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In The Archive and the Aural City, Alejandro L. Madrid examines the possibilities for retrieving from the archive sounds that were not meant to be heard. Drawing on Ángel Rama’s notion of the Lettered City, Madrid proposes a notion of the Aural City—a Latin American urban intellectual elite for whom sound and listening are central to the creation, re-creation, and circulation of new types of knowledge. While many of these elites carry forward a nationalistic agenda, Madrid contends that the Aural City’s archives and the ways they are listened to and conceived through sound and music can also help dismantle dominant frameworks of national or colonial culture and build more inclusive spaces for intellectual exchange and political mobilization. From national archives in Latin America and colonial institutions abroad to sound exhibits, instruments, and internet-based archival projects, Madrid demonstrates how the development of urban spaces is understood through sound. In this way, he expands understandings of the archive’s social and sonic power.
Price: $33.95
Pages: 384
Publisher: Duke University Press
Imprint: Duke University Press
Series: Sign, Storage, Transmission
Publication Date:
22 August 2025
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781478032113
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
“The Archive and the Aural City showcases Alejandro L. Madrid’s erudition, theoretical curiosities, and rigorous research. Madrid not only makes key arguments that will shape new directions of Mexican and Latinx sound studies, he provides an overdue and pointed intervention into a tradition of Latin American critique that has prioritized the lettered and the visual as the primary drivers of nation-building. This book is a crucial addition to how sound, music, and archives are studied.”—Josh Kun, editor of, The Tide Was Always High: The Music of Latin America in Los Angeles
“A significant and thorough study of sound archives and the institutionalization of sound in post-revolutionary Mexico, The Archive and the Aural City is an outstanding work that accounts for both the role of aural archives in the understanding of modern culture and the significance of sound in the development of cultural memory. Alejandro L. Madrid interweaves paradigmatic conceptual work on the archive and on sound with key Latin American interventions, and his bold theoretical and historiographic expansions make this book important for those thinking about sound and archives globally.”—Ignacio Sánchez Prado, author of, Strategic Occidentalism: On Mexican Fiction, the Neoliberal Book Market, and the Question of World Literature
"Madrid’s new book challenged me . . . to open my mind and entertain new ways to perceive a world where I once lived."—Lindajoy Fenley, ReVista
“A significant and thorough study of sound archives and the institutionalization of sound in post-revolutionary Mexico, The Archive and the Aural City is an outstanding work that accounts for both the role of aural archives in the understanding of modern culture and the significance of sound in the development of cultural memory. Alejandro L. Madrid interweaves paradigmatic conceptual work on the archive and on sound with key Latin American interventions, and his bold theoretical and historiographic expansions make this book important for those thinking about sound and archives globally.”—Ignacio Sánchez Prado, author of, Strategic Occidentalism: On Mexican Fiction, the Neoliberal Book Market, and the Question of World Literature
"Madrid’s new book challenged me . . . to open my mind and entertain new ways to perceive a world where I once lived."—Lindajoy Fenley, ReVista
Alejandro L. Madrid is Walter W. Naumburg Professor of Music at Harvard University and the author of several books, including Tania León’s Stride: A Polyrhythmic Life and In Search of Julián Carrillo and Sonido 13.