Knowing by Ear

“Baffling, confronting, and revealing—those are a few of the qualities that struck me as I read Anette Hoffmann’s new book. I read it in one breath but with vicarious shame. Like her Listening to Colonial History, Knowing by Ear makes clear how much undiscovered information about colonial history is waiting for us in sonic archives all over the world. By investigating these sonic archives Hoffmann shows how African prisoners of war were simultaneously misunderstood, mistreated, and dehumanized.” - Marcel Cobussen, Professor of Auditory Culture at Leiden University, the Netherlands

“Knowing by Ear is a much-anticipated, urgent study of the coercive recording of African prisoners of war by German researchers during World War I. Challenging the original epistemic frames of this archive, Anette Hoffmann offers a sensitive analysis of the African speakers and their recordings. A highly rewarding read for all interested in war, media, and colonial archives, Knowing by Ear engages close listening, translation, and collaborative research as vital tools for reactivating these fragments today.” - Carolyn Birdsall, Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam

"The publication of Knowing by Ear is highly relevant for scholars of Sound Studies, colonial history, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and African studies. . . . Hoffmann’s work sets a precedent for historians interested in pursuing multisensory approaches, especially within postcolonial contexts." - Anamitra Ghosh, Sound Studies

"Knowing by Ear deepens our knowledge by digging beneath the extrinsic linguistics to recover the intrinsic messages. . . . This book should be purchased by all owners of the Black Europe set and historians of World War I." - Edward Komara, ARSC Journal

"The book makes us ask, as Hoffmann does in her acoustic installations of competing recordings, ‘who is positioned to speak (of) history?’ (p. 150). Knowing by Ear is a recovery of expression which indicts the Kaiser and all authority that sacrifices individuals recalled later only as types. It is informed, sensitive, and a corrective." - Paul Landau, Journal of Southern African Studies