The Dissonance of Democracy: Listening, Conflict, and Citizenship

by Susan Bickford

Although the role of shared speech in political action has received much theoretical attention, too little thought has focused on the practice of listening in political interaction, according to Susan Bickford. Even in a formally democratic polity, political action occurs in a context of conflict and inequality; thus, the shared speech of citizenship differs significantly from the conversations of friendly associates. Bickford suggests that democratic politics requires a particular quality of attention, one not based on care or friendship. Analyzing specifically political listening is central to the development of democratic theory, she contends, and to envisioning democratic practices for contemporary society. Bickford's analysis draws on the work of Aristotle and of Hannah Arendt to establish the conflictual and contentious character of politics. To analyze the social forces that deflect attention from particular voices, Bickford mobilizes contemporary feminist theory, including Gloria Anzaldua's work on the connection between identity and politics. She develops a conception of citizen interaction characterized by adversarial communication in a context of inequality. Such a conception posits public identity―and hence public listening―as active and creative, and grounded in particular social and political contexts.

224 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1996

Reviews

[Dont · Rating 5 out of 5]

In recent years the field of sound studies has clearly established itself within the humanities. The field has become an interdisciplinary meeting point for musicologists, social historians, art historians, and cultural studies. Despite the disciplinarian range, however, there seems to be something of a core canon slowly emerging. One of the contested qualities of that nascent canon is the emphasis on sound versus listening. The point may seem minor but it has implications on which discourse -- and which set of institutional interests -- get to dominate the conversation. It also has clear implications politically; an emphasis on those who produce, organize, and name sounds or an emphasis on the practices and contingencies of reception. It's also interesting to note how the competing discourses of sound and listening draw on very different intellectual traditions not to mention political projects.

The contest between sound and listening is nowhere more sharply drawn than in the work of Seth Kim-Cohen. His book, In the Blink of an Ear, uses a Kantian reading of conceptualism in the visual arts to drive a wedge between sound as analytical proposition and listening as synthetic practice. The whipping child in such an argument is phenomenology (and, as we all know from poststructuralism, phenomenology=bad). The wages of such an argument is the disavowal (silencing) of the feminist critique of analytical conceptualism on the very terms of experience and social practice.

Unfortunately, much of the conversation that centers around an analysis of listening has been far too dependent upon a kind of wispy phenomenology that avoids the more difficult questions regarding the relationship between listening and politics. This conflict lies at the center of Susan Bickford's 1996 book, The Dissonance of Democracy. The fact that this book is over fifteen years old and (as far as I know) has made little impact on the discourses of sound studies begs some urgent questions about the actual investments in the field.

While published in 1996, the scope and orientation of Bickford's argument is very much turned towards the debates of the 1980s around identity politics, new social movements, and a radical rethinking of theories of democracy. Bickford is in conversation with thinkers like Nancy Fraser, Seyla Benhabib, as well as earlier theorists of democracy like Ronald Dahl. But, as Bickford acknowledges, any conversation that links listening to the the communicative function of democracy must contend with Habermas. Here Bickford sets out her course of argument, rejecting the Habermas notion of consensus as the foundation of political practice. The backbone of Bickford's argument comes from her sustained engagements with Hannah Arendt and Merleau-Ponty. This is an entirely different trajectory of phenomenology largely ignored in sound studies. Taking up Arendt and Merleau-Ponty leads Bickford to make a distinction between a sort of general practice of listening and the point at which listening becomes a political practice.

Contrary to most phenomenological approaches to listening (Cage, Schaeffer, Ihde, etc.), Bickford rejects the notion that a kind of self-abnegation is conditional for listening. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty's notion of an active form of reception, Bickford describes how listening involves two simultaneous procedures; first, the making of oneself the background and, second, placing the other against that background. In other words, listening is not a process of coming to identification, nor is it about hearing from the perspective of another, or even compassion or sympathy. Rather, in order to make oneself the horizon against which the other becomes legible, difference must be retained. In fact, as Bickford convincingly shows, the easy (and non-listening) thing to do is to simply erase difference. Retaining difference in the act of listening defamiliarizes our own positions and, thus, as Arendt argues, challenges our own identity. Furthermore, the reversibility and interactivity of figure and ground requires that we must acknowledge the other's capacity for creative listening. This, for Bickford is the basis for taking responsibility for listening. But if this dialectic describes a general practice of listening, at what point does that practice become a form of political listening?

Here is where Bickford makes a tremendously important and, as far as I can tell, unique contribution to our thinking about listening. Again, drawing on Arendt and Merleau-Ponty, Bickford argues that a political listening requires a kind of multiplicity of perspectives on a shared event, problem or issue. Using Aristotle's distinction between the social and the political, she argues how the political requires some form of action that determines the quality of the social. How do we determine that action where consensus always requires some form of exclusion (and often the exclusion of those whose interests are seen as particular, obstacles to a universality)? At this point, Bickford turns to feminist theory and, in particular, feminists of color like Audre Lorde and Gloria Anzaldua. A form of listening that not only retains difference, but considers its wandering perspectives as crucial to dialogue and action (dialogue as action), begins to draw the outlines of a structure of solidarity.

It seems almost tragic that the discourse of sound studies has completely ignored Bickford's argument given the challenges she presents. She rejects any claims of essence for listening; where listening has some sort of essential purchase over the other modes of perception. She also rejects the notion that listening is about excavating an essence in the object of perception. Rather, she argues that listening is a deliberative act that makes meaning rather than excavates it. The making of meaning becomes political once it enters the realm of dialogue, collectivity, and the call to action. In other words, for Bickford, a non-essentialist conceptualization of listening is inextricably linked to listening as social practice around interest (where interest is always collective and always political). Additionally, Bickford performs her politics by locating feminist and feminist of color discourse in the very terms and voices theorizing the practices of listening -- something that has been nearly entirely obscured in the field of sound studies. Bickford's book deserves to be taken seriously and engaged critically. I cannot help but imagine where the field of sound studies would be today (institutionally and practically) if The Dissonance of Democracy was a starting point of our debates and investigations.