Res nulla loquitur

Abstract

The concept of res nulla loquitur, the no-thing speaks, is a reformulation of the rule of evidence, res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself. It is drawn from a careful examination of the recorded arrest of Sandra Bland in 2015, and the evidence collected in Texas’s subsequent investigation of her death while in custody. Engaging with what remains of Sandra Bland’s speech performatively by “listening while you look” (Moten), the article offers a critical reading of the rhetoric of self-evident truth associated with Fourth Amendment jurisprudence on lethal arrest and more recent audio-visual evidence of police use of lethal force against black citizens. To emphasize the sonic dimension of the terrain of struggle with the violence of the word of law, each section is accompanied by sound loops the author created from evidence used by artist, lauren woods, in her exhibit, American Monument (2020). These sounds loops can be accessed at resnullaloquitur.com.

KEYWORDS:

• Lethal use of force; nonperformance
• evidence
• sound studies
• afropessimism
• speech acts
• police violence
• law
• abolition
• fourth amendment
• res ipsa loquitur

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I use the term, aesthetic, throughout this article in the broad sense of the experience and perception of qualities associated in Western philosophical discourse with art, including beauty, creativity, taste and style. At the same time, my use of the term unsettles the ideological presupposition that qualities typically associated with law, such as rationality, morality and political power, are not aesthetic. So my use of the term encompasses my approach to law and art as each other’s other, which is also to say that artistic and legal judgement share a limit where violence and ethics bear the possibility of unprecedented forms and modes of thought and regard. It is an interventionist term that joins many others' development of the concept, including, for example, Rizvana Bradley and Denise Ferreira da Silva, “Four Theses on Aesthetics” (2021).