Les Back, The Art of Listening

摘要

The project of this new book by Les Back is directed against what are described as forms of intrusive empiricism and moral cannibalism. By intrusive empiricism he means claims to know others with unquestionable closeness and judge them with unequivocal confidence, as for example in television documentaries and journalistic exposes, which, in a spirit of salacious curiosity, offer 'revelation, occlusive detail, fast turnaround and an excess of "data" ' (p. 16). By moral cannibalism he means the consumption of 'images of badness, crime, vulgarity and degeneracy' that nourish the viewer's sense of moral probity, as for example in reality TV spectaculars like Big Brother, a sort of contemporary equivalent of the Victorian freak show. The sociological approach that Back advocates stands in contrast to these media forms by prizing patience, dialogue with others and careful, critical refection. It means going beneath the surface buzz and crackle of spectacle to get to unassumed evidence of the self-evident and what is remarkable in the unremarkable. It also means accepting ambivalence and doubt instead of feigning mastery, authority and certainty. What he is after is attentive listening in the interests of cautious sociological reasoning. Back identifies this with the task of sociology articulated by C. Wrighr Mills, translating the personal troubles of biography into the public issues of history and society, but notes the need to strive for this now in a post-national context.