The Documentary Audit : Listening and the Limits of Accountability (Investigating Visible Evidence: New Challenges for Documentary)

Rangan, Pooja

Columbia University Press（2025/07発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 280 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9780231217972
• DDC分類 070.18

Full Description

Documentary films are often celebrated with aural metaphors: they give "voice" to the "voiceless" and ask the public to "listen." But when did listening become synonymous with social justice? How exactly do documentaries train audiences to listen when they ask them to right historic wrongs or hold power to account?

The Documentary Audit challenges the association of listening with accountability and charts oppositional modes of listening otherwise. Pooja Rangan develops a framework for understanding how documentary practices have, under the mantle of accountability, provided a moral cover for listening habits that are used to profile, exclude, and incarcerate.

From the British Crown's promotional films to Zoom meeting recordings, from disability-informed filmmaking in Japan to forensic efforts to expose anti-Palestinian violence in Hebron, Rangan explores how historical and contemporary practitioners have challenged and refused the lures of normative documentary listening habits in order to listen with an accent, listen in crip time, and listen like an abolitionist. Through an interdisciplinary approach that bridges documentary and sound studies while considering raciolinguistics, disability access, and legal forensics, Rangan demonstrates how the question of listening is central to the study of documentary. Far from being a neutral ethic, The Documentary Audit shows, listening creates the reality it purports to verify—with transformative political possibilities.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Listening with an Accent
2. Listening in Crip Time
3. Listening Like an Abolitionist
Coda: Listening Without Impact
Notes
Bibliography
Index