Sirens are sounds that confront us in daily life, from the sounds of
police cars and fire engines to, less often, tornado warnings.
Ideologies of sirens embody the protective, the seductive and the
dangerous elements of siren sounds - from the US Cold War public
training exercises in the 1950s and 1960s to the seductive power of the
sirens entrenched in popular culture: from Wagner to Dizzee Rascal, from
Kafka to Kurt Vonnegut, from Hans Christian Andersen to Walt Disney.
This book argues, using a wide array of theorists from Adorno to Bloch
and Kittler, that we should understand 'siren sounds' in terms of their
myth and materiality, and that sirens represent a sonic confluence of
power, gender and destructiveness embedded in core Western ideologies to
the present day. Bull poses the question of whether we can rely on
sirens, both in their mythic meanings and in their material meanings in
contemporary culture.