Sound Clash: Listening to American Studies

摘要

This anthology, originally conceived as a special issue of American Quarterly, the journal of the American Studies Association, is part of a growing sound-studies literature dedicated to the premise that sound can function not only as an object of study, but also as the cornerstone of a coherent methodology for cultural inquiry. As such, this collection represents a valuable contribution to the field, both in terms of the individual works of scholarship it contains, as well as the collective theoretical vision that emerges from their juxtaposition. "In the West," the editors observe, "choosing to study sound has always been choosing to take the silver. Vision has traditionally been linked to reason, knowledge, science, truth and rationality; sound is 'seen' as fleeting and ephemeral, mystical, subjective and contingent. The former gives you evidence, the latter only hearsay" (p. 2). In re-casting this epistemological marginalization as a strength rather than a weakness, the editors argue that sound-based methodologies offer a point of view that is at once systematic and intrinsically anti-hegemonic.