"Des essais de son": Sonic Geographies of Racial Capitalism in Med Hondo's Soleil Ô

Through a historically situated close reading of Mauritanian-French filmmaker Med Hondo's first feature-length film, Soleil Ô (1970), this article traces the development of a deeply inventive, decolonial form of audiovisual critique that retains its analytical and affective force. The analytic framework of racial capitalism, I propose, makes it possible to hold together the film's fragmented vignettes. Focusing on how the work attentively sifts through the powerful auditory cacophony of the postcolonial city, I argue that the film traces a sonic cartography, generating an oppositional 'sound-essay' that critically interrogates racial capitalism's structuring dynamics of social differentiation and spatial domination.