On the contingency of sound and listening: an introduction
Steffen Just, Jens Gerrit Papenburg · Sound Studies · 2025
This introduction presents the central thesis of this special issue: Sound and listening are contingent and this contingency became reflected and diffracted in selected situations in Europe and North America between 1800 and the present day. In a first step, we trace the status of the contingency of sound and listening in the discourse of sound studies to date and outline theoretical discussions of contingency in philosophy, history, post-colonial studies, visual studies, and sociology. In a second step, we propose three outlines of the contingency of sound and listening: sound and listening cannot be determined generally, only situationally; this lack of general determinability has repeatedly become reflexive and diffractive in the past and the present; contingency of sound and listening is a figure of the third. While the introduction also briefly presents the six contributions in this special issue which explore specific cases where the contingency of sound and listening becomes apparent, in a third and final step it also sketches how the study of the contingency of sound and listening can shape the building of a theory of sonic modernity.