Noise and the Other in Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind

This article engages with noise studies to foreground their importance in the perception and the creation of the Other in Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind. The essay draws from Michel Serres’s The Parasite and Marie Thompson’s Beyond Unwanted Sound to contend that the pair sound/noise structures the characters’ response to difference and alterity. While initially pitting sound vs noise and English vs Spanish, the article shows how those pairs are impossible to maintain as the novel moves from the Other as noise to the self as noise. Although initially associated to the externality and vulnerability attributed to a Spanish-speaking woman stranded by the side of the road, noise becomes center stage, a parasitic presence that restructures reality and creates a void in signification. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the errantry of noise dismantles protocols of ordering and labeling and creates new configurations of power. There is no longer self vs Other, inside vs outside, belonging vs non-belonging as noise spreads vulnerability and relationality.