Abstract
For much of human history members of one nationality (ethnic group, race, gender, culture, religious community, etc.) have oppressed those defined as ‘other’. The liberal principle of toleration points to a more attractive alternative, in which no one is systematically disadvantaged as a result of membership in a particular group. Contemporary advocates of multiculturalism go a step further, insisting that diversity should be affirmed as good in itself, and not merely as a means of avoiding social conflicts. For all of these viewpoints the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is a relatively straightforward matter. In this important book Evans criticizes this assumption, develops a more adequate social ontology and then traces its most important political implications.
For Evans, the main ‘units’ of the social world, so to speak, are not nationalities, ethnicities, races, or any other sort of distinct group. But neither are they ‘individuals’, whether understood as members of such groups or as separate agents pursuing their own interests. The basic units are instead ‘voices’. To understand what he means by this term we must put aside the idea that language is primarily a tool employed by speaking subjects. Neither is language an objective system of synchronic differences to which speaking subjects must conform. Language must be comprehended first and foremost as a radically indeterminate multiplicity of potential and actual dialogues extending forwards and backwards in time in an indefinite number of dimensions. Speaking subjects are inserted in – or, better, constituted by – an open-ended multiplicity of voices that are at once ‘within’ and beyond them. In granting primacy to voices Evans does not deny that the individuals referred to by proper names exist. His point instead is that what Walt Whitman said of himself – ‘I contain multitudes’ – is literally true of all of us. While one voice typically plays a leading role in a person’s life at any given time, we are always far more than a single voice. We are essentially hybrids, inseparably tied to an indefinite range of other voices. Ontologically, then, the ‘other’ is never truly other; the voice of the other is always already within us, always already a part of who we are.
Nationalities, ethnicities, cultures and so on must also be comprehended in terms of hybrid voices. No nationality, ethnicity, culture, etc., ever possesses a ‘pure’ homogeneous identity. Ontologically, here too the voice of the ‘other’ is never truly other, but always already within the given nationality or ethnicity or culture. From this perspective an attempt to repress the voices of other nationalities, and to articulate the ‘pure’ voice of a national community, is not just an attack on the other; it must be seen as a form of self-mutilation as well. The same can be said when members of some other form of social grouping make the same attempt.
If voices are the basic units of social life, it follows that society must be comprehended as a multivoiced body, extending backwards and forwards in time and space. Given the manner in which the voices of any one place and time are inseparable from those of other places and other times, territorial boundaries, whether those of nations, empires, cultures, or civilizations, are secondary phenomena. The social world is not an aggregate of more or less independent peoples, defined by state boundaries, as Rawls and many others have pictured. Neither is it the case that the webs of interconnections across borders are recent effects of advances in communication and transportation technologies, as many theorists of globalization assert. Society has always been a multivoiced body, within which the diverse voices of different times and places are inseparably tied to others without being reducible to them.
The intrinsic interconnection and heterogeneity of voices are closely tied to another dimension of voices emphasized by Evans: their ceaseless proliferation. Individuals, nationalities, cultures and so on do not have fixed and static identities, since the voices that constitute them are continually in flux. Whenever two voices come into play, a third will spontaneously arise in response; as this third interacts with each of the first two a fourth and a fifth are generated, and so on without limit. This endless proliferation of different voices does not move to any predetermined goal; the fate of the multivoiced body is radically open-ended.
Evans believes that a principle of justice can be derived from this social ontology, the principle of the equal audibility of all voices. Accepting this principle obviously demands a commitment to instituting a very strong form of democracy. No social order can be said to be democratic merely because it has instituted a procedure for aggregating given preferences. Democracy is also not merely a matter of creating social spaces in which a multiplicity of voices could be heard in principle. For a social order to count as a truly democratic society every feasible effort must be made to ensure that the fullest possible range of diverse voices is in fact able to express itself effectively, and not just in principle. Evans finds his own country profoundly wanting in this regard. Employing a distinction introduced by Shoshana Zuboff, he describes how information technologies have been introduced in order to remove skills from workers (‘automating’), rather than to help them develop new creative capacities (‘informating’). The former makes it easier for the voices of workers to be silenced; the latter furthers the audibility of those voices. Generalizing from this case, Evans insists that an adequate institutionalization of the principle of the equal audibility of voices requires democracy in the workplace, and not just the ballot box. It requires, in fact, a ‘classless society’ (167). Evans also agrees with cosmopolitan theorists like David Held that entirely new democratic forms are required on the global level, such as a democratically elected world parliament. He insists, however, that no set of socio-political institutions can ever adequately institutionalize the principle of the equal audibility of voices once and for all. For one thing, new voices are constantly emerging that require the construction of new social and political spaces to be heard adequately. For another, we will always discover new ways our institutions fail to further equal audibility.
Throughout the book Evans presents exceptionally clear and penetrating accounts of Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, Deleuze and Guattari, and other theorists too numerous to mention. These discussions allow Evans to clarify his own position by contrasting it with others. But they are also extremely valuable in their own right. Any student seeking a clear overview of the often extraordinarily dense and complex writings of influential Continental philosophers (especially those from France) would be well advised to begin here. Any instructor seeking a secondary text to supplement primary readings in a contemporary Continental philosophy course should put this work at the top of the list.
