Sound studies folk will be unsurprised to know that I have some thoughts (and feelings) abt Christoph Cox's 'response' to myself and @annie_goh, the caveat being that I haven’t had chance to read it as closely as I’d like. However, I thought I’d share some initial responses.
Cox’s response seems to be predicated on ‘reading through’ both the realist/correlationist and enlightenment/postmodernism binary. This feels pertinent given that I sought to raise how unacknowledged perceptual schema shape what we see and don’t see, what we hear and don’t hear.
This ‘reading through’, I feel ,results in a number of ‘confusions’ (to be generous). While i'll engage on a more ‘meta’ level at some point, I’d like to comment on a few of these ‘confusions’ here.
Cox claims that I appear to reject ontology in light of my citation of @ZoeSTodd who states 'ontology is just another word for colonialism'. Yet the context in which Todd speaks and I mention Todd (and indeed Fanon) is in relation to the ‘origin myth’ of the 'ontological turn' 
In other words, I’m not talking ontology as ontology but about the politics of citation: who, in the construction of the grand ‘realist’ versus ‘correlationist’ binary gets obscured and erased.
While the ‘grey areas’ and ‘exceptions’ are always important, I don’t believe De Landa’s work or the other scholars he cites undoes the general narrative constructed around the ontological turn ad the realist/correlationist binary (nor does it for the other critics I cite).
Granted, I should have perhaps acknowledged De Landa as one of Cox’s influences, though I’d read Cox’s paradigm as Deleuzian more than anything else (which he shares in part with De Landa).
In this section I acknowledge the presence of ‘non-European’ ontologies (some of which Cox gestures to when referring to ‘African’ and ‘Asian’ philosophies). I also state that these antecedents suggest the concerns of ontology do not simply preclude a consideration of race.
So, my issue here is not ‘ontology’ per se, but a particular formation of ontology that is tied to a particular origin myth. Consequently, I’m not asking for a dismissal of ontology but for ontology to be situated. Hence my use of Fred Moten’s incredible work later in the article
Cox describes myself (and others) as denying the ‘nature’ of sound. The term nature here is telling (see @doctaj on this). Where I do not speak of the ‘nature’ of sound as distinct from its ‘cultural’ components, I explicitly state that I don’t deny sound has a material existence
The question I raise is what conditions and processes of mediation (i.e. perceptual schema) enable Cox to describe the ‘richest’ sound art as giving voice to ‘sound-itself’. This also doesn’t mean I hate science. Or oysters. Or dinosaurs.
‘constitute’ is in quotation marks because it is part of a quotation. It’s not in scare quotes – the quote ends after ‘apprehend’. The punctuation is incorrect in Cox's piece (or at least the version I have). These are Nikki Sullivan’s words, not mine.
Again, context is important: this isn't about saying epistemology constitutes ontology. It’s specifically about how new materialisms have failed to recognise the complex role of mediation/perception in shaping the object of study and the questions it asks, and does not ask, of it
Again, I don’t deny the suggestion that sound does not have a material or 'real' existence. But we're not talking about sound. We’re not even talking about acoustics. We are talking about a particular lineage of sound art, understood through a particular lineage of philosophy
Cox claims that I believe all universalising knowledge is racist. I really don’t think I say that. Indeed, I think I’m fairly clear that my issue is Cox’s ‘sound-itself’ relies on a selective interpretation of his exemplars: this is why I focus on his interpretation of Cage.
Cox calls me a creationist. It’s quite a remarkable thing to be called in print. This claim concerns my use of the term ‘ancestral’, which is coming from Jordana Rosenberg’s incisive critique of the Ontological Turn; and the use of the term ‘origin myth’.
Rosenberg's piece is here muse.jhu.edu/article/546470
As I understand it, this isn’t about natural science, or the Big Bang, or whatever. Nor do I call these things origin myths. I talk about speculative realism’s ‘origin myth’ regarding its emergence as a theoretical trend.
The ‘ancestral’ comes from Millassoux who refers to the ancestral as the ‘pre-conscious world, and object life’. The ‘ancestral’ is in scare quotes because its being used figuratively to refer to a perceived desire to move ‘beyond the social’.
More importantly, the point being raised is this: 'why now?' Why is there this turn in theory happening ‘now’ at this current social and political moment? I still maintain that this is a crucial question to ask.
Finally, given that part of this was indebted to the feminist assertion that it’s not just what we talk about but how and who we talk about, I’d like to pick up the reference to David Stove.
As a colleague of mine helpfully pointed out, Stove, while beloved of Harman et al, is the author of such ‘scientific’ hits as:
Just wanted to add to the thread @doctaj response to the doubling down on the nature/culture split its-her-factory.com/2018/05/some-t…
