Radical Open Access Collective
Building Horizontal Alliances
We hope this newsletter finds you well and that you have enjoyed a lovely July. We write with news of recent publications, the launch of a new series, and much more.
All of our titles are free to read and download. Explore our complete catalogue.
We are delighted to announce that, beginning in 2026, the Papers of the British School at Rome will appear fully open access with Open Book Publishers.
For more information, visit the series page here.
We are thrilled to announce that we are, for the fifth year in a row, on this year's SE100 list!
For more information, and to see the other excellent organisations who have been selected, see this webpage.
We are delighted to be able to share some news from within the wider OA community.
Open Access Books Network Article: 'How Should Diamond Open Access Work for Books?'.
NEW BOOK DISCOUNT: Enjoy 10% off when you spend £100 and 20% off when you spend £200 (or the equivalent in supported currencies) at OBP! The discount will be applied automatically at checkout.
That's all for this month!
We hope this newsletter finds you well and that you have had a restful June. We write with news of recent publications, updates from the wider Open Access community, and a spotlight on some of our exciting forthcoming titles.
All of our titles are free to read and download. Explore our complete catalogue.
Earlier this month (16-22 June) Refugee Week took place. At this time of this extreme humanitarian crisis, we are proud to publish two books that address humanitarian issues:
'Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By': Jews of Conscience on Palestine by Susan Landau (ed.) is a searing commentary on the impact of Israeli statehood on the indigenous Palestinian population, written as a powerful collection of Jewish dissent against Zionism. This title is particularly important at a time when violence escalates in Gaza and misinformation clouds public understanding.
The forthcoming Interprofessional Approach to Refugee Health: A Practical Guide for Interdisciplinary Health and Social Care Teams by Emer McGowan, Djenana Jalovcic and Sarah Quinn (eds.) focusses on equally pressing issues. As global displacement reaches unprecedented levels, health and social care professionals increasingly find themselves supporting people with refugee experience whose health and wellbeing needs are complex, urgent, and often unmet. This timely and practical book provides essential guidance for professionals on how to deliver compassionate, culturally responsive, and effective care to forcibly displaced individuals and communities.
We are delighted to be able to share some of the exciting new developments from within the wider OA community.
Open Access Books Network Blog post: 'From Permission to Publication: Managing Third-Party Materials in Open Access Books'.
Open Access Books Network Blog post: 'Services for OA book policy making'.
OA week 2025 has announced that the theme will be 'Who Owns Our Knowledge?'
There have been new developments with Copim; the new accessibility component is live but still under development. Find out more information about Copim Compass here and also in this fantastic blog post.
NEW BOOK DISCOUNT: Enjoy 10% off when you spend £100 and 20% off when you spend £200 (or the equivalent in supported currencies) at OBP! The discount will be applied automatically at checkout.
That's all for this month!
We hope this newsletter finds you well and that you have been enjoying some May sunshine. We write with publication announcements, several exciting prize nominations, author blog posts and a listing in the European Diamond Capacity Hub.
All of our titles are free to read and download. Explore our complete catalogue.
We're thrilled that three of our authors have been shortlisted for the 2025 ACLS Open Access Book Prizes and Arcadia Open Access Publishing Awards in the Environmental Humanities and Literary Studies categories!
This is a fantastic acknowledgement of their work and their decision to publish open access. The shortlisted authors are:
Enormous congratulations to them and to the other nominees for this wonderful recognition of their fine research and writing. We're also delighted that through these nominations we're flying the flag for independent open access presses: we're hugely proud to represent this growing community.
Find out more about the awards and the other nominees.
We're delighted that our author, Michael Hughes, has been shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the Biography category for his book, Feliks Volkhovskii: A Revolutionary Life.
Huge congratulations to Michael and to the other nominees!
Find out more about these awards and the other shortlisted books.
Etosha Pan to the Skeleton Coast: Conservation Histories, Policies and Practices in North-West Namibia, edited by Sian Sullivan, Ute Dieckmann and Selma Lendelvo has now received over 2,000 full-text downloads! Congratulations to the editors and all of the contributors.
You can also read a highly informative blog post packed full of images and photographs about the book and featuring many of the contributors.
OBP now appears in the European Diamond Capacity Hub registry: a dynamic, free and comprehensive resource designed to foster collaborations within the Diamond Open Access landscape in the European Research Area.
NEW BOOK DISCOUNT:Enjoy 10% off when you spend £100 and 20% off when you spend £200 (or the equivalent in supported currencies) at OBP! The discount will be applied automatically at checkout.
That's all for this month!
Edited by Paul R. Carr, Eloy Rivas-Sánchez and Gina Thésée
For the HTML version, click here / cliquez ici / haz clic aquí.
