3: From Festival to Decibel: Contestations of Renao and Zaoyin in Taiwan's Noise Control System

Temple festivals are largely celebrated in Taiwan as a distinctive feature of Taiwanese music and culture, though this was not always the case. In this talk, I examine renao as a contested aesthetic in the creation of noise control regulations starting in the 1980s. The cultural embrace of festival noise, known as renao, complicates assumptions of unwanted noise, zaoyin, and has led government officials to tread lightly between the two ideals in the day-to-day management of noise. Drawing on legislative proceedings, historical sources, and ethnographic data, I argue that the tension between renao and zaoyin points to the co-existence of multiple ideologies of noise and allows for an articulation of political subjectivity in the sonic domain