An Auditory Anthropology of Birds’ Postures of Listening

Auditory anthropology examines sound production and sound perception under combined ontological and epistemological premises. This article presents ideas and examples concerning postures of listening and sound communication between humans and birds. These discussions are grounded in two of the four ontological types proposed by the French anthropologist Philippe Descola. A distinction is drawn between the ontology of moderns (referred to as naturalists by Descola) and the ontology of animism, which is prevalent among indigenous peoples. In the former, birds are typically categorized as “non-human animals,” while the latter consistently regards the interiority of birds as in the broadest sense “proto-human”—exemplified by insights from the indigenous Pemón community (Venezuela/Brazil). A bird’s definition as either a “non-human animal” or a “proto-human” points to different perceptions and epistemologies regarding human-bird-sound relations in ontological comparison. I examine these differences using the concept of listening postures, as proposed by Stoichiţă and Brabec. Their categorization of enchanted listening, which views sound phenomena as independent sonic beings capable of evoking otherwise non-sonic effects and affects (e.g., tension and release), serves as the foundation for a concept I call radical enchanted listening. I develop this concept by comparing different phenomena in the animistic understanding of the indigenous Pemón with phenomena observed by modern bioacousticians, such as attacks of mountain bluebirds on sound traps, which are difficult to explain from a naturalistic point of view. Additionally, I compare phenomena of mimesis to elucidate the relationships between (radical) enchanted listening and specific qualities of mimesis. These mimetic qualities transcend ontologies and can only be fully comprehended through an examination of their differences in relation to one another. previous article back to index next article