The Force of Listening
by Lucia Farinati & Claudia Firth
2017 · Errant Bodies Press · 216 pages
The Force of Listening explores the role of listening in the contemporary intersection of art and activism and asks what potential for transformation it might facilitate.
Written as a constructed montage in dialogic form, The Force of Listening draws from conversations with artists, activists, and political thinkers which took place during 2013-2014, in the aftermath of the wave of protests and occupations against austerity. Members of Ultra-red, Precarious Workers Brigade and feminist consciousness-raising groups, artists Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, media theorist Nick Couldry and philosopher Adriana Cavarero meet on the page to discuss questions of listening. Conversations cover themes such as collectivity, solidarity and resonance, the politics of voice, the challenges of institutional frameworks and reflections on the Occupy movement. In particular, The Force of Listening traces a legacy from feminist theory and consciousness-raising practices through the narration of first-hand experience (from Pat Caplan and Anna Sherbany) and discussions on ethics and politics of listening. In so doing, it inserts a vital component that often gets missed in debates on the sonic and explores how attention and interconnection might exist in the face of current structures of neoliberal governance and the instrumentalized modes of being it fosters. [Text Source: Errant Bodies Press]
“We sat and went through this very simple process of listening, and people were writing down on pieces of paper what they were hearing. They knew each other very well, they have worked together for a long time and they started to arrive at the point of their own contradictions. This happens, when you start to listen with a historical consciousness, with this other object form of listening, which is just to describe the sound you hear.” (Robert Sember)
“How do we create the space that can make listening possible? If you have a situation where everybody listens to/hears each other but you feel that what you are saying is not respected… and if this mutual understanding of listening and speaking (this safe space) is not created, then listening is not possible.”