Deleuze and Guattari’s writings are examined at the most length. Evans applauds their rejection of the traditional Cartesian subject, as well as their insistence that the endless proliferation of differences (‘deterritorialization’) has ontological priority over the forces that constrain this proliferation (‘territorialization’). He complains, however, that their theoretical framework revolves around impersonal and anonymous forces, with no place for the hybrid subjectivity so crucial in his own position. The claim that his account of the multivoiced body is superior to competing perspectives in that it incorporates a proper appreciation of subjectivity and agency while recognizing the shortcomings of traditional notions of subjectivity and agency is a leitmotif running throughout Evans’ examination of other philosophers.
In most of the book Evans states that his theoretical goal is to develop a notion of social unity (the multivoiced body) consistent with an appreciation of the ceaseless proliferation of different voices. He repeatedly asserts that the practical import of his theory is that it undercuts both assertions of unity that come at the cost of oppressing supposedly alien ‘others’, and assertions of difference that come at the cost of undermining our solidarity with ‘others’ who are in fact part of us. From this standpoint there is no reason whatsoever to privilege either unity or difference. They are equiprimordial. The same dynamic holds when we move from social ontology to normative social theory. The principle of the equal audibility of voices, a principle of unity, presupposes the radical multiplicity of voices. It does not and cannot claim any ontological priority over the endless generation of different voices. But in Evans’ normative theory new voices are not to be applauded simply because they illustrate chance and heterogeneity. The principle of equal audibility is in effect a regulative ideal for the endlessly proliferating voices, and as such it cannot be said to have a secondary status vis-à-vis those different voices. From this standpoint too, then, there is no reason to privilege either unity or difference. In more than a few places, however, Evans argues vehemently against theorists who ‘overlook the priority that divergence has over convergence in our dialogic exchanges’ (174). It can be questioned whether such assertions of priority are in tension with what is said elsewhere about the need to recognize in our dialogic exchanges our ontological unity in the multivoiced body and our normative unity in the principle of equal audibility. These certainly appear to be forms of ‘convergence’. It can also be questioned whether Evans’ achievement can be fully appreciated if we take him as merely a philosopher of difference. Perhaps the most interesting and original dimension of his book is the manner in which it brings together lines of thought almost universally considered incompatible. Specifically, he combines a recognizably ‘Kantian’ principle of justice with a ‘Nietzschean’ emphasis on multiplicity and difference. It is a great accomplishment to show that each of these perspectives captures an important element of the truth; neither is adequate in itself, each needs to be supplemented by the other. Talk of priority here seems out of place.
In this connection it is perhaps also worth noting that Evans’ readings of philosophers in the broadly Kantian tradition, such as Rawls and Habermas, are somewhat less charitable than his interpretations of theorists aligned with Nietzsche. He overstates, in my view, the distance between their normative principles and his own principle of the equal audibility of voices. And he underestimates the degree to which the criticisms he raises against their theories could be applied to his own. In a number of places, for example, he complains that both Rawls and Habermas develop principles of justice resulting in an extremely shallow and precarious peace (a mere modus vivendi) with those who refuse to acknowledge those principles. Both Rawls and Habermas would concede the point. But surely there will be those who reject the principle of the equal audibility of all voices as well, however convincing Evans’ arguments might be. If we wish to avoid a state of war with such people, isn’t maintaining a fragile state of ‘peaceful coexistence’ the best we can hope for in Evans’ perspective as well?
Another apparent tension in the work concerns the scope of the notion of ‘voices’. On the one hand, Evans is explicitly committed to avoiding linguistic idealism, understood as the view that social structures, material artifacts and so on are essentially linguistic in nature. He refers to the relationship between the linguistic and the non-linguistic dimensions as one of ‘mutual presupposition’. On the other hand, however, there are numerous passages such as the following: The reflexivity of language – as involved in the interplay among society’s voices – still allows us to grant priority to discourse. It is therefore appropriate to refer to the combination of human bodies and social structures as voices. (167–8)
This last issue directly concerns the scope of a social critique undertaken from the standpoint of the theory of the multivoiced body. Evans provides valuable philosophical tools to critique forms of oppression rooted in the dismissal of certain voices as alien and unworthy of being heard. The basis of this critique is the ontological fact that the voices of the oppressed are no less part of the multivoiced body than the voices of the oppressors, combined with the normative principle of equal audibility. Specific social institutions and practices fall within the scope of this critique whenever they can be shown to systematically discourage the equal audibility of voices. As we have seen, Evans’ theory provides a basis for a critique of class societies on the grounds that they are incompatible with equal audibility. His account also points to ontological possibilities beyond the reign of class domination. These are very significant contributions to critical social philosophy. But is it the case that all forms of social critique must center on the category of voices?
In my view, a set of historically specific social forms distinct from, and irreducible to, the general (transhistorical) ontology of voices and the multivoiced body is in place today. While I cannot establish the point here, I believe Marx was correct to assert that human subjectivity – that is, the hybrid subjectivity so brilliantly described by Evans – confronts a reified world of things (commodities, money, capital) that circulate with a quasi-objective dynamic of their own. Capital accumulation has become an end in itself, a totalizing principle holding on the level of society as a whole, subsuming even the voices of capitalists under its imperatives. Capital accumulation certainly does not proceed apart from the multivoiced body. Nonetheless, the circulation of money and commodities cannot be reduced to an interplay of voices, and cannot be adequately comprehended and criticized solely from the standpoint of voices. If we want to know what capital is, what its dominant tendencies are, and why it is so important to supersede it, we need to supplement the theory of the multivoiced body with a critique of political economy.
Despite this reservation, it remains the case that the scope of issues examined in Evans’ book, the range of theorists considered in depth, and the virtuosity with which the central themes are investigated, are truly astonishing. It is a major contribution to both social ontology and political theory from the perspective of Continental philosophy.