Download / télécharger / descargar the PDF version here / ici / aquí. (Upcoming)
This book critiques the notion of “Pygmalion democracy,” where deceptive forms of nationalism and propaganda, marinated in new technologies, communications and platforms, mask social inequalities and anti-democratic practices. This book, with some twenty authors from eight countries, problematizes war/conflict, environmental catastrophe, the media, education, peace, social injustice and social movements enmeshed within the context of Pygmalion democracy. The authors advocate for transformative, inclusive democracy through dialogue and solidarity, challenging hegemonic norms and promoting non-hierarchical decision-making and civil engagement. We hope that we can collectively create (non-normative) democratic spaces together, involving civil society, marginalized sectors, the arts, diverse learning engagements, citizen fora and activism.
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Cet ouvrage critique la notion de « démocratie Pygmalion », où des formes trompeuses de nationalisme et de propagande, imprégnées des nouvelles technologies, communications et plateformes, masquent les inégalités sociales et les pratiques antidémocratiques. Cet ouvrage, rédigé par une vingtaine d’auteurs et d’autrices de huit pays, problématise la guerre et les conflits, les catastrophes environnementales, les médias, l’éducation, la paix, l’injustice sociale et les mouvements sociaux, ancrés dans le contexte de la démocratie Pygmalion. Les aut·eur·rice·s prônent une démocratie transformatrice et inclusive, fondée sur le dialogue et la solidarité, remettant en question les normes hégémoniques et promouvant une prise de décision non hiérarchique et l’engagement citoyen. Nous espérons pouvoir créer collectivement des espaces démocratiques (non normatifs), impliquant la société civile, les secteurs marginalisés, les arts, les divers engagements d’apprentissage, les forums citoyens et le militantisme.
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Este libro critica la noción de la “democracia Pigmalión”, donde formas engañosas de nacionalismo y propaganda, impregnadas de nuevas tecnologías, comunicaciones y plataformas, enmascaran desigualdades sociales y prácticas antidemocráticas. Este libro, con una veintena de autores de ocho países, problematiza la guerra/conflicto, la catástrofe ambiental, los medios de comunicación, la educación, la paz, la injusticia social y los movimientos sociales envueltos en el contexto de la democracia Pigmalión. Los autores abogan por una democracia transformadora e inclusiva a través del diálogo y la solidaridad, desafiando las normas hegemónicas y promoviendo la toma de decisiones no jerárquica y la participación ciudadana. Esperamos que podamos crear colectivamente espacios democráticos (no normativos), involucrando a la sociedad civil, los sectores marginados, las artes, diversas formas de aprendizaje, foros ciudadanos y activismo.
ISBN for the print version: 978-2-925128-44-1
ISBN for the PDF version: 978-2-925128-45-8
DOI : Upcoming
588 pages
Cover design: Kate McDonnell
Publication date: August 2025
***
Contents – Contenu – Contenido
Preface – Préface – Prólogo / Paul R. Carr, Eloy Rivas-Sánchez & Gina Thésée
Abstract – Résumé – Resumen / Paul R. Carr, Eloy Rivas-Sánchez & Gina Thésée
Foreword: Contesting Pygmalion democracy / Antonia Darder
Introduction / Paul R. Carr, Eloy Rivas-Sánchez & Gina Thésée
Introduction / Paul R. Carr, Eloy Rivas-Sánchez & Gina Thésée
Introducción / Paul R. Carr, Eloy Rivas-Sánchez & Gina Thésée
1. If it sounds too good to be true… The mythology of (normative) elections building transformative forms of democracy / Paul R. Carr
1. Si c’est trop beau pour être vrai… La mythologie des élections (normatives) construisant des formes transformatoires de démocratie / Paul R. Carr
2. Galatea’s Revenge on Pygmalion. Women, Democracies, and Earth: Same Colonial Oppressions, Same Decolonial Struggles! / Gina Thésée
5. Beyond fragmented hegemonies: A critical feminist vision for transformative democracy / Sheila Landers Macrine
6. Democracy, social movements and pedagogy: Contesting the hegemonic attempts at destroying the popular / Ravi Kumar
7. Murmurations in the swarm: Trolling in the Age of rhizomatic reproduction / iowyth hezel ulthiin
8. Using critical media literacy to examine our relationships with nature and democracy / Jeff Share
9. Why 15-minute cities? Democracy and climate crisis denialism / Michael Hoechsmann
11. Official document utopias: Constructing the brave new digitalized higher education / Marko Teräs, Hanna Teräs & Juha Suoranta
12. Strengthening student teachers’ capabilities and creating transformative democratic spaces through practical-esthetical learning / Claudia Lenz & Merethe Skårås
13. Democratic ecopedagogy: Inclusive of more-than-humans within our postdigital world / Bachar Chbib & Greg William Misiaszek
Distance, therefore, preserves a European austerity in recorded musical practices, and electroacoustic practice is no exception; it is perhaps even responsible for reinvigorating a colonial posterity in contemporary music as so many examples in this book follow this pattern–Danielle Shlomit Sofer, Sex Sounds, 14.
