Sonic warfare: sound, affect, and the ecology of fear

There are few texts with a premise as seductive as that of Sonic Warfare, the first monograph by philosopher and musician Steve Goodman. A decade ago, Goodman weaved together a sonic-materialist philosophy with analyses of aesthetic, military, and corporate deployments of sonic weapons. Notably, the work pays attention to the materialism of Afro-diasporic sound system culture, reflecting the author’s own activities in this space as Kode9, a DJ-producer in London, where he contributed to the early development of dubstep and remains the owner-operator of the record label Hyperdub. In this retrospective review, I celebrate ten years since Sonic Warfare’s publication and reflect on its significance to Sound Studies.