This is a groundbreaking study of the centrality of listening to the experience of modern warfare. Based on years of ethnographic interviews with US military service members and Iraqi civilians, as well as on direct observations of wartime Iraq, the book 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.
Includes bibliographical references and index
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 ": 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
Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on September 22, 2015)