Chapter 4 Listening
In: Inhuman EducationsSearch for other papers by Derek R. Ford in
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In this chapter, I propose different sonic modes of engaging the distinct voices of the two inhuman educations, the public life and secret life, lexis and phonè. The two main modes, hearing and listening, are differentiated according to the role the subject plays in each. Hearing is about affirming and creating new forms of understanding, while listening reaches beyond understanding and subjects us to the force of sonorous matter itself. Lyotard’s writings on John Cage and Pierre Boulez, who each approach sublime sounds through different tactics, the former through minimalism and the latter through overdetermination. Next, I turn to timbre or the nuance of sounds, or those sonorous elements that are unpredictable and sublime, and which disseize the subject and disable our capacity to identify, understand, and know. To experience the force of timbre, the inhuman education of infancy requires passibility and another form of listening: not listening, upsetting the apparent dichotomy of sonic pedagogy. When not listening, we’re subjected to the force of timbre, or the inaudible and immaterial matter of sound. In the end, I read these forms of listening back through the examples of the ellipses and the list introduced in chapter 2.