Acoustic Colonialism

In <i>Acoustic Colonialism</i> Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante examines the role of sound in Chilean and Mapuche cultural production over the last two centuries. Cárcamo-Huechante theorizes sound as a territory of racial patriarchal and colonial hegemony as well as of Mapuche struggle agency and response to what he calls acoustic colonialism. From the mid-nineteenth century to the present Chilean literature radio and other media have exerted a historic role in disseminating distorted visual and sonic representations of the Mapuche. The enduring effects of what Cárcamo-Huechante defines as the colonial ear-the entry point for these misrepresentations-reflect the logic of the Chilean settler nation-state. In response to these aural and sonorous figurations contemporary Mapuche writers artists and activists have produced their own literary radiophonic vocal and musical expressions. The voices sounds and discourses of these Mapuche productions contest and disrupt the acoustic colonialism that has dominated the soundscape of the territory designated in present-day cartography as central and southern Chile.