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E-book
Author Hoffmann, Anette, 1965- author.

Title Knowing by ear : listening to voice recordings with African prisoners of war in German camps (1915-1918) / Anette Hoffmann
Published Durham : Duke University Press, 2024

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Description 1 online resource (209 pages) : illustrations
Series Sign, storage, transmission
Sign, storage, transmission.
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"
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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Description based on print version record
Subject Prisoners of war -- Germany -- History -- 20th century -- Archival resources
Africans -- Germany -- History -- 20th century -- Archival resources
World War, 1914-1918 -- Prisoners and prisons, German
Prisoners' songs -- Germany
Sound recordings in ethnology -- Germany
HISTORY / Africa / General
Prisoners' songs.
Sound recordings in ethnology.
Germany.
Genre/Form History.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2023028135
ISBN 1478059028
9781478059028