Sex Sounds: Vectors of Difference in Electronic Music (MIT Press, 2022) by Danielle Shlomit Sofer brings a complex analysis for contemporary de-colonial, queer and feminist readers. This book did its best to sustain an argument diving into eleven case studies and strongly problematising the Western white cis gaze. Sofer offers readers a new perspective in both the history of music and the decolonisation of that history.
In a moment when discussions of consent, censorship, pleasure, and surveillance are reshaping how we think about media, Sofer asks: What does sex sound like, and why does it matter? Their analysis cuts across high art and popular culture, from avant-garde compositions to pop music to porn, revealing how sonic expressions of sex are never neutral—they’re deeply entangled in gendered, racialized, and heteronormative structures. In doing so, Sex Sounds resonates with broader critical work on listening as a political act, aligning with ongoing conversations in sound studies about the ethics of hearing and the politics of voice, noise, and silence
The main focus of Sex Sounds is the historical loop of sexual themes in electronic music since the 1950s. Sofer writes from the perspective of a mixed-race, nonbinary Jewish scholar specializing in music theory and musicology. They argue that the way the Western world teaches music history involves hegemonic narratives. In other words, the author’s impetus is to highlight the construction of mythological figures such as Pierre Schaeffer in France and Karlheinz Stockhausen in Germany who represent the canon of the Eurocentric music phenomena.
Sex Sounds specifically follows the concept of “Electrosexual Music,” defined by Sofer as electroacoustic Sound and Music interacting with sex and eroticism as socialized aesthetics. The issue of representation in music is a key research focus navigating questions such as: “How does music present sex acts and who enacts them? ” as well as: “how does a composer represent sexuality? How does a performer convey sexuality? And how does a listener interpret sexuality?” (xxiv & xxix). Moreover, Sofer traces: “the threats of representation, namely exploitation and objectification” (xxxvii) as the result of white male privilege and the historical harm and violence this means (xiix & 271).
By exploring answers to these questions, Sofer successfully exposes how electroacoustic sexuality has historically operated as a constant presence in many music genres, as well as proving that music and sound did not begin in Europe nor belongs only to the Anglo-European provincial cosmos. Sex Sounds gives visibility to peripheral voices ignored by the Eurocentric canon, arguing for a new history of music where countries such as Egypt, Ghana, South Africa, Chile, Japan or Korea are central.
Sofer further vivisects the meaning of sexual sounds as not only Eurocentric and colonial but patriarchal and sexist. What is the history behind sex sounds in the electroacoustic music field? Can we find liberation in sex sounds or have they only reproduced dominance? Which role do sex sounds play in the territories of otherness and racial representation? Are there examples where minoritized people have reclaimed their voice? Sex is part of our humanity. But how do sex sounds dehumanize female subjects? These are more of the fundamental questions Sofer responds to in this study.
I aim, first and foremost, to show that electrosexual music is far representative a collection than the typically presented electroacoustic figures -supposedly disinterested, disembodied, and largely white cis men from Europe and North America –Sofer, Sex Sounds,(xvi).
The time frame of the study ranges from 1950 until 2012, analysing four case studies. Sofer divides the book in two parts: Part I: “Electroacoustics of the Feminized Voice” and Part II: “Electrosexual Disturbance.” The first part contextualizes “electrosexual” music within the dominant cis white racial frame. The main argument is to demonstrate how many canonic electroacoustic works in the history of Western sound have sustained an ongoing dominance as a historical habit locating the male gaze at the center as well as instrumentalizing the ‘feminized voice’ as mere object of desire without personification and recognition as fundamental actor in the compositions. Under such a premise, Sofer vivisects sound works such as “Erotica” by the father of Musique Concretè Pierre Schaffer and Pierre Henry (1950-1951), Luc Ferrari’s “les danses organiques” (1973) and Robert Normandeu’s “Jeu de Langues” (2009), among other pieces.
Luc Ferrrari’s work from 1973 is one of many examples in which Sofer makes evident the question of consent, since the women’s voices he includes were used in his work without their knowledge, a pattern of objectivation that mirrors structures of patriarchal domination. Sofer “defines and interrogates the assumed norms of electroacoustic sexual expression in works that represent women’s presumed sexual experience via masculinist heterosexual tropes, even when composed by women” (xivii-xiviii). Sofer emphasises the existence of “distance” as a gendered trope in which women’s audible sexual pleasure is presented as “evidence” in the form of sexualized and racialized intramusical tropes. Philosophically speaking, this phenomena, Sofer argues, goes back to Friedrich Nietzsche and his understanding of the “women’s curious silence” (xxvii). In other words, a woman can be curious but must remain silent and in the shadows.
This is the case in Schaeffer and Henry’s “Erotica” (1950-1951), one of the earliest colonial impetus to electrosexual music in which female voices are both present and erased, present in the recording but erased as subjects of sonic agency, since the composers did not credit the woman behind the voice recordings. She has no name nor authorship, but her sexualized voice is the main element in the composition. This paradox shows the issue of prioritising the ‘Western’ white European cis male gaze. This gaze uses women’s sexuality as a commerce where only the composer benefits from this use. This exposes the problem of labor and exploitation within electroacoustic practice historically dominated by white men.
