| dc.description.abstract | This study approaches the field of military history with approaches to the study of sound in order to
interrogate the concept of war that underpins military historiography as a disciplinary formation. It
delineates the notion of the phonographic attitude with which to think about the ways in which
technology, war, and the senses coalesce in broader historical writing about war, colonialism, and
apartheid in South Africa. In so doing, it suggests that an attention to what it calls the warring
motifs is necessary if a reorientation of a reading of war and apartheid away from a politics of
deadness is to be achieved. It does so through a methodological approach that attends to various
objects in South African historiography that may be attended to differently through an emphasis on
the sensorial. These include the state-sponsored Walkman bomb that killed ANC lawyer Bheki
Mlangeni, a record produced by artist Roger Lucey in memory of the death of activist Lungile
Tabalaza, the supposed whistle or shout that led the indigenous Khoikhoi to victory over the
Portuguese in 1510, a lithographic print by William Kentridge named after a radio programme for
troops engaged in South Africa’s border war, the bell of sunken troopship SS Mendi, and the first
recording of the hymn ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’ by intellectual and key figure in a history of
nationalism in South Africa, Sol T Plaatje. | en_US |
