Detonations: Shellac at war

Abstract

Chapter 4 attends to the toxic transformation of shellac in the two World Wars, when it became a key substance in the manufacture of detonating compositions, hand grenades, and bombs and was rationed by governments (thus curtailing record-making operations and intensifying research into substitutes, including PVC). Drawing from Catherine Malabou’s radical theses on ‘destructive plasticity’, it theorises the material and ideological instability of shellac as well as its recycling, exploring the dominant discourses associated with recorded sound. In particular, it draws attention to the trope of phonographic listening as a means to repair both individual and social bodies broken down by war, showing how this discourse was recuperated by governmental bodies.