Listening and Voice: Phenomenologies of Sound

by Don Ihde

New and expanded edition of the now classic study in the phenomenology of sound.

Listening and Voice is an updated and expanded edition of Don Ihde’s groundbreaking 1976 classic in the study of sound. Ranging from the experience of sound through language, music, religion, and silence, clear examples and illustrations take the reader into the important and often overlooked role of the auditory in human life. Ihde’s newly added preface, introduction, and chapters extend these sound studies to the technologies of sound, including musical instrumentation, hearing aids, and the new group of scientific technologies which make infra- and ultra-sound available to human experience.

“…an imaginative application of phenomenological investigation … this highly accessible work creatively engages phenomenological concepts … It will appeal to readers in many different disciplines—from philosophy to musicology to psychology and linguistics.” — CHOICE

“…finally, a little-known gem has reappeared … clear, commonsense examples dominate this sagacious book.” — ThScore

“The significance and importance of the topic, and centrality of the topic to a particular field of study, is directly related to Ihde’s strong reputation. His work is central to any study of the interface between the human body and technology, and his reputation began with, and still includes, the first edition of this book. He has been important to the field for thirty years and continues to contribute new insights.” — Lenore Langsdorf, coeditor of Recovering Pragmatism’s Voice: The Classical Tradition, Rorty, and the Philosophy of Communication

“This book is pathbreaking. It is still the only detailed phenomenology of listening and voice that we have. Philosophy, up until Ihde, was obsessed with visual representation and visual metaphors. Ihde contrasts visual perception with aural experiments, mixing up the examples and talking about pop music and opera in the same analytical voice.” — Trevor Pinch, coauthor of Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer

Don Ihde is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University, State University of New York. He is the author of many books, including Experimental Phenomenology: An Introduction, also published by SUNY Press, and Bodies in Technology.

Genres: Philosophy, Music

296 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Don Ihde is an American philosopher of science and technology. In 1979 he wrote what is often identified as the first North American work on philosophy of technology, Technics and Praxis. Before his retirement, Don Ihde was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really excellent overview of Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology and an important intervention in the field that prioritizes sound and listening. The sections with music (and especially music theory) though fall a bit flat and feel pretty shallow in their analyses. A philosophy text and not a musicology or sound studies one for sure.

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ihde's phenomenological work is always very, very interesting, and his style is particularly suited to the defamiliarizing aim of such a philosophy. Here he turns his attention to sound, the most pervasive and yet perhaps overlooked sense that we have. The analyses that he performs yield some relatively unsurprising results in terms of defining or describing the structure of our aural experience, but is nonetheless fascinating in how it classifies the generalized experience that we all have with sounds. Here are things that we know implicitly about our sense of hearing, yet have rarely bothered to put into words. Thinking through these things with Ihde is thus fascinating and rewarding, even if sometimes his variations can be a bit complex even for someone versed in philosophical and phenomenological vocabulary--in some ways this has been the densest of Ihde's books that I've read. That being said, if you are interested in sound, hearing, or music, this is a fascinating read that can really help you to think about how we interact with and take in sounds, and what it can mean to be involved in the production of sounds via things like speech.

[Dont · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been sitting on my shelf for some time. I first encountered the title years back in an essay by Fran Dyson in her essay on phenomenology and Cage (from the Wireless Imagination book). With all the blather about phenomenology in recent sound studies, I have found it quite curious that no-one except Dyson has referenced this text. So I read it. The book is quite old and one of Ihde's earliest - before he became something of a premiere Riceour scholar. In the preface he describes the book as something of an experimental phenomenology -- trying to work through the ideas of phenomenology (in this case, the shift from Husserl to Heidegger) in the process of actually describing embodied experiences of listening. What's absolutely remarkable is that Ihde wrote this book without any reference -- and thus, I presume, no knowledge of -- Pierre Schaeffer. The overlaps are remarkable, particularly in how Ihde gives an analysis of the phenomenological reduction in the field of auditory experience. The book should make a useful supplement to students of Schaeffer and musique concrete; particularly given how little of Schaeffer's actual writings are available in English. Of course, Ihde falls into much of the conventional metaphysical traps of Husserlean phenomenology. There is a forceful rejection of psychoanalysis and the very notion of a split subject. This is precisely the sort of full-presence in phenomenological discourse that is at the heart of critiques by Derrida and Kristeva. When Ihde acknowledges the former, he launches into such a gross misreading that clearly helps to give him an alibi and dismiss any difficult challenges that Derrida makes to Husserlean metaphysics in particular. But that said, the book is a great introduction to the problems/practice of phenomenology within the field of sound.

[Cambra · Rating 2 out of 5]

what about the phenomenology of speaking?

[Tomas Serrien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very lucid and good introduction to a phenomenology of sound, speech and music.

[Nuno · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite interesting. Food for thought.