Our presence in a soundful world has to be critically scrutinized. We recognize some sounds and sonic ecologies and some sounds and sonic ecologies remain inaudible to us. Just like several things remain unseen by our eyes , several sounds also remain unheard. There are several things we actively choose to see and in the same way we also choose to listen to several sounds. This means there is a politics of seeing that invisibilizes some people, animals, trees and other things. There is also a politics of listening that renders some people, animals, trees and other things voiceless and inaudible.
Opening our sensibilities to the silenced and the silent one takes us into the politics of listening. There are voices that cannot be put into or transcribed into writing or speaking. Hence, the threshold of audibility is also a threshold of the political. There are several phonemes that remain in the background even as we hear and recognize the end result of their combinations. This is why we have to move beyond Aristotle and accept that not just speaking but listening and what we choose to listen makes us political. In contra to the diction, we have the challenge to turn to listening. It will manifest a politics of voice and its policing of our ear.
We are not just enable to enter new visibilities today but also are able enter new audibilities. Forensics is already employing voice recognition techniques to nab criminals. The surveillance is not just depending on a smart eye , but has opened itself to smart ear. Thus, new audibilities are entering forensic and other areas. Audio-politics is fast catching up with the visual politics. Visual metrics is still uppermost and dominant. But audio-politics is opening other horizons that remain blind to the eye. We have been using the technologies of the ears. Today they have come to our critical attention. Ascultations is entering the diction ( speech-centered) juri-diction. In many ways this entry of the aural data is offering wholesome justice. This of course is certainly within the domain of what we have been calling judicial hearing.
Our attention to the new audibilities opens us to border-crossing that might have remained blind to the eye. It goes against the command as Jacques Derrida tells us. This command is being expressed by Shss ! Keep quite! Shut up! Therefore, we have the challenge to break-free from the aural bio-political barriers. Indeed it is a challenge to deconstruct aural bio-political blockades. We can ,therefore, cross boundaries and live emancipatively. This politics does not just decide what is sayable and unsayable and what remains unsaid, it also allows what is hearable and unhearable and what remains unheard. We have the challenge, therefore, to expand the horizon of speaking as well as hearing so that voices that silenced can speak and be heard.
This stance also opens us to a humble recognition that admits every saying, there remains something unsaid and in every hearing there remains something unheard. Sayable and the unsayable are often bound by taboo of blasphemy . It legitimates the politics of exclusion. The unsayable becomes unhearable and thus, unbearable. Hence, saying the unsayable opens our ears to the unhearable. This might open how the command Shss! To Shut up ! is deeply inscribed in facism, racism, casteism, hate politics and fundamentalism of all kinds. This brings about self-policing that is produced by the pan-opticon ( pan-audicon) of Michel Foucault as well as that of extra-state actors that police society by using violent intimidation. Such policing leads to normalization of injustice and inequality and thus, keeps people chained and subjugated.
Opening of our eyes, mouth and ears is essential to produce emancipative practices. To do this we need creative and liberative visual, audio and speaking practices. They are interrelated yet perhaps creative audio practices binds them all. This is why we have to transgress the oral borders. Neither speech, writing can be disembodied. The new audibilities are to be considered in their bodily dimensions. This will enable us to understand how both speaking and listening is a politics of body. It is a bio-politics. When we decide who can speak and who can listen and relegate others to silence and inaudibility, we enter what may be called necropolitics which decide who can live and who has to die. Our turn to listening, therefore, is a turn to life and will let us have life in abundance for all.
