Knowing by ear : listening to voice recordings with African prisoners of war in German camps (1915-1918) / Anette Hoffmann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hoffmann, Anette, 1965- author.

Series:

e-Duke books scholarly collection

Sign, storage, transmission

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Prisoners of war--Germany--History--20th century--Archival resources.

Prisoners of war.

Africans--Germany--History--20th century--Archival resources.

Africans.

World War, 1914-1918--Prisoners and prisons, German.

World War, 1914-1918.

Prisoners' songs--Germany.

Prisoners' songs.

Sound recordings in ethnology--Germany.

Sound recordings in ethnology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (209 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2024.

Summary:

"During the First World War, thousands of young African men conscripted to fight for France and Britain were captured and held as prisoners of war in Germany, where their stories and songs were recorded and archived by German linguists. In Knowing by Ear, Anette Hoffmann demonstrates that listening to these acoustic recordings as historical sources, rather than linguistic samples, opens up possibilities for new historical perspectives and the formation of alternate archival practices and knowledge production. She foregrounds their archival presence as individual speakers and positions their recorded voices as responses to their experience of colonialism, war, and the journey from Africa to Europe. By engaging with the recordings alongside written sources, photographs, and artworks depicting the speakers, Hoffmann personalizes speakers from present-day Senegal, Somalia, Togo, and Congo. Knowing by Ear includes transcriptions of and audio links to specific recordings of spoken and sung texts, revealing acoustic archives as significant yet under-researched sources to recover historical speaking positions of colonized subjects and listen to the acoustic echo of colonial knowledge production"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Catchers of the Living

Fragment I. Samba Diallo: "The war of the whites" / "Catcher of the living"

Listening to Acoustic Fragments

Fragment II. Jámafáda: "The war is horrible"

Abdoulaye Niang: Voice, Race, and the Suspension of Communication in Linguistic Recordings

Fragment III. Asmani bin Ahmad: "Once upon a time"

Mohamed Nur: Traces in Archives, Linguistics Texts, and Museums in Germany

Fragment IV. Josef Ntwanumbi: "We are initiates"

Albert Kudjabo and Stephan Bischoff: Mysterious Sounds, Opaque Languages and Otherworldly Voices

Fragment V. Mamadou Gregoire: "The sea requests fish from the rivers"

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Print version: Hoffmann, Anette, 1965- Knowing by ear.

ISBN:

9781478059028

1478059028

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.