Listening back: materiality, mediatisation and method in radio history

‘Listening Back’ explores how radio’s mediatisation of a permanently unfolding perpetual present transformed the modern experience of time and with it the tools and techniques of historiography itself. Methodologically, it is about revisiting radio historiography: listening back to become aware of things that were missed on first hearing. Conceptually, as a phrase associated with recorded sound, ‘listening back’ acts as a reminder that listening happens in real time, in the now, opening an experiential and theoretical gap between the act of listening and the sounds of the past. Experientially, ‘listening back’ is newly prominent in digital radio, as broadcasters and listeners each collapse the distinction between live output and the archive. In short, the chapter offers a media archaeological approach that puts listening back at the core of radio’s historical narrative. It deals in fragments and associations to re-present (to make present again) and reconfigure (between past and present) the materiality and mediatisation of listening through aspects of radio’s past, and of its here and now.