Sirens

Sirens are sounds that confront us in daily life, from the sounds of police cars and fire engines to, less often, tornado warnings. Ideologies of sirens embody the protective, the seductive and the dangerous elements of siren sounds - from the US Cold War public training exercises in the 1950s and 1960s to the seductive power of the sirens entrenched in popular culture: from Wagner to Dizzee Rascal, from Kafka to Kurt Vonnegut, from Hans Christian Andersen to Walt Disney. This book argues, using a wide array of theorists from Adorno to Bloch and Kittler, that we should understand 'siren sounds' in terms of their myth and materiality, and that sirens represent a sonic confluence of power, gender and destructiveness embedded in core Western ideologies to the present day. Bull poses the question of whether we can rely on sirens, both in their mythic meanings and in their material meanings in contemporary culture.

Michael Bull is Professor of Sound Studies at the University of Sussex, UK, and is the co-founder of the journal Sound Studies.

Siren Beginnings
Sounding Out the Sirens
Siren Traces
1. Prolegomena to the Sirens
2. Eclipsing the Acousmatic: The Story of the Sirens
3. Sonic Sleepwalkers: Sirens Myths from Homer, to Bach, to Nancy Sinatra
4. Remembering the Forgotten Sounds of Air-Raid Sirens: Charlie Hebdo, Dresden and Beyond
5. Urban Sirens: 9/11, Dizzee Rascal and Varese
6. Timing the Sirens: Kurt Vonnegut Meets Theodor Adorno
7. Siren Spaces: A Different Colonization?
8. Hearing the Sirens: A Tale of Sonic Exclusivity?
9. Sirens for the Young: From Fénelon to Disney
10. Kafka's Sirens and the Story of Silencing
11. Sonic Aftermaths: Sirens and Stormy Daniels
12. Sonic Fallibility: Kittler's Sirens
Afterword: Let's Sing Another Song Boys. This One Has Grown Old and Bitter (Leonard Cohen)
Notes
Bibliography
Index