Journal Article

Listening for noise in political thought

Bruce Buchan

2012

Overview

The association of sound and political philosophy is venerable, but usually only silently invoked in metaphor or analogy, as in Cicero's likening 'concord' among the citizens of the republic to 'harmony in song', or John of Salisbury's image of rulership as 'producing the sweetest consonance of dissonances' by 'stretching or relaxing' the variety of 'strings' in the commonwealth. These musical metaphors have at least two important implications for our understanding of how political ideas are communicated in the Western tradition of political thought. First, their antiquity implies that political ideas have frequently been communicated, even in written texts, by means of specific reference to the noise of ideas resonating in music, in speech, or in dialogue. Second, they also imply that the communication of political ideas takes place by means of purposive and meaningful 'sound' (of the orchestrated harmony of music in this analogy) rather than invasive and irritating 'noise' (to stretch the same analogy, in discordant strumming or tuneless chanting). These two implications deserve further investigation if only because political theorists have often been deaf to the ways in which the invocation of noise has been used in written texts to underscore the meaning of political ideas.

• Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing
• Subject: Analogies / Communication / Inscriptions / Listening / Music / Noise / Political aspects / Political philosophy / Politics / Public speaking / Singing / Social aspects / Sound / Sound (Philosophy) / Syntax / Verbal communication