Sonic Violence is a concept through which we can perceive the dynamic of domination. The act of Sonic Violence can be viewed as the total hegemony of involuntary sound forced by one actor upon another. This can be by the ‘noisy neighbour’ inflicting his musical tastes upon his neighbour VERY LOUDLY at 2am. This could equally, and more pertinently, be through sonic incapacitation devices such as the LRAD. The LRAD, initially designed for counter-insurgency military operations for the US army in Iraq in 2003 by the American Technology Corporation (now LRAD corporation) , has seen a worrying proliferation throughout police forces and private individuals over the last decade. Worrying, because the LRAD has a genuinely deafening effect, creating an effective hegemony of noise over any given target.
Moral Violence, a concept typically associated with Patriarchy studies and studies on inter-personal domination, is the creation of the sentiment of insecurity through psychological coercion by the aggressor on the target. This is a vision of domination which could easily be applied equally within an inter-community dynamic: think the soldier in front of the synagogue, deployed for symbolism rather than strategic interest, or the flag on the hill, declaring this community as ‘ours’ at the exclusion of ‘them’. Such gests constitute a body of psychological coercion which promote the domination of a community by the aggressing actor.
It may seem evident that while both of these violence’s of the sentiment have a commonality of domination, there is no clear paradigm between them. Such a paradigm is unfortunately present, and has been developing for a while; from alarm tests, such as the testing of community wide alarm systems, as was notably the case in Czechoslovak Prague – and continues to this day -, through to the increasing focus on ‘targeted’ devices which seek to instil a domination over a specific group of people or in a specific place. One such example is the ‘mosquito anti-vandal system’, which emits an ultrasonic frequency, either targeted at the general population or exclusively aimed with frequencies audible to youths, in order to disincentive loitering in certain ‘sensitive’ locations. One example is the heart of the Macedonian capital, Skopje, where at the heart of the political/cultural complex, mosquito devices embedded in the lampposts are targeted towards the general population in order to ‘cleanse’ this zone of non-necessary and unwelcome populations and visitors.
An alarming trend is therefore ascertainable towards a greater and greater application of varying ‘sonic warfare’ devices as Steve Goodman refers to them in his excellent book “Sonic Warfare – Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear” (Goodman, 2009) to instil a moral violence against a domestic populous or community. A goal which can have only a singular objective of proliferating fear through the community to strengthen further this domination rapport for the purpose to which the Sonic Violence/Moral Violence paradigm serves as an effective, non-intrusive and cost-effective means.
note: this is just a rough sketch of ideas, a further developed essay on the Sonic Violence/Moral Violence paradigm to follow in coming months.
desai. 