Techniques of Inattention: The Mediality of Loudspeakers in Nigeria

This article examines the religious use of loudspeakers on churches and mosques in Jos, Nigeria. It examines the medial form of the loudspeaker, how this medium technologizes urban space, and how urban residents generate cultural techniques to live with the sounds it produces. More precisely, I focus on how loudspeakers seek to compel attention by disbursing religious messages and how, in a city riven by religious conflict, residents cultivate practices of inattention in order to ameliorate the possibility of religious violence.