Beyond Empathy and Inclusion (henceforth BEI) offers the most recent in-depth defense of listening as a central democratic practice. Mary Scudder advances a theory of “democratic performative listening” and its “ilauditory force,” drawing on Doyle W. Srader’s little-known article in the International Journal of Listening (2015). She distinguishes between the “auditory,” the “ilauditory,” and the “perauditory” force of listening. The first refers to hearing the input, the second to the act of listening, and the third to the effects of the listening act (understanding; misunderstanding; informational, attitudinal, and behavioral effects; p. 88). Listening to others is democratically valuable, regardless of what listening brings about. The very act of listening “helps constitute democratic autonomy” by acknowledging others as having a say in lawmaking (pp. 13, 16). For Scudder, the act of listening itself constitutes relationships of equal citizenship.
Scudder offers “uptake” or “fair consideration” (words used interchangeably; see pp. 6, 14, 20–21, 36, 38, 42–43, 135, 149, 191) as the normative standards to which we should hold democratic performative listening. It merely requires “entertaining [the utterance] as a normative claim,” not that we accept the truth of the claim or reflect it in our decision (pp. 38, 90). Neither does it require that all claims have equal influence or be considered for an equal amount of time (p. 39).
I found Scudder’s argument for how to encourage deliberation across deep difference particularly successful. She argues that civic friendship, empathy, civility, and respect for others do not provide solutions in this respect. We cannot be expected to be friends with or have empathy for people whose ideas we find abhorrent, and listening to others in these circumstances might risk further straining our relationship with them. Scudder’s solution to this thorny situation is to insist that, although we should never give up the ideal of listening, we should better equip citizens for dealing with the pressure and anxiety that disagreeable deliberation might bring. Thus, instead of cultivating civic friendship and empathy, we should help citizens grow thicker skins: they should become more resilient and accepting of open conflict and disagreement (pp. 126–31). We could do that through civic education (teaching citizens the value of conflict), as well as through other anxiety-reducing strategies to help citizens cope psychologically with conflict. Scudder’s position is particularly appealing because it provides valuable middle ground between defending disagreement and ignoring it altogether. Such accounts that successfully “walk the fine line” are unfortunately rare in deliberative democracy. Scudder’s success here is partly explained by her willingness to engage with empirical science (especially political psychology) to build her case—something that other deliberative theorists have not been doing sufficiently.
There are a few aspects of BEI, however, that would benefit from further elaboration and clarification. One regards the meanings of “uptake,” “fair (or due) consideration,” and “understanding.” Scudder declines to define any of these terms. Instead, she uses them interchangeably with each being specified by reference to the others, as if these concepts were self-defining. Alas, none of them are.
Scudder’s “uptake” could be consistent with a Bayesian framework where it means simply “taking into account” someone’s input in light of our existing beliefs. It could be equally consistent with standard notions of information processing, reflection, weighing of inputs, and open-mindedness—although she does not rely on them. Importantly, uptake defined these ways could be more or less “fair.” It may be distorted by various biases, and it could be more or less thorough, depending on what mental resources and time we allocate to it.
Is listening, considering, and “promptly” rejecting a conspiracy theory “fair consideration” of it, as Scudder suggests (p. 39)? Does fair consideration require merely “taking notice” of someone’s view, or also reflecting on it, or taking it into account in our judgments as well? To “fairly” consider an input could mean to consider it without any bias or prejudice, with as much impartiality as one can. Or it could mean to consider it for long enough or from a certain perspective. Or it could mean to acknowledge it discursively in replying to that input in conversation. If we equate “uptake” with “fair consideration” (something we could avoid), how we consider the claim matters as much as whether we consider it at all. If our consideration can either be fair or unfair, it can be so only against some procedural or substantive standard of fairness in consideration. BEI does not identify any.
In the second half of her book (e.g., pp. 149, 191, and chapter 6 especially) Scudder equates “uptake” and “fair consideration” with “understanding.” She says “understanding, and so uptake, can elude even the most generous interlocutors” (p. 135); “understanding and thus fair consideration can elude even the most generous listener” (p. 191; see similarly p. 136, n. 65). Does this clarify or further complicate matters?
First, it is not clear whether by “understanding” we simply mean intelligibility (understanding the meaning of your words) or more than that—for example, understanding your perspective, where you’re coming from, what motivates your use of those words, or how your conclusion is supported by the reasons offered. If understanding refers to something being intelligible, then the threshold for fair consideration and uptake is very low. The conspiracy example I cited earlier seems to support this reading: uptake merely requires listening, considering, and “attempting to understand the speaker’s meaning” (p. 39).
