Negotiated Moments: Improvisation, Sound, and Subjectivity, Gillian Siddall, Ellen Waterman

The contributors to Negotiated Moments explore how subjectivity is formed and expressed through musical improvisation, tracing the ways the transmission and reception of sound occur within and between bodies in real and virtual time and across memory, history, and space. They place the gendered, sexed, raced, classed, disabled, and technologized body at the center of critical improvisation studies and move beyond the fields tendency toward celebrating improvisations utopian and democratic ideals by highlighting the improvisation of marginalized subjects. Rejecting a singular theory of improvisational agency, the contributors show how improvisation helps people gain hard-won and highly contingent agency. Essays include analyses of the role of the body and technology in performance, improvisations ability to disrupt power relations, Pauline Oliveross ideas about listening, flautist Nicole Mitchells compositions based on Octavia Butlers science fiction, and an interview with Judith Butler about the relationship between her work and improvisation. The contributors close attention to improvisation provides a touchstone for examining subjectivities and offers ways to hear the full spectrum of ideas that sound out from and resonate within and across bodies.