Sound judgments: An aural critique of Jean Baudrillard

The following research examines how sound technologies erode the material "sound referent" and foster a new socio-historic subject known as "the prosumer." Using Bourdieu and Baudrillard's respective frameworks, I illustrate how prosumers' "tone quests" hinder their ability to define or perceive reality ("real sound"). For Bourdieu, only a uniquely sociological perspective can illuminate reality by "mapping" the underlying relations and structures that frame actors' practices and perceptions. Yet Baudrillard challenges this privileged sociological perspective and argues that, like the prosumer, sociologists merely simulate reality through their practices. Dismissing Bourdieu's concepts as a priori constructions, Baudrillard seeks a different "social cartography" in which "the map does not precede the real." Accordingly, I argue that Bourdieu's framework fails to truly understand prosumers' practices since it simulates socio-cultural reproduction according to anachronistic terms and distinctions.;Although Baudrillard offers an intriguing critique of Bourdieu, his radical anti-empirical stance a priori rejects all data as merely a simulation. Since anything people say ("data") only fosters simulation, Baudrillard simply turns a "deaf ear" to the social world. Thus ironically, Baudrillard's own theory produces an all-encompassing simulation of reality since data (other voices) cannot possibly refute its perspective. This problem stems from retaining a Cartesian standard of "Truth" yet developing a (visual) perspective of absolute uncertainty: since no perspective can achieve or "envision" this standard of truth, empirical research becomes irrelevant. Conversely, I argue that sound's omnidirectional and reverberating nature repudiates such an absolutist perspective and develops a less rigid conception of "Truth." Yet unlike other "aural epistemologies" that erroneously equate sound with speech, this conception of truth rejects relativism since sound's ontological status cannot be reduced to a never ending play of arbitrary signs: a sound sociological theory must address this "objective" (nonrelativist) reality. Subsequently, my study of the "aural realm" modifies Bourdieu's problematic conception of social reproduction/change, overcomes his potentially simulationist vision of society, yet retains his "objective" view of reality. In sum, I conclude that a reflexive and interpretive ear balances Bourdieu's "objective vision" of social reality by methodologically replacing a strictly rational Cartesian subject/perspective with a communicative dialog between subjects.