Abstract

Contemporary democratic theorists who focus on shared speech as a practice of citizenship have not yet given any sustained account of the role of listening. This neglect has prevented them from developing a conception of communicative interaction that takes seriously the conflicts and differences among citizens. ;Aristotle and Hannah Arendt help us understand politics as communicative interaction that takes its meaning from the presence of conflict. For both theorists, such interaction requires certain kinds of "attention to others." But the character of that attention, and who those "others" are, is very different for each, and neither account is adequate by itself. For Aristotle, who we are as citizens is determined by our positions in the socioeconomic order. But Arendt insists that humans are never wholly conditioned; the unpredictable character of politics comes from their capacity to speak and act in unexpected ways. If listening is part of this creative action, then speakers in a context of political equality cannot control how they will be heard. ;But Arendt does not acknowledge the distinction between this inevitable lack of control among equals, and the systematic distortion of some people's voices. Feminist theorists of race, class, gender, and sexuality have analyzed the forces that screen attention, deflecting it from some and focusing it on others. These theorists examine the connection between social existence and the opinions that we speak: language. They point to a conception of political identity that stresses both the importance and the indeterminacy of that connection. ;Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception helps us probe the distinction between distorted listening and active listening, by addressing how the activity of listening works from the point of view of the subject, and among subjects in a common world. This listening attention need not spring from care or friendship, I argue, but rather requires a specifically political kind of courage. Since this interaction is often deeply conflictual, it does not take its meaning from, or its purpose to be, consensus. I suggest a different normative goal that can better guide political action in a diverse and inegalitarian social order