Sonic Imperium: Sound and the State in the Twentieth Century

In the first decades of the twentieth century, state administrators helmed organizations historically-unprecedented in their size and degree of centralization. Growing armies of state employees collected taxes; generated and distributed government statistics; administered fitfully-growing welfare programs and, perhaps most saliently, conducted military operations of hitherto-unimaginable scope. The modern enterprise of war required state coordination of millions of combatants and the surveillance of citizens on the battlefield and the home-front alike. This panel explores the place of sound, hearing, and non-hearing in the operations of the twentieth century state, paying particular attention to the contexts of war, surveillance and propaganda. The relationship between twentieth century states and sonic techniques and technologies is unsurprising given the historical contemporaneity of developments in both spheres. Beginning in the late 1800s a panoply of new techniques and technologies arose for the control and communication of sound. Edison’s phonograph facilitated the mass reproduction of sounds. Radios and loud speakers expanded exponentially the reach of centrally-produced sounds while the telephone allowed for the instantaneous (and more-or-less private) communication of sonic data across vast expanses. At the same time, new techniques and technologies allowed scientists and technicians to attend to the evolving soundscape in increasingly sophisticated ways. They measured and tested the volume of urban and industrial environments and the acuity and pitch-range of subjects’ hearing. All of these developments in the control and measurement of sound attracted the attention—and resources—of the state.