The Sound System of the State: Critical Listening as Performative Resistance

What is heard and what goes unheard in contemporary sonic experience is subject to constant negotiation. Although high-powered industrial emissions overshadow fainter organic vibrations, meaningful signals are still frequently intercepted in spite of the noisy environment. Such sonic signifiers or ‘cues’ could be considered as the fundamental ‘sonic blocks’ of ideology.

This chapter discusses the sonic methodology of critical listening as a means of interpreting these cues in their political context. This methodology can be used to reveal the ways in which sound operates as an ideological sphere. I will examine critical listening both as a method for analysing state sound systems and as a performative act of political resistance in its own right. The text draws on John L. Austin’s influential theory of speech acts, outlining the role of the listening agency in setting the conditions for the failure or success of illocutionary acts. Critical listening is then conceptualized as a means of resistance that can challenge or subvert the ideological signification of state- produced sounds. Building upon this performative role, critical listening is theorized as a method which broadens our understanding of how ideological sound systems can be challenged and resisted.

The chapter also includes a case study of critical listening, based on my experience of listening to state-produced sounds in Tel Aviv during the 2014 Israel– Gaza conflict. The case explores Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system and its part in the state’s self-inflicted soundscape of war. The case helps to support the underlying argument that reading and observing politics and ideology must also be supplemented by listening to the ‘Sound System of the State’ as one of the central tools of ideology.