In this essay, I explore rhetoric after sound—a condition that emerges when listening exceeds the limits of acoustic explanation. Centering the story of Michael A. Sweeney’s encounter with “The Hum,” I trace how listeners respond to sonic phenomena that defy measurement and understanding. These stories, told in the wake of failed studies and unanswered questions, reveal how rhetorical action persists when the sonic is no longer sourceable. Listening with The Hum, I argue, invites a different kind of knowledge: affective, situated, and unfolding in the still-to-be-explained.

“Beyond the limits of current scientific logics which attempt to make sense of sonic events and their impacts, the hum exists as an exceptional and unknown anomaly. It transcends the valuative limits of current knowledge in acoustics and ways of understanding how sound moves through, across, and within spaces to address potential listeners. ‘I’m not saying I saw waves of electricity or anything of the sort,’ Sweeney adds to their above description of the hum as a sound ‘charged with electricity.’ ‘It was more of a feeling than something you saw.’”
 
...Read more