“Erotica” stands out for its sensual tension, abstract eroticism, and experimental use of the body as both subject and instrument. This work belongs to the hegemonic narrative of electroacoustic music with the use of sex sounds as aesthetic objects that insinuate erotic arousal as a construct of the male gaze.
Through examples like “Erotica” Sofer strongly questions the exclusion of women as active agents of aesthetic sonic creation since: “electroacoustic spaces have long excluded women’s contributions as equal creators to men, who are more typically touted as composers and therefore compensated with prestige in the form of academic positions or board dominations” (xxxix). This book considers: “the threats of representation, namely exploitation and objectification” (xxxvii). Here we navigate the questions of how something is presented, by whom, and with which profit or intention. In other words, how sounds: “are created, for what purposes, and in turn, how sounds are interpreted and understood” (xxxiii).These are problems rooted in both patriarchy and capitalism.
This book is a strong contribution to decolonize the history of music as we know it, although the citations here could be richer, including studies by Rachel McCarthy (“Marking the ‘Unmarked’ Space: Gendered Vocal Construction in Female Electronic Artists” 2014), Tara Rodgers (“Tinkering with Cultural Memory: Gender and the Politics of Synthesizer Historiography” 2015), and the work of Louise Marshall and Holly Ingleton, who used intersectional feminist frameworks to analyze the work of marginalized composers (including women of color) and the curatorial practices that shape electronic music history. Also, not to forget: Chandra Mohanty’s “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” (1988).
Musical artist Sylvester
I argue that, although many composers of color work in electronic music, the search term ‘electroacoustic’ remains exclusionary because of who declares themselves as an advocate of this music, and not necessarily in how their music is made–Sofer, Sex Sounds, (xiv).
After a deep dive into the genealogy of the patriarchal practices in electroacoustic music understood as electrosexual works (hence: “Sex is only re-presented in music p. xxix), Sofer moves to the territory of feminist contra-narratives. In the second part of their study, Sofer offers sonic practices and concrete examples that: “break the electroacoustic mold either by consciously objecting to its narrow constraints or by emerging from, building on, and, in a sense, competing with a completely different historical trajectory” (xlvi). Contra-narratives from the racialized periphery and underground landscapes appear in this book as case studies to hold the argument and expand the homocentric and patriarchal telos found even in the sonic archives as well as the Western theoretical corpus. These ‘Others’ reclaim their voices going a step further and gaining recognition.
After examining examples of racialisation and objectification, Sofer selects some case studies from 1975 to 2013 in the second chapter of this section titled: “Electrosexual Disturbance.” In this section, Sofer also points to new forms of exclusion and instrumentalisation via “racial othering,” specifically in the context of popular music such as Disco where we find an emphasis on the feminized voice. Disco, as a genre rooted in Black, queer, and marginalized communities, inherently grappled with racial and gendered dynamics. Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” (1975) exemplifies this tension.
The track’s erotic vocal performance (23 simulated orgasms over 16 minutes) became emblematic of the hypersexualization of Black women in popular music. Summer’s persona as the “first lady of love” reinforced stereotypes of Black female sexuality as inherently exotic or excessive, a trope traced to racist and sexist historical narratives. Simultaneously, disco provided a space for liberation: Black and LGBTQ+ artists like Summer, Sylvester, and Gloria Gaynor used the genre to assert agency over their identities and bodies, challenging mainstream exclusion. The tropes of sex and race are a paradoxical combination bringing both oppression as well as liberation.
Sofer argues that Summers was commercially recognized but her figure as a composer was destroyed, creating consequently a hierarchy of labor. She was acknowledged for her amazing sexualized voice and performance on stage, but not recognized as a musician or equal to music producers. Here we see the practice of epistemological discrimination and extreme racial sexualisation. On the positive side, Summer became the Black Queen idol for gay liberation. Nevertheless, she remained as the sexualized and racial voice of the seventies.
Sofer also presents the case of ex-sex worker, sex-educator and radical ecosex-activist Annie Sprinkle collaborating in a post-porn art video with the legendary Texan and lesbian composer Pauline Oliveros. For Sprinkle and Oliveros, Sofer offers a different phenomena at work, since both queer-women/Lesbian-women collaborated from the point of feminist independence and sexual liberation coming together for educational purposes.
Sluts & Goddesses (1992) is a porn film with an Oliveros soundtrack, produced by radical women– with only women–in a self-determined frame. The movie offers an example of collaboration moving from avantgarde sound composition expertise to trashy whoring and interracial lesbian power. This example was rare, but inspiring for the coming generations. Two lesbian Titans united for electrosexual disturbance from the feminist gaze, Sprinkle and Oliveros were a duo that broke silence.
