[Commlist] CfP - "Sounds of Fascism: Media, Practices, Imagination" Conference

CfP - "Sounds of Fascism: Media, Practices, Imagination"
University of Bonn, September 24-26, 2025.


The word “fascism” designates a political category with a disputed 
historical definition, as so-called “fascist” regimes and movements from 
the end of the First World War to the present day can differ widely in 
their forms and actions. Stanley Payne describes those of interwar 
Europe using a wide range of criteria that specify their ideology, 
aesthetics, organization and enemies (Payne 1980). For Roger Griffin, 
who extends his study to post-World War II movements, their fundamental 
and common characteristic is to be palingenetic ultra-nationalist 
political projects (Griffin 1991). However, this proposal for a 
consensual, root definition has not put an end to historiographical 
(Costa Pinto 2011; Costa Pinto & Kallis 2014) or political debates, as 
shown by the latest polemics concerning Trump’s indentification with 
fascism (Zerofsky 2024). Considering the central role sound plays in the
mediation of politics, in political practices, and as a propaganda 
instrument, how could its study contribute to this debate and help us 
define fascism?


In order to address these issues, this conference will encompass a 
period spanning from the interwar years to the present day, and 
totalitarian regimes as well as small groups struggling for their 
survival. It will focus on the political uses of sound as a means of 
persuasion, amplification and expansion, through an estheticization – 
musical, oratorical, event-based – of fascist political projects.


This conference will also focus on the conditions of these use’s 
implementation, through the imaginaries that help shape these uses, the 
media that support them, and the practices that carry them out. Its 
epistemic framework will welcome interdisciplinary proposals from the 
fields of political science and history, sound studies, media studies, 
musicology and cultural sociology.


The aim will be to examine the musical and non-musical sounds produced 
and disseminated as part of a fascist political project, by group 
organizations and state institutions alike, in order to convey 
information of all kinds, i.e. relating to current events, community 
memories and future objectives, as well as to disseminate the aesthetic 
sound framings associated with a particular form of fascism.


These sounds may concern, for instance, the political practices that 
make up mass gatherings (Birdsall 2012) or invade ordinary public spaces 
(Epping-Jäger 2010 & 2011), cultural policy efforts such as the 
programming of festivals or opera seasons (Palazzetti 2021), the sonic 
dimension of everyday life, where people listen to radio news broadcasts 
or the latest propaganda song (Monteleone 1985), online propaganda, 
cinema and audiovisual contents, or the creation of music groups or the 
distribution of sound recordings marketed by small militant structures, 
with aesthetics or textual references related to fascism (Multiple 
Authors, 2004; Toscano & Di Nunzio 2016; François 2022).
 It is then important to question listening practices and sound 
cultures as fascist regimes have attempted to regulate them, or as 
smaller organizations attempt to bring them into existence. For example, 
we might look at a redefinition of the notions of listening, hearing, 
noise and space in the light of fascism (Novak & Sakakeeny 2015). What 
forms of listenings are sought in order to further fascist expansion 
through more penetrating propaganda (Goodman 2010)? What signs are 
desired or excluded from fascist sound cultures? How are the force and 
even violence of amplified sound used in a fascist framework (Papenburg 
2020)? While the soundscape can be seen as one of the everyday 
frameworks of action (Guillebaud 2017), what would a fascist soundscape 
be? So, if there is a “political ecology of the ear” (Pecqueux & Roueff 
2009), is there a “fascist ecology of the ear” where sounds,
particularly music, contextually take on a particular political meaning 
(Buch 2016, 2018)?


These questions can be addressed from the point of view of the media, 
and thus of the mediations effected by various objects; of the sound 
practices, notably of production and listening, that are engaged in by 
the actors, be they regimes or small groups, of fascist politics or must 
be engaged in by those they target; of the political imaginaries of 
sound, which orient the theoretical conception of its fascist uses and 
give them part of their effectiveness. We suggest below a number of 
themes and questions that could be addressed at this conference:


Medias
- Technical mediations of sound (transduction, transmission, 
conservation, amplification) and their relationship to space as 
political territory
- Uses and incorporation of technical sound objects (loudspeakers, 
radios, records, amplifiers, etc.) into fascist propaganda apparatuses 
and their socio-technical networks
- Construction, development and durability of fascist sound broadcasting 
institutions and structures
- Production and economics of sound media in fascist contexts
- Creative conditions and aesthetics of musical and non-musical sound 
compositions
- Sound media and archives, time and memories of fascism


Practices
- Creating, occupying, appropriating and contesting a territory through 
sound
- Does sonic totalitarianism exist, and if so, how?
- Linking sound and images in fascist propaganda
- Managing strangeness, hybridity and musical interpenetration in 
gendered, ethnic or racial terms
- Sonic challenges to fascism and its repressive consequences
- What is the role of sound in fascist policing practices?
- Practices of silence in fascist regimes and organizations
- Organizing the sound dimension of fascist gatherings, from group 
meetings to mass gatherings
- Sound commemorations


Imagination
- Modernity of sound objects
- Implementation, evolution and current relevance of the relationship 
between fascism and the sound aesthetic avant-garde
- Establishment and evolution of the relationship between sound, war and 
military imaginary within fascism
- Sound power and volume
- Positive and negative sonic imaginations of the foreigner in ethnic, 
racial or political terms
- Imagined agency of sound forms
- Fascist sound and martyrology

The conference will be held in English on September 24, 25 and 26, 2025 
at the Abteilung für Musikwissenschaft/Sound Studies of the University 
of Bonn.

