N005: Breaking the Sound Barrier: Examining China's Sonic Cultures Across the 1949 Divide

Organizer(s)

• 

  Dayton Lekner

  University of British Columbia, Canada

Chair(s)

• 

  Laura De Giorgi

  Department of Asian and North African Studies
  Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy

Paper Presenter(s)

• MH

  M. Hartono

  University of California, Berkeley, United States
• 

  Odila Schröder

  University of Nottingham, Germany
• JL

  Jie Li

  Harvard University, Germany
• 

  Dayton Lekner

  University of British Columbia, Canada

Discussant(s)

• WL

  Wei Lei

  Southern University of Science and Technology, China

Session Abstract: 
Recent sound-studies approaches to modern China have revealed the importance of the sonic medium in state-making efforts both before and after the 1949 divide. State initiatives deploying radio, loudspeakers, as well as record and tape production have been brought to our attention, as has contestation over these media. This panel seeks to develop our understanding of the East Asian sonic through research that explores the lived processes and experiences of engaging with sound. The four studies move us through time, through conflict and campaign, and through technological change, but retain a concern with the question of how non-elite interacted with the acoustic world to create the social. Paulina Hartono examines how amateur radio enthusiasts navigated shifting and overlapping boundaries between technological prowess, patriotism, and politics in the Republican Era. Of Japanese occupied China, Odila Schröder traces the role of the China Harmonica Society in the normalization and aestheticization of the sounds of war. Jie Li brings an endogenous theoretical turn by applying the concept of “hot noise” to the campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s, highlighting the somatic experience of campaign tumult. Finally, Dayton Lekner explores the amplification and reception of state voice with a study of speaker towers set in opposition across the Taiwan Strait.

Presentations:

• Tinker, Tuner, Amateur, Spy? Radio Hobbyists in Republican China
  

  Paper Presenter: M. Paulina Hartono – University of California, Berkeley
• Reverberations of Collaborative Violence: The Harmonica Society in Japanese-Occupied China
  

  Paper Presenter: Odila Schröder – University of Nottingham
• Socialist Hot Noise: The Sound and Fury of Maoist Campaigns
  

  Paper Presenter: Jie Li – Harvard University
• One China – Two Speakers: Hearing Yourself and Your Enemy in Cold War China.
  

  Paper Presenter: Dayton Lekner – University of British Columbia