This book revisits the acousmatic in its electronic manifestations to examine and interrogate sexual and sexualized assumptions underwriting electroacoustic musical philosophies.–Sofer, Sex Sounds, (xxi)
Sofer’s Sex Sounds enters into a vital and still-emerging conversation about how sound—particularly sonic expressions of sex and eroticism—shapes, disrupts, and reinscribes power. At a time when sonic studies increasingly reckon with embodiment, affect, and intimacy, Sofer brings a feminist and queer critique to the center of how we listen to, interpret, and culturally regulate the sounds of sex. Their book invites us to reconsider not only what we hear in erotic audio, but how we’ve been taught—socially, politically, morally—to hear it.
This book doesn’t just fill a gap—it pushes the field toward a more nuanced, bodily-aware mode of scholarship. For SO! readers, Sex Sounds offers both a provocation and a methodology: it challenges us to hear differently, to ask how power works not only through what is seen or said, but through what is moaned, whispered, muffled, or made to be heard too loudly.
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Featured Image: “Stamen,” by Flickr User Sharonolk, CC BY 2.0
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Verónica Mota Galindo is an interdisciplinary researcher based in Berlin, where they study philosophy at the Freie Universität. Their work goes beyond the academic sphere, blending sound art, critical epistemology, and community engagement to make complex philosophical ideas accessible to broader audiences. As a dedicated educator and sound artist, Mota Galindo bridges the gap between academic research and lived material experience, inviting others to explore the transformative power of critical thought and creative expression. Committed to bringing philosophy to life outside traditional boundaries, they inspire new ways of thinking aimed at emancipation of the human and non-human for collective survival.
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REWIND!…If you liked this post, check out:
Into the Woods: A Brief History of Wood Paneling on Synthesizers*–Tara Rodgers
Ritual, Noise, and the Cut-up: The Art of Tara Transitory—Justyna Stasiowska
SO! Reads: Zeynep Bulut’s Building a Voice: Sound, Surface, Skin –Enikő Deptuch Vághy
Distance, therefore, preserves a European austerity in recorded musical practices, and electroacoustic practice is no exception; it is perhaps even responsible for reinvigorating a colonial posterity in contemporary music as so many examples in this book follow this pattern–Danielle Shlomit Sofer, Sex Sounds, 14.
Sex Sounds: Vectors of Difference in Electronic Music (MIT Press, 2022) by Danielle Shlomit Sofer brings a complex analysis for contemporary de-colonial, queer and feminist readers. This book did its best to sustain an argument diving into eleven case studies and strongly problematising the Western white cis gaze. Sofer offers readers a new perspective in both the history of music and the decolonisation of that history.
In a moment when discussions of consent, censorship, pleasure, and surveillance are reshaping how we think about media, Sofer asks: What does sex sound like, and why does it matter? Their analysis cuts across high art and popular culture, from avant-garde compositions to pop music to porn, revealing how sonic expressions of sex are never neutral—they’re deeply entangled in gendered, racialized, and heteronormative structures. In doing so, Sex Sounds resonates with broader critical work on listening as a political act, aligning with ongoing conversations in sound studies about the ethics of hearing and the politics of voice, noise, and silence
The main focus of Sex Sounds is the historical loop of sexual themes in electronic music since the 1950s. Sofer writes from the perspective of a mixed-race, nonbinary Jewish scholar specializing in music theory and musicology. They argue that the way the Western world teaches music history involves hegemonic narratives. In other words, the author’s impetus is to highlight the construction of mythological figures such as Pierre Schaeffer in France and Karlheinz Stockhausen in Germany who represent the canon of the Eurocentric music phenomena.
Sex Sounds specifically follows the concept of “Electrosexual Music,” defined by Sofer as electroacoustic Sound and Music interacting with sex and eroticism as socialized aesthetics. The issue of representation in music is a key research focus navigating questions such as: “How does music present sex acts and who enacts them? ” as well as: “how does a composer represent sexuality? How does a performer convey sexuality? And how does a listener interpret sexuality?” (xxiv & xxix). Moreover, Sofer traces: “the threats of representation, namely exploitation and objectification” (xxxvii) as the result of white male privilege and the historical harm and violence this means (xiix & 271).
By exploring answers to these questions, Sofer successfully exposes how electroacoustic sexuality has historically operated as a constant presence in many music genres, as well as proving that music and sound did not begin in Europe nor belongs only to the Anglo-European provincial cosmos. Sex Sounds gives visibility to peripheral voices ignored by the Eurocentric canon, arguing for a new history of music where countries such as Egypt, Ghana, South Africa, Chile, Japan or Korea are central.
Sofer further vivisects the meaning of sexual sounds as not only Eurocentric and colonial but patriarchal and sexist. What is the history behind sex sounds in the electroacoustic music field? Can we find liberation in sex sounds or have they only reproduced dominance? Which role do sex sounds play in the territories of otherness and racial representation? Are there examples where minoritized people have reclaimed their voice? Sex is part of our humanity. But how do sex sounds dehumanize female subjects? These are more of the fundamental questions Sofer responds to in this study.
