Sound Politics: Affective Governance and the State

About

Talk by Michelle Weitzel (International Relations and Political Science, Graduate Institute of Geneva)

Since the early aughts, policy makers, states, and military strategists have shown renewed interest in better understanding the psychophysiological underpinnings of human behavior and decision-making. Drawing on insights from psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics, as well as on emergent industry trends in marketing, publicity, and design, this interest in “beyond-rational” thinking is focused on precognitive, embodied feeling as much as it is on the conscious mind. Insights from behavioral sciences have led to an outpouring of new micro-techniques of governance, sometimes termed “nudge policies,” which purport to guide citizens toward beneficial choices. However, these studies and their resultant policies rarely grapple with the theoretical presuppositions coming from the interdisciplinary field of sensory studies, which has long insisted that the senses are culturally organized and politically consequential. Nor do they critically interrogate the ethical and political implications of policies that target the subconscious, particularly when these move beyond narrow policy initiatives and are applied more broadly in conflict settings. In this talk, I tune in to the sensory register of the auditory, asking what role sound plays in micro-techniques of politics and how this mode of perception has become entangled with everyday governance and statecraft. With a nod to Foucault, I advance the notion of a “Panaudicon” in which sound derives power from the fact that its political effects are ignored in all but the most obvious cases. In identifying and tracing the contours and operations of the Panaudicon, I track sound’s political effects via empirical settings that vary in degree and technique of repressive control. The research draws on fieldwork and case studies from Israel and Palestine, Algeria and France, and Morocco.

Michelle Weitzel is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations and Political Science at the Graduate Institute of Geneva. Prior to joining the Institute, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Basel where she collaborated on a Swiss National Science Foundation project related to design thinking and governance. She received her PhD from The New School, where she trained in comparative politics and international relations, and specialized in the political systems of Southwest Asia and North Africa. Weitzel’s research centers on affect, emotion, and the body in politics, critical security, and everyday governance. Her current book project, entitled "Sound Politics: Navigating Affective Governance” (under contract with Oxford University Press) draws on case studies in Palestine, Israel, Algeria, France, and Morocco.