Listening to War

Listening to War is an original if deeply idiosyncratic book.

Auteur
J. Martin Daughtry is an associate professor of ethnomusicology and sound studies at New York University. His work centers on acoustic violence; voice; listening; sound studies; the Iraq war, and musics of the Russian-speaking world. Daughtry is co-editor, with Jonathan Ritter, of Music in the Post-9/11 World (Routledge 2007), and has published essays in Social Text, Ethnomusicology, Music and Politics, Russian Literature, Poetics Today, and a number of edited collections.

Texte du rabat

A landmark work within the study of conflict, sound studies, and ethnomusicology, Listening to War offers a broad theorization of sound, violence, music, listening and place, while also providing a discrete window into the lives of individual Iraqis and Americans struggling to orient themselves within the fog of war.

Contenu

• Dedication

• Note on Transliteration

• Introduction: Composing Thoughts on Sound and Violence

• -In Lieu of an Epigraph: Sound-centered Memories of Operation Iraqi Freedom

• -The Belliphonic

• -Intellectual Predecessors

• -A Necessary Detour

• -Approaches and Challenges

• Fragment #1: The Presence of Mind to Save an Ear: Ali's Story

• Section I: Sonic Matériel

• Chapter 1: Belliphonic Sounds and Indoctrinated Ears: The Elements of Wartime Audition

• -Charting the Belliphonic

• -Listening, Structure, and Positionality

• -Vehicular Sounds

• -Communications

• -Civilian Sounds

• -Weapons

• Chapter 2: Mapping Zones of Wartime (In)audition

• -The Zone of the Audible Inaudible

• -The Narrational Zone

• -The Tactical Zone

• -The Trauma Zone

• -A Complicating Factor: Iraqi Civilian Auditors

• -Another Complicating Factor: Sound and Psychological Trauma

• -Conclusion

• Fragment #2: Stealth and Improvisation in the Desert: Jason's Story

• Fragment #3: Loudly Searching in the Resonant Darkness: The Anatomy of a Nighttime House Raid

• Section II: Structures of Listening, Sounding, and Emplacement

• Introduction to section II

• Chapter 3: Auditory Regimes

• -Ideals of Military Audition

• -National Audition

• -Oblique Indoctrination of Belliphonic Ears

• -Situational Awareness

• -The Inclusive Auditory Regime of Iraqi Civilians

• -Auditory Literacy, Competence, Virtuosity

• -Incommensurability

• Chapter 4: Sonic Campaigns

• -Sound (and Violence)

• -Violence (and Sound)

• -The Omnidirectionality of Sound and Violence

• -Sonic Campaigns

• Chapter 5: Acoustic Territories

• -Emplacement, Displacement, Transplacement

• -Sound and Territoriality

• -The Virtual Acoustic Territory of Recorded Sound

• -The Radiant Acoustic Territories of Wartime

• -The Resonant Acoustic Territories of Baghdad

• -The Resonant Acoustic Territory of the body

• -Life at the Intersection of Regime, Campaign and Territory

• Fragment #4: Fatal Mishearing

• Section III: Music, Mediation, and Survival

• Chapter 6: Mobile Music in the Military

• -Introducing the Wartime iPod

• -A Century of Recorded Music on the Battlefield

• -iPods in the Iraq War

• -Amping Up, Staying Focused, Cooling Down: Technologies of Self-regulation in Combat

• -Moving Bodies, Loosening Tongues, Adjusting Crosshairs: Technologies for Manipulating Others in Combat

• -Concluding Thoughts

• Fragment #5: From "Hell's Bells " to "Silent Night ": A Conversation about Music in the Military

• Fragment #6: Keeping the Music Turned Down Low: Shymaa's Story

• Chapter 7: A Time of Troubles for Iraqi Music

• -Iraq's Musical Legacy

• -Post-invasion Challenges

• -Political Violence

• -Sectarian Violence

• -U.S. Forces Targeting Music

• -The Attenuated Acoustic Territory of Iraqi Musical Practice

• Conclusion: The Amplitude of Violence

• Fragment #7: Listening as Poiesis: Tareq's Story

• Acknowledgments

• Glossary

• Works Cited

• Index