War's audiovisons Music, affect, and the representation of contemporary conflict.

摘要

Since September 11, 2001, music has been increasingly used to represent the meanings and project the realities of contemporary armed conflict. This dissertation sets out to analyze the cultural logic of its many deployments. Through a special focus on war music videos---amateur productions that have been set to some form of popular music and posted online---I explore how music has become a generative, affective force in countless war representations. My concern in analyzing these videos focuses in large part on how soldiers create, discuss, and make use of them. But I'm also after a larger issue, namely, the position and significance of music within an increasingly violent, imperial US culture. I argue that such audiovisions are not about war as much as they are part of it. In fleshing out this argument, I show how music and the auditory have been routinely mobilized as devastating weapons, simultaneously simplifying warfare while engendering the aesthetics of armed conflict. I conclude by theorizing ways of reimagining such musical mediations based on practices that short circuit the logic of audiovisual synchrony that defines current depictions.