The Trembling City
The Sonic and Atmospheric Violence of Vibrational Warfare
$113.17
- Paperback
192 pages
- Release Date
17 November 2026
Summary
The Trembling City is a gripping account of cities that shudder under the vibrational force of occupation, siege, and war. From the persistent drone noise of Gaza to turbulent skies above Beirut, Gascia Ouzounian uncovers the insidious role of sound and vibration as instruments of violence that shape urban life. She introduces two interlinked concepts: vibrational warfare, a covert violence enacted through waves; and atmospheric occupation, the seizure of a city’s airs to unsettle, dominate, …
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262056489 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0262056488 |
| Author: | Gascia Ouzounian |
| Publisher: | MIT Press Ltd |
| Imprint: | MIT Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 192 |
| Release Date: | 17 November 2026 |
| Weight: | 369g |
| Dimensions: | 152mm x 229mm |
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Critics Review
“The Trembling City offers fresh and counterintuitive resources for thinking sound amid contemporary political horror.”
—The Wire
ENDORSEMENTS
“This powerful, transformative study exposes the acoustic violence of genocide, a world overlooked by scholarship that reverberates painfully without closure. Sifting through witness testimony, Ouzounian recovers the sonic terror experienced by the voiceless and the disappeared.”
—Esther da Costa Meyer, Professor Emerita, Department of Art and Archaeology Architecture, Princeton University
“Cities remember through vibration and reverberation. The Trembling City is a remarkable meditation on sound as archive, atmosphere, and witness, revealing how the echoes of war inhabit spaces—architecture, memory, and the body—long after violence has receded from view. Ouzounian beautifully argues for the sonic as a carrier for histories of displacement, resistance, and survival.”
—Jasbir K. Puar, Professor and Graduate Director of Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University
“Revisiting urban ontologies of violence, Ouzounian refocuses our attention from the city we think we can measure to the urban we can barely feel: inchoate, indeterminate, and unsettled. In doing so, she elaborates an acoustic epistemology that teaches counterlistening to urban tremor and the human flutter therein. The Trembling City is a vibrant and sonorous book.”
—Marwan M. Kraidy, Dean and CEO, Northwestern University in Qatar
Gascia Ouzounian
Gascia Ouzounian is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Oxford and an internationally recognized scholar of sound, urban life, and violence. She is the author of Stereophonica (MIT Press).
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