Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Documentary Audit: Listening and the Limits of Accountability

The Documentary Audit: Listening and the Limits of Accountability

Rangan, Pooja

Hardcover

Series: Investigating Visible Evidence: New Challenges for Documentary

Film StudiesGeneral Sociology

ISBN10: 0231217978
ISBN13: 9780231217972
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: Jul 8 2025
Pages: 280
Weight: 1.05
Height: 0.75 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

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.

1 different editions

Also available

Also from

Rangan, Pooja

View All

Also in

Film Studies

View All