I aim, first and foremost, to show that electrosexual music is far representative a collection than the typically presented electroacoustic figures -supposedly disinterested, disembodied, and largely white cis men from Europe and North America –Sofer, Sex Sounds,(xvi).
The time frame of the study ranges from 1950 until 2012, analysing four case studies. Sofer divides the book in two parts: Part I: “Electroacoustics of the Feminized Voice” and Part II: “Electrosexual Disturbance.” The first part contextualizes “electrosexual” music within the dominant cis white racial frame. The main argument is to demonstrate how many canonic electroacoustic works in the history of Western sound have sustained an ongoing dominance as a historical habit locating the male gaze at the center as well as instrumentalizing the ‘feminized voice’ as mere object of desire without personification and recognition as fundamental actor in the compositions. Under such a premise, Sofer vivisects sound works such as “Erotica” by the father of Musique Concretè Pierre Schaffer and Pierre Henry (1950-1951), Luc Ferrari’s “les danses organiques” (1973) and Robert Normandeu’s “Jeu de Langues” (2009), among other pieces.
Luc Ferrrari’s work from 1973 is one of many examples in which Sofer makes evident the question of consent, since the women’s voices he includes were used in his work without their knowledge, a pattern of objectivation that mirrors structures of patriarchal domination. Sofer “defines and interrogates the assumed norms of electroacoustic sexual expression in works that represent women’s presumed sexual experience via masculinist heterosexual tropes, even when composed by women” (xivii-xiviii). Sofer emphasises the existence of “distance” as a gendered trope in which women’s audible sexual pleasure is presented as “evidence” in the form of sexualized and racialized intramusical tropes. Philosophically speaking, this phenomena, Sofer argues, goes back to Friedrich Nietzsche and his understanding of the “women’s curious silence” (xxvii). In other words, a woman can be curious but must remain silent and in the shadows.
This is the case in Schaeffer and Henry’s “Erotica” (1950-1951), one of the earliest colonial impetus to electrosexual music in which female voices are both present and erased, present in the recording but erased as subjects of sonic agency, since the composers did not credit the woman behind the voice recordings. She has no name nor authorship, but her sexualized voice is the main element in the composition. This paradox shows the issue of prioritising the ‘Western’ white European cis male gaze. This gaze uses women’s sexuality as a commerce where only the composer benefits from this use. This exposes the problem of labor and exploitation within electroacoustic practice historically dominated by white men.
“Erotica” stands out for its sensual tension, abstract eroticism, and experimental use of the body as both subject and instrument. This work belongs to the hegemonic narrative of electroacoustic music with the use of sex sounds as aesthetic objects that insinuate erotic arousal as a construct of the male gaze.
Through examples like “Erotica” Sofer strongly questions the exclusion of women as active agents of aesthetic sonic creation since: “electroacoustic spaces have long excluded women’s contributions as equal creators to men, who are more typically touted as composers and therefore compensated with prestige in the form of academic positions or board dominations” (xxxix). This book considers: “the threats of representation, namely exploitation and objectification” (xxxvii). Here we navigate the questions of how something is presented, by whom, and with which profit or intention. In other words, how sounds: “are created, for what purposes, and in turn, how sounds are interpreted and understood” (xxxiii).These are problems rooted in both patriarchy and capitalism.
This book is a strong contribution to decolonize the history of music as we know it, although the citations here could be richer, including studies by Rachel McCarthy (“Marking the ‘Unmarked’ Space: Gendered Vocal Construction in Female Electronic Artists” 2014), Tara Rodgers (“Tinkering with Cultural Memory: Gender and the Politics of Synthesizer Historiography” 2015), and the work of Louise Marshall and Holly Ingleton, who used intersectional feminist frameworks to analyze the work of marginalized composers (including women of color) and the curatorial practices that shape electronic music history. Also, not to forget: Chandra Mohanty’s “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” (1988).
Musical artist Sylvester
I argue that, although many composers of color work in electronic music, the search term ‘electroacoustic’ remains exclusionary because of who declares themselves as an advocate of this music, and not necessarily in how their music is made–Sofer, Sex Sounds, (xiv).
After a deep dive into the genealogy of the patriarchal practices in electroacoustic music understood as electrosexual works (hence: “Sex is only re-presented in music p. xxix), Sofer moves to the territory of feminist contra-narratives. In the second part of their study, Sofer offers sonic practices and concrete examples that: “break the electroacoustic mold either by consciously objecting to its narrow constraints or by emerging from, building on, and, in a sense, competing with a completely different historical trajectory” (xlvi). Contra-narratives from the racialized periphery and underground landscapes appear in this book as case studies to hold the argument and expand the homocentric and patriarchal telos found even in the sonic archives as well as the Western theoretical corpus. These ‘Others’ reclaim their voices going a step further and gaining recognition.
