The Political Possibility of Sound: Fragments of Listening

Eight independent yet thematically related essays explore listening as a sociopolitical practice of sound, raising current aesthetic and political questions. The themes of these essays emerge from and deepen discussions started in Voegelin's previous books, Listening to Noise and Silence and Sonic Possible Worlds, and further engage the relationship between aesthetic practice and political possibility. Continuing the methodological juxtaposition of phenomenology and logic, each essay represents a fragment of listening to sound art, music and the soundscape, to hear their possibilities and develop words for what appears impossible.

The individual texts contribute to current discussions of ethics and morality, respond to contemporary ideas on geography and location, bring into play the notion of a feminine composition and relate a sonic sociality to efforts of curation and listening. Through a focus on what can't be heard, they explore the politics of the inaudible. Maurice Merleau-Ponty's life-worlds and David K. Lewis' possible worlds meet Henri Meschonnic's rhythmanalysis of language and place, to find a public rhythm and hear the beat of private sounds.

These essays perform embedded anthropologies of works and sounds: writing the political, social and private rhythms of the acoustic environment. Each develops through close sonic encounters and involves the unheard to invite different attitudes into the context of aesthetic actuality, civic identity and political possibility.