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

Abstract

This article engages with noise studies to foreground its importance in the perception and the creation of the Other in Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind (2020). The essay draws from Michel Serres’s The Parasite (2007) and Marie Thompson’s Beyond Unwanted Sound (2017) to contend that the pairing sound/noise structures the characters’ response to difference and alterity. While initially pitting sound against noise and English against Spanish, the article goes on to show how those pairings are impossible to maintain as the novel moves from notions of the Other as noise to those of the self as noise. Although initially associated with the externality and vulnerability attributed to a Spanish-speaking woman stranded by the side of the road, noise then takes center stage, becoming a parasitic presence that restructures reality and creates a void in signification. The analysis provided here 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 has spread vulnerability and relationality.