Aural Postcoloniality in Film Analysis

1. The Problem: The Hegemonic Aural Regime

Before we can understand a postcolonial approach to sound, we must first define what it pushes against: a dominant, often invisible, system of sonic power. Drawing on postcolonial and decolonial theory, scholars Rodrigo Toro and Donovan Hernández Castellanos call this the hegemonic aural regime.

This concept is foundational to understanding aural postcoloniality. It moves beyond a simple analysis of sound effects or music and asks us to consider the politics of listening itself.

As the text explains, the aural regime is the set of rules, technologies, and listening practices that determines what is considered meaningful sound and what is relegated to noise or silence. It's a political system that unequally distributes sonic value. Key points to grasp are:

• Political Nature of Audibility: What we can meaningfully hear is not just a biological function but is politically determined. Power structures decide which voices, music, and sounds are amplified, recorded, and valued.
• The Colonial Wound: The text argues that this regime is marked by the "colonial wound"—the long-lasting trauma and internalized power dynamics of colonialism. Aural postcoloniality, therefore, is the study of how this wound manifests in sound and listening. It is how the "long-lasting pattern of domination" described by Quijano and the divided self-recognition described by Fanon are made audible.

This gives us the first part of our definition: Aural postcoloniality is the critical examination of how the historical structures of colonialism persist within the contemporary 'aural regime', shaping what is sonically produced, valued, and perceived, and how subjects are formed through these sonic experiences.

2. The Response: Sonic Pluralism and Decolonial Listening

If aural postcoloniality is the critical framework, how does it manifest in practice? How do artists and listeners respond to and challenge the hegemonic aural regime? Here, we turn to two intertwined concepts: sonic pluralism and decolonial listening.

Gilles Aubry, in his research on sound in Morocco, develops the concept of sonic pluralism. This provides a fantastic, culturally specific lens that is directly applicable to your future research.

Aubry's work gives us concrete ways to think about aural postcoloniality:

• Critique of Eurocentric Sound Studies: Aubry points out that mainstream sound studies often sustain a universal, disembodied, Western concept of sound. This is the intellectual arm of the aural regime.
• Sawt vs. Sound: The distinction is profound. Where "sound" can be an abstract, measurable phenomenon, sawt implies "voice" and is intimately related to the body. This challenges the separation of sound from its source and its history.
• Sonic Pluralism: This is the practical response. It is the capacity to combine different ways of knowing sound ("epistemologies"). It is an "aural syncretism" that allows people to find new meanings and emancipate themselves from oppressive perceptual schemes. It is the act of "digesting" colonial science and technology (like Fanon's example of the radio) and repurposing it.

Hernández and Toro call the practice of applying this framework decolonial listening. It is an active, political mode of audition that seeks to:

• Listen from the position of the marginalized.
• Dismantle the hierarchies of the aural regime.
• Recognize the "acoustic body" and listening as an embodied, not just auditory, experience.

3. Application to Film Analysis

We can now synthesize these ideas to define "aural postcoloniality" and outline its application.

Definition: Aural postcoloniality is a theoretical framework for analyzing the persistence of colonial power dynamics within the sonic realm. It identifies a "hegemonic aural regime" that privileges Western modes of listening and sonic representation while marginalizing others. As a critical practice, it employs "decolonial listening" to uncover how the "colonial wound" manifests in soundscapes and to identify acts of "sonic pluralism"—syncretic aural practices that challenge and re-purpose dominant sonic epistemologies.

To apply this framework to the analysis of a film, especially a Moroccan film, you can ask a series of targeted questions:

• The Aural Regime:

  • Whose sounds dominate the soundscape? Whose are pushed to the background or treated as "noise"?
  • Which sonic elements are presented as "modern" and which as "traditional"? What power dynamics are encoded in this distinction?
  • Does the film's mix conform to a global "whiteness of sound" (e.g., Hollywood conventions), or does it propose a different aesthetic?

• The Colonial Wound:

  • How does the soundscape represent hybrid or conflicted identities? Is there a sonic tension between a desire for assimilation and an assertion of cultural specificity?
  • How are languages (e.g., Darija, Amazigh, French, Spanish) layered and mixed? Does the use of language reinforce or subvert historical power relations?
  • Are there sonic ghosts? Does the soundscape contain echoes of past violence, displacement, or colonial presence, even in scenes of contemporary life?

• Sonic Pluralism & Decolonial Listening:

  • Does the film engage with local sonic epistemologies (like the concept of sawt)? Does it treat sound as embodied and voiced, rather than abstract?
  • How are recording technologies represented or used within the film? Are they tools of surveillance and control, or are they "digested" and used for resistance and self-definition?
  • Does the film's sound design challenge the viewer's listening position? Does it decenter the Western ear and demand a different kind of attention—a decolonial listening?

Using this framework transforms film analysis from a descriptive exercise into a diagnostic one, allowing you to interpret a soundscape as a site of historical negotiation and political meaning.

Conclusion

In this lesson, we have moved from observing phenomena to defining the theory that explains them. We established a rigorous definition for the complex concept of aural postcoloniality.

Key Takeaways:

• Aural Postcoloniality is a framework for analyzing how colonial power structures persist in the sonic domain.
• It operates in opposition to a Hegemonic Aural Regime, a system that politically determines which sounds are valuable and meaningful, often privileging a Western, disembodied notion of sound.
• This regime perpetuates the "colonial wound" in the aesthetic and subjective experience of sound.
• Practical responses include Sonic Pluralism, an "aural syncretism" that combines different ways of knowing sound (as seen in Morocco), and Decolonial Listening, the active practice of challenging the dominant listening position.
• Applying this framework involves asking critical questions about whose sounds are centered, how history is voiced, and whether the film demands a new way of listening.

Preview of the Next Lesson:

You now have a powerful theoretical lens. The next step is to ground it in a specific historical context. We will begin Module 8, "Moroccan Cinema: Socio-Sonic Context," with a lesson where you will outline the key periods and movements in the history of Moroccan cinema. This will provide the essential cinematic and historical foundation upon which you can apply the concept of aural postcoloniality to your future analyses.