Rithmus belli: Grappling with the Rhythmic Periodicities of War
The organized pulses that we term “rhythm” permeate our musics, our languages, our workplaces, our ambulatory patterns, and, in the form of the biomechanical syncopation of the human heart, the very concept of human life. But the embodied experience of this universal attribute is often intensely local—the product of sonorous event; sociocultural milieu; and the life histories, attentions, and intentions of auditors. Nowhere is the fusion of these elements more intense or caustic than in wartime, when the audible and haptic presence of “the beat” bespeaks the immediate proximity of violent acts.
This paper examines a number of violent rhythms that emanated from the recently (albeit imperfectly) concluded war in Iraq. Operating within overlapping but distinct auditory regimes, Iraqi civilians and American military service members strained to make sense of the wartime rhythms they encountered. Through the repetitive labor of audition and conversation, they learned to recognize and respect the circadian rhythms of combat, minimizing their exposure during the hours of the day in which gun battles were more common. Some developed the ability to identify different firearms based on the rhythmic patterns of their explosive reports. In other, rarer instances, wartime auditors worked to pacify the dystopian rhythms of wartime violence by translating them into musical frameworks. By attending to the often surprising ways in which individual auditors characterized their engagements with wartime rhythms, the paper lays the groundwork for a broader discussion of rhythm and its relation to violence and vulnerability.