The Archive and the Aural City: Sound, Knowledge, and the Politics of Listening [Paperback]

InThe Archive and the Aural City, Alejandro L. Madrid examines the possibilities for retrieving from the archive sounds that were not meant to be heard. Drawing on Ángel Rama’s notion of the Lettered City, Madrid proposes a notion of the Aural City—a Latin American urban intellectual elite for whom sound and listening are central to the creation, re-creation, and circulation of new types of knowledge. While many of these elites carry forward a nationalistic agenda, Madrid contends that the Aural City’s archives and the ways they are listened to and conceived through sound and music can also help dismantle dominant frameworks of national or colonial culture and build more inclusive spaces for intellectual exchange and political mobilization. From national archives in Latin America and colonial institutions abroad to sound exhibits, instruments, and internet-based archival projects, Madrid demonstrates how the development of urban spaces is understood through sound. In this way, he expands understandings of the archive’s social and sonic power.USDrawing on various archives in Latin America, Alejandro L. Madrid examines how listening for sound in the archive can provide opportunities to build more inclusive spaces for intellectual exchange and political mobilization.Alejandro L. Madrid is Walter W. Naumburg Professor of Music at Harvard University and the author of several books, includingTania León’s Stride: A Polyrhythmic LifeandIn Search of Julián Carrillo and Sonido 13.“The Archive and the Aural Cityshowcases Alejandro L. Madrid’s erudition, theoretical curiosities, and rigorous research. Madrid not only makes key arguments that will shape new directions of Mexican and Latinx sound studies, he provides an overdue and pointed intervention into a tradition of Latin American critique that has prioritized the lettered and the visual as the primary drivers of nation-building. ThislÃU