Going to MESA? Be sure to check out, “Acoustic Ecologies of the Middle East,” on Saturday, November 4 at 11am. Ali Musleh will present his paper, “A Musicology of Settler Colonialism,” as part of the panel.
ABSTRACT
This paper explores how settler-colonial sonic spheres in Palestine translate topologies of experience into topologies of power. My focus will be on Israel’s use of remote and autonomous weapons, particularly drones, the Iron Dome and artificial intelligence, as atmotechnics productive of violent compositional beats that place the sensing bodies of the colonizer and the colonized in processual proximity to war. My argument is that such machining of experience is meant to individuate forms of life by hacking the nervous system, turning fear into a neural implant that can be engaged through giving war a musical character. Drawing on martial and affect theory, as well as theories of the flesh, I show how settler-colonial violence individuates forms of life according to an economy of pain that conditions Israelis’ experience of “the quiet” on the relentless invasion and hacking of the Palestinian sensorium.
