Listening, Fiumara laments, is neither dialectical nor assertive enough to keep it from obscurity, or to have any remunerative value (Fiumara 1990:9;31). Nancy, however, offers a lucrative discussion on a philosophy of listening. In Listening (2007), Nancy ponders philosophy’s ability to listen. He draws a fine distinction between the words, écoute and entente. Nancy questions the indecision of listening, “la mince indécison tranchante” “entre deux allures du meme,” calling
l’écoute and l’entente two kinds of attention that walk side by side, “The one
cannot...do without the other” (Nancy 2002:12-13) (Nancy 2007:2). The indecision that the philosopher confronts between l’écoute and l’entente is confounded by the simple translation of terms into English. L’entente, meaning “understanding,” comes from entendre, meaning both “to hear” and “to
understand” (Nancy 2007:1;69). Thus, l’entente has a double meaning. L’écoute and l’entente may both be translated to the English, listening.
Thinking of listening in this way, it is more than just hearing, and the question, ‘How to avoid listening’? could mean: Comment ne pas écouter? Or, Comment
ne pas entendre? This thesis begins with Nancy’s indecision between l’écoute
and l’entente. It focuses primarily on the multiple meanings of listening. 1.2.2 Tension and Attention
L’entente refers to ‘agreement’ or ‘a friendly understanding’. Entendre, ‘to hear
or to understand’, relates to hearing and intelligibility. This is the understanding of speech. Etymologically, entendre and entente share the Latin root, ten, ‘to stretch, stretch out, distend, extend’ (Lewis, et al., 1951;1852). Intendre is Latin for ‘tend toward’ (Nancy 2007:69). Entendre is related to attendere ‘to pay attention’, from attendo. Literally, attendo or ‘to stretch to’, is usually, ‘to direct the attention towards’ or ‘attend to’. Attendo derives from the preposition, ad and the verb, tendo (Simpson 1977:64). Ad is ‘to’. Ad expresses ‘primarily direction
towards’, or ‘to a point’ (Simpson 1977:10). Tendo, ‘to stretch, stretch out,
extend, spread’, also gives basis to the words, intendere, ‘tend toward’, ostendo, ‘to hold out, expose to view, display, show’, portendo ‘to indicate, predict, reveal’ ostento, ‘to hold out, show, display, expose to view’, ‘to exhibit, demonstrate’ (Simpson 1977:318;417;418;458;473;598) (de Vaan, 2008).12
12 de Vaan, Michiel Arnoud Cor, 2008. Etymological dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages, Leiden & Boston: Brill.
The root meaning ‘to stretch’ implies a potential to expand and to create space for something else. If there is a thread running through these definitions of Latin verbs derived from or containing –tendo, it has to do with either showing and exposing something or stretching toward something that is revealed or shown. A similar thread runs through Nancy’s work in the idea of exposure or opening of thought to the world (James 2006:9). In the moment of exposure, thought opens onto and responds to an exteriority or outside, which is at the outer limits of thought itself (James/ffrench 2005:3-4). Nancy’s idea of listening is stretching toward sonority and an inclination toward the opening of meaning (Nancy 2007:12;27). This tendency does not stop at the showing and exposing implied by the root of entendre and entente. Nancy considers what gives l’écoute distinction is a movement toward openness that he discusses as resonance. I will explain resonance more fully in Chapters Three and Four. The movement of resonance is inclined to expand and expose in a different way than l’entente’s way of showing something.
Nancy has a keen ear to perceive the difference as well as the similarity in the multiple meanings of listening. He explains listening as the indecision between a tension and an adequacy [entre une tension et une adéquation], where
adéquation means ‘perfect adaptation’ (Nancy 2002:12-13). This could imply
that entendre means to adapt to the circumstances in order to grasp some meaning. For Nancy, écouter is to stretch in the direction of possible, conceivable meaning. It would be puzzling if Nancy were to assign the meaning of the root –tendo, ‘to stretch’ to l’écoute, rather than to l’entente. However, Nancy expands on the role of tension in this stretching aspect of listening, “In
ear” (Nancy 2006:69). L’écoute moves toward tension and delivers the tension to
l’entente. The tension, however, does not arise from a difference between l’entente and l’écoute.
L’entente and l’écoute do not form a hierarchy, nor are they at war with each
other. I argue l’écoute puts attention to the other into l’entente. Could all saying, discourse and meaning be l’entente? I believe the distinction between the resonant meaning perceived in l’écoute and the saying understood in l’entente does not institute as clear a hierarchy as being the sensible and the intelligible types of listening.
1.2.2 S’Entendre-Parler
The differentiation in French of two words for listening not only brings out the complexity of listening, but also implies listening’s undervalued position in Derrida’s critique of logocentric thinking. Derrida focuses instead on l’entente as the listening that speech requires. In Of Grammatology (Derrida 1997), for instance, Derrida does not mention l’écoute. Throughout the text, he uses
s’entendre-parler or “hearing oneself speak” and “hearing (understanding)-
oneself-speak” (Derrida 1997:7-8). This is also the case in Speech and Phenomena (Derrida 1973). In the chapter, “La Voix Qui Garde Le Silence” in
La Voix et Le Phénomène (Derrida 1976:78-97), Derrida uses s’entendre, entendus, je m’entende dans le temps, s’entendre-parler (Derrida 1976:83-89).13
13 Parler à quelqu’un, c’est sans doute s’entendre parler, être entendu de soi, mais aussi et du même coup, si l’on est entendu de l’autre, faire que celui-ci répète immédiatement en soi le s’entendre-parler dans la forme même où je l’ai produit (Derrida 1976:89).
He uses l’entente or entendre, and not l’écoute or écouter. This is because
l’entente, as hearing and understanding, is necessary in order for speech to be
heard and understood. As I will discuss in this thesis, Nancy contends l’écoute is needed in order to stretch toward possible meaning.
Nancy’s Listening (2007) brings to light Derrida’s concentration on entendre and de-emphasis of écouter in his discussions of logocentrism and metaphysics of presence. For instance, Derrida states in De La Grammatologie, “Parler à
quelqu’un, c’est sans doute s’entendre parler, être entendu de soi” (Derrida
1976:89). In Of Grammatology, Speech and Phenomena and Writing and Difference, Derrida uses the phrase, s’entendre-parler or ‘hearing (understanding)-oneself-speak’, rather than écouter, ‘to listen’ or s’écouter, ‘to listen to oneself’. His use of s’entendre-parler presupposes a primacy of
entendre. In privileging l’entente over l’écoute, does Derrida give higher status
to the spoken word, which he claims is the perpetrator in phono-logocentrism? I diagnose an oppositional hierarchy in which listening is an absence to speaking’s presence. An investigation into l’écoute and l’entente illustrates how the premise of listening is essential to speech. Listening is in fact, not the absence of speech. It re-sounds.
I will return to this notion of the re-sounding of listening in an exploration of Nancy’s theory of resonance. In the next section, I will focus on Chaplin’s Tramp figure, which will introduce a major thread that will run throughout this thesis: Chaplin’s unique refusal to bring his speechless Tramp character into
sound cinema. This discussion will deal with Chaplin’s conundrum, asking why Chaplin refused to make the Tramp speak.