Audible States

Abstract

Audible States examines how elites have governed politically and aesthetically meaningful spaces of silence and sound in Albania since 1945. Interweaving archival research with ethnographic interviews, author Nicholas Tochka argues that modern political orders do not simply render social life visible, but also audible. And in rendering social life audible, states make reality governable in significant, albeit unpredictable, ways. The book’s chronological narrative presents an aural history of government through the close examination of a state-subsidized popular genre, light music, as broadcast at an annual song competition, Radio-Television Albania’s Festival of Song. Drawing on a wide rang..