The Juge-Auditeur and Hearing the People

Abstract

The research of Perrault and Duverney demonstrated that hearing involved access to an imaginative, broader realm of existence. This model can be used to interrogate the Foucauldian “humanitarian” frame of state authority and to identify an alternative narrative of power that evolved during the eighteenth century in France, encompassing the auditory imagination. Such a narrative acknowledged the value placed on human “voices” within emerging contemporary political discourses of human rights.1 Foucault himself acknowledged the “voice” of the liberal subject in his understanding of the relationship between authority and the citizen in the modern state.2 The way in which the everyday person was able to gain a sense of the right to be “heard” and the means to develop these expectations, however, is much more complex.3 There are, however, specific examples of linguistic realms where the public had a clear expectation of being “heard” by those in authority before open debates surrounding democracy and rights. These sites of liberal expression were critical spaces of the auditory imagination where hearing cultivated a strong sense of inclusivity, incorporating an extended form of processing of “voices” on the part of the authorial hearer. By tracing the history of one such site from the eighteenth century through to the eve of the revolution, it can be demonstrated that audition, as practised in this transformative sense remained valued and conserved throughout the eighteenth century in France and was an important catalyst for political change.KeywordsEighteenth CenturySmall ClaimAlternative NarrativeAuditory ImaginationTransformative SenseThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.