After examining examples of racialisation and objectification, Sofer selects some case studies from 1975 to 2013 in the second chapter of this section titled: “Electrosexual Disturbance.” In this section, Sofer also points to new forms of exclusion and instrumentalisation via “racial othering,” specifically in the context of popular music such as Disco where we find an emphasis on the feminized voice. Disco, as a genre rooted in Black, queer, and marginalized communities, inherently grappled with racial and gendered dynamics. Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” (1975) exemplifies this tension.
The track’s erotic vocal performance (23 simulated orgasms over 16 minutes) became emblematic of the hypersexualization of Black women in popular music. Summer’s persona as the “first lady of love” reinforced stereotypes of Black female sexuality as inherently exotic or excessive, a trope traced to racist and sexist historical narratives. Simultaneously, disco provided a space for liberation: Black and LGBTQ+ artists like Summer, Sylvester, and Gloria Gaynor used the genre to assert agency over their identities and bodies, challenging mainstream exclusion. The tropes of sex and race are a paradoxical combination bringing both oppression as well as liberation.
Sofer argues that Summers was commercially recognized but her figure as a composer was destroyed, creating consequently a hierarchy of labor. She was acknowledged for her amazing sexualized voice and performance on stage, but not recognized as a musician or equal to music producers. Here we see the practice of epistemological discrimination and extreme racial sexualisation. On the positive side, Summer became the Black Queen idol for gay liberation. Nevertheless, she remained as the sexualized and racial voice of the seventies.
Sofer also presents the case of ex-sex worker, sex-educator and radical ecosex-activist Annie Sprinkle collaborating in a post-porn art video with the legendary Texan and lesbian composer Pauline Oliveros. For Sprinkle and Oliveros, Sofer offers a different phenomena at work, since both queer-women/Lesbian-women collaborated from the point of feminist independence and sexual liberation coming together for educational purposes.
Sluts & Goddesses (1992) is a porn film with an Oliveros soundtrack, produced by radical women– with only women–in a self-determined frame. The movie offers an example of collaboration moving from avantgarde sound composition expertise to trashy whoring and interracial lesbian power. This example was rare, but inspiring for the coming generations. Two lesbian Titans united for electrosexual disturbance from the feminist gaze, Sprinkle and Oliveros were a duo that broke silence.
This book revisits the acousmatic in its electronic manifestations to examine and interrogate sexual and sexualized assumptions underwriting electroacoustic musical philosophies.–Sofer, Sex Sounds, (xxi)
Sofer’s Sex Sounds enters into a vital and still-emerging conversation about how sound—particularly sonic expressions of sex and eroticism—shapes, disrupts, and reinscribes power. At a time when sonic studies increasingly reckon with embodiment, affect, and intimacy, Sofer brings a feminist and queer critique to the center of how we listen to, interpret, and culturally regulate the sounds of sex. Their book invites us to reconsider not only what we hear in erotic audio, but how we’ve been taught—socially, politically, morally—to hear it.
This book doesn’t just fill a gap—it pushes the field toward a more nuanced, bodily-aware mode of scholarship. For SO! readers, Sex Sounds offers both a provocation and a methodology: it challenges us to hear differently, to ask how power works not only through what is seen or said, but through what is moaned, whispered, muffled, or made to be heard too loudly.
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Featured Image: “Stamen,” by Flickr User Sharonolk, CC BY 2.0
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Verónica Mota Galindo is an interdisciplinary researcher based in Berlin, where they study philosophy at the Freie Universität. Their work goes beyond the academic sphere, blending sound art, critical epistemology, and community engagement to make complex philosophical ideas accessible to broader audiences. As a dedicated educator and sound artist, Mota Galindo bridges the gap between academic research and lived material experience, inviting others to explore the transformative power of critical thought and creative expression. Committed to bringing philosophy to life outside traditional boundaries, they inspire new ways of thinking aimed at emancipation of the human and non-human for collective survival.
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REWIND!…If you liked this post, check out:
Into the Woods: A Brief History of Wood Paneling on Synthesizers*–Tara Rodgers
Ritual, Noise, and the Cut-up: The Art of Tara Transitory—Justyna Stasiowska
SO! Reads: Zeynep Bulut’s Building a Voice: Sound, Surface, Skin –Enikő Deptuch Vághy
Revue de la Faculté des Arts, Lettres et Sciences Humaines de l’Université de Maroua
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Rhumsiki est une revue scientifique pluridisciplinaire publiée par la Faculté des Arts, Lettres et Sciences Humaines et Sociales (FALSH) de l’Université de Maroua, au Cameroun. À l’image du site emblématique dont elle porte le nom – symbole de richesse culturelle, d’altérité et de confluence entre traditions et modernité – la revue Rhumsiki entend être un carrefour intellectuel ouvert à la diversité des regards, des disciplines et des problématiques qui traversent les sociétés humaines.
Elle accueille des contributions originales en sciences humaines et sociales, notamment en histoire, géographie, sociologie, anthropologie, psychologie, lettres, langues, arts, philosophie, sciences de l’éducation, science politique, et domaines connexes. Les articles proposés peuvent prendre la forme de recherches empiriques, d’analyses théoriques, de notes de lecture critiques ou encore de réflexions méthodologiques.
