Cut Sound
In my proposal of cut sound as a literary device, I demonstrate that silences can be woven into literary narratives through the interplay of dialogue and characters’ reactions with characters’ thoughts. To develop cut sound as a literary mode of listening, I draw from Djebar’s theorization of women’s silences in the essay ‘Forbidden Gaze, Severed Sound’ (1978), from her collection Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement, as well as oral folklore and performance studies scholar Richard Bauman’s concept of the performance event. Music recording production techniques serve as a critical metaphor for how to listen for silences in literary narratives. The characters’ thoughts either belie their reactions to what other characters say, or their thoughts efface parts of dialogue altogether, effectively erasing what other characters say from the text. In my readings of Djebar’s novella ‘Femmes d’Algers dans leur appartement’ and Leïla Sebbar’s novel Shérazade (1982), I demonstrate how cut sound weaves dialogue with thought in order to articulate cut sound, or the gendered silences of postcolonial subjects.