Proposals are for 20 min. presentations. They should be written in 
English and should not exceed 250 words. They should be accompanied by a 
short biography (no more than 120 words) and should be sent by January 
15, 2025 to (jthomas2 /at/ uni-bonn.de).

Responses to proposals will be sent from February 15, 2025.

No payment from the authors will be required to attend or participate in 
this conference.

This conference is part of a project that has received funding from the 
European Union’s Horizon 2022 research and innovation programme under 
the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101105514.

Organisation : Jonathan Thomas (University of Bonn)

Scientific Committee : Esteban Buch (EHESS) ; Carolyn Birdsall 
(University of Amsterdam) ; Ben Earle (University of Birmingham) ; 
Stéphane François (University of Mons) ; Matthew Kerry (University of 
Oxford) ; Nicolò Palazzetti (La Sapienza University of Rome) ; Jens 
Gerrit Papenburg (University of Bonn) ; Susanna Pasticci (La Sapienza 
University of Rome) ; Elodie Roy (University of Durham) ; Jedediah 
Sklower (Labbex ICCA) ; Jonathan Thomas (University of Bonn) ; Benedetta 
Zucconi (University of Cagliari)

Bibliography

Birdsall C., 2012, Nazi Soundscapes. Sound, Technology and Urban Space 
in Germany, 1933-1945, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press.

Buch E., 2016, Trauermarsch. L'Orchestre de Paris dans l'Argentine de la 
dictature, Paris, Seuil.

Buch E., 2018, « Mahler’s Fifth, Daniel Barenboim, and the Argentine 
Dictatorship: On Music, Meaning, and Politics », The Musical Quarterly, 
Vol. 100/2, p. 122–154.

Cannistraro P. V., 1975, La fabbrica del consenso: fascismo e mass 
media, Roma/Bari, Laterza.

Costa Pinto A. (ed.), 2011, Rethinking the Nature of Fascism. 
Comparative Perspectives, London, Palgrave Macmillan.

Costa Pinto A. & Kallis A. (eds.), 2014, Rethinking the Fascism and 
Dictatorship in Europe, London, Palgrave Macmillan.

Currid Brian, 2006, A National Acoustics : Music and Mass Publicity in 
Weimar and Nazi Germany, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.

Epping-Jäger C., 2010, "Voice Politics. Establishing the LoudSpeaker in 
the Political Communication of National Socialism", in L. Jäger, E. 
Linz, I. Schneider (eds), Media, Culture and Mediality. New Insights 
into the Current State of Research, Bielefeld/New Brunswick, p. 161-186.

Epping-Jäger C., 2011, "Hitler’s Voice. The Loudspeaker under National 
Socialism", Intermédialités/Intermedialities. Histoire des Arts, des 
Lettres et de la Technique, No 17, p. 83-104.

François Stéphane, 2022, Une avant-garde d’extrême droite. 
Contre-culture, conservatisme radical et tentations modernistes, Lyon, 
Éditions de la Lanterne.

Goodman D., 2010, "Distracted Listening: On not making sound choices in 
the 1930s", in S. Strasser & D. Suisman (eds), Sound in the Age of 
Mechanical Reproduction, Philadelphia, University of Philadelphia Press, 
p. 15-46.

Griffin R., 1991, The Nature of Fascism, London, Palgrave Macmillan.

Guillebaud C. (ed.), 2017, Toward an Anthropology of Ambient Sound, 
New-York/Oxon, Routledge.

Lebourg N., 2010, Le monde vu de la plus extrême droite : Du fascisme au 
nationalisme-révolutionnaire, Perpignan, Presses universitaires de 
Perpignan.

Monteleone F., 1985, La radio italiana nel periodo fascista, Venice, 
Marsilio Editori.

Multiple Authors, 2004, Rock Haine Roll, origines, histoires et acteurs 
du Rock Identitaire Français (RIF), Paris, No Pasaran.
Novak D. & Sakakeeny M. (eds), 2015, Keywords in Sound, Durham, Duke 
University Press.

Palazzetti N., 2021, Béla Bartók in Italy. The Politics of Myth-Making, 
Suffolk, Boydell Press.

Papenburg J. G., 2020, "Nazis and Quiet Sounds, Popular Music, Simulated 
Normality, and Cultural Niches in the Terror Regime, 1933–1945" in O. 
Seibt, M. Ringsmut, D.-E. Wickström (eds), Made in Germany: Studies in 
Popular Music, New-York, Routledge, p. 36-46.

Payne S., 1980, Fascism. Comparison and Definition, Madison, The 
University of Wisconsin Press.

Pecqueux A. & Roueff O. (eds), 2009, Écologie sociale de l’oreille. 
Enquêtes d’expérience musicale, Paris, Éditions de l’EHESS.
Thomas J., 2024, "Koloniale Expansion und faschistische Herrschaft durch 
Phonographie in Italienisch-Ostafrika", Zeitschrift für 
Medienwissenschaft, n° 31, p. 55-67. 
[https://doi.org/10.14361/zfmw-2024-160207].

Toscano E. & Di Nunzio D., 2016 « Musique et subjectivité dans la 
nouvelle droite radicale italienne » in E. Grassy & J. Sklower, 
Politiques des musiques populaires au XXIe siècle, Éditions Mélanie 
Seteun, [https://doi.org/10.4000/books.ms.914].

Zerofsky E., 2024, « Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His 
Mind. », The New York Times Magazine, October 23rd. 
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/magazine/robert-paxton-facism.html]

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