Rhumsiki se donne pour ambition de valoriser les travaux portant sur l’Afrique en général, et le Sahel en particulier, tout en s’ouvrant à des perspectives comparées et globales. La revue s’adresse aux chercheur·euse·s, enseignant·e·s, doctorant·e·s, professionnel·le·s du développement et à tous ceux et celles qui s’intéressent à la compréhension fine des dynamiques sociales, culturelles, politiques et économiques du monde contemporain.
Liste des contributeurs et contributrices : DOLLO MANDANDI, Éric Achille NKO’O BEKONO, Gilbert Willy TIO BABENA, GONDEU LADIBA, Jean-Marie DATOUANG DJOUSSOU, Joseph BOMDA, Mahamat MEY MAHAMAT, Mbiah Anny Flore TCHOUTA, Rachel ASTA MÉRÉ, Remy DZOU TSANGA, Théophile KALBE YAMO, WARAYANSSA MAWOUNE et ZAKINET DANGBET.
ISSN : 2312-766X
206 pages
Design de la couverture : Kate McDonnell
Date de publication : 2025
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Table des matières
Revue de la Faculté des Arts, Lettres et Sciences Humaines de l’Université de Maroua
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Ce numéro spécial, issu des Grands programmes de recherche de la Faculté des Arts, Lettres et Sciences Humaines de l’Université de Maroua, interroge la complexité des frontières à l’Extrême-Nord du Cameroun, région sahélienne marquée par le terrorisme islamiste et des dynamiques transfrontalières multiformes. Réunies sous le thème « Regards pluriels sur la frontière à l’Extrême-Nord du Cameroun », les contributions explorent les représentations, les usages et les tensions qui structurent ces marges. Au-delà des tracés administratifs, les frontières apparaissent comme des zones de contact, d’échanges, de conflits et de résilience. Elles révèlent des ambivalences profondes, à la fois héritées de la colonisation et réactualisées par les crises sécuritaires, de Boko Haram à la grande criminalité transfrontalière. Ces études, nourries de perspectives plurielles, offrent des clés pour comprendre comment ces marges influencent la vie des populations et les circulations dans le bassin du Lac Tchad. Malgré la violence et l’instabilité, les personnes, les biens et les plantes continuent à circuler entre le Cameroun, le Nigeria et le Tchad, rappelant le caractère mouvant et négocié de la frontière. En définitive, ce numéro propose une lecture nuancée de la frontière comme fait social total : imposée et contestée, fragile et persistante, violente et vitale.
Liste des contributeurs et contributrices : Aimé Raoul SUMO TAYO, Crépin WOWÉ, GIGLA GARAKCHEME, Gilbert Willy TIO BABENA, HAMADOU, Jean GORMO, Jean-Marie DATOUANG DJOUSSOU, Jeremie DIYE, Joël MBRING, Joseph WOUDAMMIKÉ, MAHAMAT ABBA OUSMAN, NDJIDDA ALI, OUSMANOU ABDOU, Paul Basile Odilon NYET, Samuel KAMOUGNANA et WARAYANSSA MAWOUNE.
ISSN : 2312-766X
294 pages
Design de la couverture : Kate McDonnell
Date de publication : 2025
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Table des matières
I. Frontière disruptive : le défi sécuritaire
2. Évanescence des frontières et extension du terrorisme au Cameroun : le cas de Boko Haram aux abords du lac Tchad et des Monts Mandara
Aimé Raoul SUMO TAYO
3. L’extension de la menace terroriste Boko Haram dans les monts Mandara (Cameroun/Nigeria)
GIGLA GARAKCHEME
5. Insécurité transfrontalière et résilience socioéconomique des éleveurs bovins à l’Extrême-Nord Cameroun : entre reconversion, sédentarisation et reconstruction identitaire
Paul Basile Odilon NYET et OUSMANOU ABDOU
6. La résolution endogène des conflits fonciers par les communautés des monts Mandara de l’Extrême-Nord Cameroun
Jeremie DIYE
7. Jeu de données sur les stéréotypes et la stigmatisation des réfugié·e·s, déplacé·e·s et accueillants de la crise transfrontalière Boko Haram
Gilbert Willy TIO BABENA et WARAYANSSA MAWOUNE
II. Frontière ficelante : les opportunités économiques et sociales
8. L’idée de frontière chez les peuples des monts Mandara du Nord-Cameroun
Samuel KAMOUGNANA
10. Milieux naturels et ancien culturescape au Nord-Cameroun : un regard d’archéologue
Jean-Marie DATOUANG DJOUSSOU
12. Cultures, échanges transfrontaliers et nouvelle perception de la frontière dans la vallée du Logone
MAHAMAT ABBA OUSMAN
13. Plantes et frontières au Nord-Cameroun
Jean GORMO
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