Acousmatic Noise: Racialization and Resistance in The Tempest's 'New World' Soundscape

Abstract

I analyze Shakespeare’s racialization of noise in The Tempest as an acousmatic phenomenon and suggest how the acousmatic — sound whose source remains hidden — is imagined as a weapon of resistance that the racialized noisome Other could use to resist aristocratic and colonial power. Shakespeare’s play echoes the Algonquian-speaking Powhatan use of acousmatic singing in Tsenacommacah as a mode of warfare against the English in Virginia in 1611 with that of Caliban and his companions’ (Stephano and Trinculo) singing revolt.