even comfortingly familiar 'white noise' can help subjects otherwise unmoored to feel at home.;My project takes Northern Ireland as a case study, as this ear-minded approach seems an imperative in the post-Partition North: the country's visual spaces are violently stratified, cluttered with sectarian symbols complicating comfortable belonging and conciliatory community-building. It explores the work of three Ulster poets -- Ciaran Carson, Derek Mahon, and Paul Muldoon -- who are self-consciously attentive to sound. Carson casts Troubles-era Belfast as a "demolition city"; violence defamiliarizes his cityscape, swallowing local landmarks "in the maw of time and Trouble." In response, he re-maps place in acoustic space, explaining how locals use compensatory auditory cues to navigate the otherwise slippery city. Mahon combines sound theory with ecocriticism to re-imagine his relationship to place; positioning his speakers as careful 'close listeners,' he censures the "noise of sectarian hate" and proposes "hearing the poetry that surrounds us" as a salve for the conflict's strident tones. Finally, Muldoon, repelled by myopic local tribalisms, re-imagines community in acoustic space -- a "sphere," according to McLuhan, "without fixed boundaries." His libretti literally sound out cross-cultural counterpoints, and his poems' polyphonies chime together far-flung voices, both enabling ways of 'being together' beyond the eye can see. Ultimately, these writers suggest that sound (at least sometimes) satisfies, and I therefore intend my project as a provocation to deep literary listening in the field. |
