Political music must fight over perception itself, not just messages

Evidence

What Public Enemy and Underground Resistance had in common was a rejection of the idea of music as entertainment. Instead of minstrelsy, they conceived of music in the militaristic terms explored in Steve Goodman’s recent book, Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect and the Ecology of Fear. In this model, the use of music to subdue populations — the “psychoacoustic correction” directed by the US army against the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega; “sound bombs” deployed over the Gaza Strip — is by no means unusual. All music functions either to embed or to disrupt habituated behaviour patterns. Thus, a political music could not be only about communicating a textual message; it would have to be a struggle over the means of perception, fought out in the nervous system. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1285

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s sonic-weapons material and to Goodman’s Sonic Warfare discussed elsewhere. — connects to: Industrial music engineered political affect as a counterweight to propaganda — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1361; Pervasive music extends political domination by breaking down individual resistance — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 571; Words do not label pre-existing political objects but must be made real through interpretation — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 430
• SHARE: The US army’s psychoacoustic attack on Noriega and Gaza sound bombs are specific enough for a sound-and-power enthusiast.

Broader Connections

• Industrial music engineered political affect as a counterweight to propaganda #corroborates (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1361
• Words do not label pre-existing political objects but must be made real through interpretation #expands (0.82) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 430
• Pervasive music extends political domination by breaking down individual resistance #qualifies (0.78) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 571