Writing about ‘radical hope’, Jonathan Lear (2006) described his work as ‘philosophical anthropology’, a project that does not focus on the collection, classification, and interpretation of data, but rather explores ethics, politics and the possibilities of being (under colonial-capitalist conditions of collapse and destruction). Similarly, one can talk about ‘philosophical sociolinguistics’ as an ethical, political, and ontological project, exploring not only what is, but also what could have been and what could be otherwise.

In my talk I will link these broader reflections on sociolinguistics and philosophy to ongoing work on decolonization and southern theory; projects that are grounded in the political philosophy of the Black Radical Tradition (including Black surrealism, Kelley 2002). I further connect the debate to work on affect and emotion (as well as posthumanism and materiality); that is, an understanding that ‘the real’ cannot be reduced to what is visible or audible, but that it exists across the diversity of our senses. It is experienced in oscillating intensities, and includes not only what is present, but also the repressed and prohibited (Derrida, 2006).

The quote in the title comes from an epigraph by Harry Garuba (2017), and it reminds one that soundings – their vibrations, resonances and echoes as well as the feelings and atmospheres they engender – can, quite literally, rouse, and awaken, the world.

Therefore, the second part of my presentation explores the idea of ‘expressive insurgency’ (Nichols 2020) and ‘insurrectionary sensibility’ (LaBelle 2018); that is, the diverse sensory impulses – from sound to silence – that generate feelings of insurgency, of resistance and defiance; that keep the struggle against oppression alive; that make us imagine new worlds. I conclude by asking what it might mean to imagine ‘sociolinguistics as insurgency’, and how we can apply ‘large’ (and potentially universalizing) concepts (such as insurgency) to specific contexts and situations.