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Sonic archives of Breathlessness

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posted on 2021-02-10, 02:39 authored by Poppy de Souza
© 2020 (Poppy de Souza). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). All Rights Reserved. This article conducts a close listening of the Australian podcast series Breathless: The Death of David Dungay Jr., which reports on the death in custody of Aboriginal man David Dungay and his family's struggle for justice in its wake. Bringing an orientation toward sound and listening into conversation with Christina Sharpe's concept of “archives of breathlessness,” it argues that Breathless can be heard as part of a larger sonic archive where Black and Indigenous breath is taken, stopped, let go, and held on to, and where the sounds of settler-colonial violence⇔and resistance to that violence⇔repeat across time and space. Drawing on notions of repetition, protraction, reckoning and recuperation, I explore the multiple ways “just hearings” in relation to Indigenous struggles for justice in the wake of colonization are stalled, protracted, and refused, while also listening for the sounds of Indigenous resistance, survival and moments of collective breath.

History

Publication Date

2020-01-01

Journal

International Journal of Communication

Volume

14

Pagination

19p. (p. 5686-5704)

Publisher

University of Southern California - Annenberg Center for Communication

ISSN

1932-8036

Rights Statement

The Author reserves all moral rights over the deposited text and must be credited if any re-use occurs. Documents deposited in OPAL are the Open Access versions of outputs published elsewhere. Changes resulting from the publishing process may therefore not be reflected in this document. The final published version may be obtained via the publisher’s DOI. Please note that additional copyright and access restrictions may apply to the published version.

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