Aqua Audibilis : sonic borders and the making of underwater territory

This article is about the making and unmaking of underwater borders through sonic technologies. Building on scholarship that posits borders as mobile, it shows how the submarine realm is characterized by unwalled states and waxing sovereignty. It discusses instances from the history of military sonars, stealth technologies as well as oceanographic data collection in postcolonial India to show how underwater sonic surveillance is geared toward elastic and expansionist bordering. Bringing together underwater sonic mediation and colonial ideas of terra/aqua nullius, it proposes aqua audibilis (audible waters) as a conceptual framework to think about the aquapolis as a battlespace and laboratory, as a space of contesting sovereignties, as well as an ever-expanding realm of geo-power and geo-politics. Expansionist submarine territoriality shapes underwater sonic surveillance technologically, legally and institutionally, unfolding statist imaginaries of voluminous sovereignty.