Listening to War
Sound, Music, Trauma, and Survival in Wartime Iraq
Published on 8. October 2015
Book
Hardback
360 pages
978-0-19-936149-6 (ISBN)
Description
To witness war is, in large part, to hear it. And to survive it is, among other things, to have listened to it--and to have listened through it.
Listening to War: Sound, Music, Trauma, and Survival in Wartime Iraq is a groundbreaking study of the centrality of listening to the experience of modern warfare. Based on years of ethnographic interviews with U.S. military service members and Iraqi civilians, as well as on direct observations of wartime Iraq, author J. Martin Daughtry reveals how these populations learned to extract valuable information from the ambient soundscape while struggling with the deleterious effects that it produced in their ears, throughout their bodies, and in their psyches. Daughtry examines the dual-edged nature of sound--its potency as a source of information and a source of trauma--within a sophisticated conceptual frame that highlights the affective power of sound and the vulnerability and agency of individual auditors. By theorizing violence through the prism of sound and sound through the prism of violence, Daughtry provides a productive new vantage point for examining these strangely conjoined phenomena. Two chapters dedicated to wartime music in Iraqi and U.S. military contexts show how music was both an important instrument of the military campaign and the victim of a multitude of violent acts throughout the war. A landmark work within the study of conflict, sound studies, and ethnomusicology, Listening to War will expand your understanding of the experience of armed violence, and the experience of sound more generally. At the same time, it provides a discrete window into the lives of individual Iraqis and Americans struggling to orient themselves within the fog of war.
Listening to War: Sound, Music, Trauma, and Survival in Wartime Iraq is a groundbreaking study of the centrality of listening to the experience of modern warfare. Based on years of ethnographic interviews with U.S. military service members and Iraqi civilians, as well as on direct observations of wartime Iraq, author J. Martin Daughtry reveals how these populations learned to extract valuable information from the ambient soundscape while struggling with the deleterious effects that it produced in their ears, throughout their bodies, and in their psyches. Daughtry examines the dual-edged nature of sound--its potency as a source of information and a source of trauma--within a sophisticated conceptual frame that highlights the affective power of sound and the vulnerability and agency of individual auditors. By theorizing violence through the prism of sound and sound through the prism of violence, Daughtry provides a productive new vantage point for examining these strangely conjoined phenomena. Two chapters dedicated to wartime music in Iraqi and U.S. military contexts show how music was both an important instrument of the military campaign and the victim of a multitude of violent acts throughout the war. A landmark work within the study of conflict, sound studies, and ethnomusicology, Listening to War will expand your understanding of the experience of armed violence, and the experience of sound more generally. At the same time, it provides a discrete window into the lives of individual Iraqis and Americans struggling to orient themselves within the fog of war.
Reviews / Votes
To say that Listening to War is ground-breaking, penetrating, and vitally important doesn't begin to convey the affective and intellectual impact of engaging with this work. More than challenging music and sound apprehension and scholarship, the book offers painful, visceral access to the ways in which ears suffer, bodies suffer, places suffer in wartime. There is no escape into abstraction or aestheticization here. It's shattering, from the very beginning... * Norie Neumark, University of Melbourne, Journal of Sonic Studies * Apart from its own awe-inspiring comprehensiveness, the book provides a foundation for continued exploration of such emergent fields as cognitive ecology, extended mind theory, and the relationship between gesture and cognition. * Bruce Johnson, Journal of the American Musicological Society * Listening to War is an original if deeply idiosyncratic book. * Gavin Williams, Music and Letters *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
702 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-936149-6 (9780199361496)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
09/2015
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€15.49
Available for download
E-Book
09/2015
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€15.49
Available for download
Person
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.
Content
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 Materiel ; 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