Noise

Abstract

This essay develops a cultural materialist theory of listening through a historical ethnography of Gibraltarian men's contradictory sensitivity to the ‘noise’ of mass media and desensitization to the industrial soundscape of the state. I argue that this contradiction can be historicized through close attention to the social antagonisms embedded in the history of noise ordinances, and the ways in which British colonial officials structured an idealized form of masculinity premised on the sonic relationships between bodies and technologies. Gibraltarian men reproduce this masculine disposition, and through it colonial hierarchies, in the seemingly banal practice of listening to mass media, and ignoring the soundscape of the neoliberal, colonial state.