Second, it is unclear how understanding, fair consideration, or uptake can apply to ilauditory, performative listening, which Scudder says has nothing to do with any epistemic and behavioral effects that listening has on the listener. She admits as much when labeling “understanding” as relating to perauditory listening (p. 88).
In discussing what democratic performative listening requires (see chapter 5.2), Scudder argues that citizens must listen “seriously, attentively, and humbly” (p. 115). Do these standards of democratic performative listening explicate what “uptake” and “fair consideration” require as well? Does listening seriously, attentively, and humbly exhaust “uptake” and “fair consideration”? If yes, this would surely clarify the concepts of fair consideration and uptake—which is a good thing. Yet, in doing so, democratic performative listening would become indistinguishable from uptake and fair consideration, and these latter two concepts would be superfluous.
Scudder argues that “in listening we constitute the deliberative act” (pp. 16, 106, 108). Taken literally, this means performative listening is enough to make speech a “deliberation.” Thus, if I listen to another person’s view on the radio and fairly consider it, this makes our relationship “deliberative.” But then we lose any distinction between monologue and dialogue, and deliberation ceases to require any dynamic discursive exchange. Deliberation is completely reduced to the listening act.
The book’s unwavering commitment to listening raises additional questions. Scudder argues that we should listen to everybody, regardless of the views they hold, “given our commitment to deliberative democracy,” because “without listening we cannot achieve the deliberative ideal of fair consideration” (p. 100). A commitment to deliberative democracy, Scudder argues, is a commitment to universal listening—listening to everyone, always (p. 47).
Deliberative democrats support deliberative ideals because they strengthen democracy. But in listening to antidemocratic views, we legitimize them. If we value listening for supporting democracy, can’t we then (at the margin) sacrifice listening to save democracy? We could do so especially when already knowing what a person’s antidemocratic views are, so listening would no longer be a way of “identifying dangerous inputs in order to determine which one must be rejected” (p. 179). In some situations, it seems that we have a duty not to listen.
Furthermore, the ilauditory force of listening is context specific and not always positive. Legal hearings—listening—may constitute fairness only insofar as arrests and indictments are not skewed in favor of white people and against Black ones. If these background conditions are skewed, the hearing, the very act of listening, can no longer be said to be “listening toward fairness.” Similarly, even if citizens listen with the intention of considering others’ views (and thus, “toward democracy” per Scudder), this performative listening may be problematic. Take white people listening to Black people. In the context of a long history of racial injustice, structural inequality, and police violence against Black people, it is unclear that listening carefully is still constitutive of equal citizenship relationships, as Scudder would wish. It may be constitutive of unequal citizenship relationships instead. Whites listening to Blacks entails extra burdens for Blacks, who must explain (yet again!) the wrongness of those matters to white people, while whites merely listening and considering their views is yet another failure to do more (engage in protest, educate themselves, vote differently, etc.). Importantly, (still) listening is a reminder and signifier that white people have failed to act on what they have listened to many times before. “Democratic” listening may no longer be an apt response in these circumstances.
Scudder argues at length against empathy as either a replacement or a complement for deliberation. Even if empathetic imagination could be perfected so that we could accurately imagine everybody’s views and perspectives, Scudder argues that this would not be good news for deliberative democracy (pp. 66). Yet if the views we imagine are identical to the ones people actually hold, then uptake and fair consideration, and thus equal participation in the authorship of laws, would be secured nonetheless.
Scudder objects that this sort of uptake would nonetheless be nondeliberative. She reminds us that we are committed to deliberative democracy (p. 71). But why should we be committed to deliberative democracy, after all? Scudder’s theory of democratic performative listening cannot alone answer this question. Why does it also matter how the input is conveyed, not just that it is received and fairly considered? We have to insist that deliberation, as a dynamic discursive exchange, should be preferred to other alternative ways in which opinions and information could be equally accurately considered—whether empathetic imagination or something else. We have to insist that there are extra ethical and epistemic benefits when citizens are actively involved in the dynamic exchange and consideration of one another’s information and opinions. We have to assume deliberation is valuable beyond the fair consideration and uptake it provides and that may be otherwise achieved. Thus, although Beyond Empathy and Inclusion provides a solid starting point for understanding the full force of deliberative democracy through its in-depth focus on the importance of listening and uptake and the shortfalls of empathy and inclusion, we also need to progress beyond it.
