Sound studies and history : a possible meeting point?

Abstract

This article presents an overview of the possibilities, limits, and significance of studying the sounds of the past. Since its emergence in the Seventies, Sound Studies have attracted attention in the scholarly community thanks to their constitutive interdisciplinarity in stressing the role of sonic phenomena in our modern-day society. More than a simple study of sound, this field aims to explore auditory perceptions and their various embedded cultural meanings, shifting the attention from the listened to the listener. Since every culture produces different sounds that are perceived differently according to their place and time, the paths of inquiry within history are many and for the most part unexplored. By broadening our understanding of sounds, scholars recognize the necessity of including noises, silence, the human voice, hearing and listening in the research framework. Sound Studies’ keywords like «soundscape» and «acoustemology» have already been employed with success in historiography but are currently undergoing a moment of epistemological reassessment to encompass previously neglected points of view on gender, race, and the Global South. Finally, this paper offers some reflections on the potential «sonic» sources of the past.