Hearing the city in protest: iconotopy and urban soundscape of the HIRAK movement in ORAN

This article analyzes how the Hirak protests in Oran (Algeria) reconfigured urban space through sound. Based on eighteen months of observational participation, the study examines the protest route from the perspective of acoustic environments. Three concepts structure the approach: iconotopy, which sheds light on the symbolic significance of urban places; sonic urbanity, which refers to forms of cohabitation and sharing through listening; and sonotope, defined here as a ritualized sound territory. The study highlights seven stops where slogans and spatial configurations combine to produce distinct acoustic sequences that inscribe memory in the city. To account for these arrangements, we propose the development of a ‘spoken map’ of the route, a device that combines sound data, spatiality, and the symbolism of places. The originality of the work thus lies in the proposal of the notion of the protest sonotope and in the development of a novel methodological tool.