Two or Three Confusions About Vibrations

Road traffic noise is considered the largest contributor to excessive noise exposure levels in Europe. Central to this type of noise is what is called “rolling noise.” This article emerges from an ethnographic encounter with a group of individuals in Greater Paris who are protesting road traffic noise, not as noise, but as vibrations. But is there a difference between noise and vibration? Why are vibrations not included within noise regulations? Is it a question of sensation? Is there a sense of vibration? If STS has shown how objects of knowledge, the senses, and bodies are assembled in social, political, and technological configurations, this article describes how vibrations and their sensory experiences slip out of them. Through a brief ethnographic encounter and a historical narrative, this article is about two or three confusions: between noise and vibration, the senses, and confusion as a form of knowledge itself. It is interested in how the sensory knowledge of vibration blurs sensory categories and challenges the bodily model that environmental regulations rely on. While vibrations have opened up reflections on other ways of sensing, they also provide an opportunity to think with, and not against, confusion as a form of knowing in uncertainty.