ABSTRACT
I consider myself a sound studies researcher and yet I do not consider myself a sound studies researcher. To explain this paradox: the object of study in my research is sound and yet I do not fit easily within the sound studies bracket as defined in numerous descriptions of sound studies as a research field and as an academic pathway. Still, in my professional life, I find myself regularly labelled as someone who “does sound studies,” whose work should be viewed through the distorting prism of sound studies. Categories and definitions, descriptive or normative, and in any field but, perhaps, particularly so in the humanities, do matter because they are useful tools for politicians and administrators and analysts and reviewers to, among other uses, formulate policies and decisions of inclusion and exclusion. This essay, therefore, is part rumination on what precisely sound studies is, part discussion of what sound is, and, ultimately, part suggestion that sound studies could be redefined to include what, if one holds to nominative determinism, should be the core object of study.
