Refusing to Listen: Receptive Audiences and the Political Authority of Speech in Hobbes, Locke, and Mill

In the middle of the summer of 2020, a group of journalists, academics, and self-styled thought leaders signed the now-infamous free speech letter in Harper's Magazine. The letter proclaimed a new epidemic: “a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open date and toleration.” Such forces of “illiberalism” were constraining the “free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society.” To oppose this rising tide of so-called cancel culture, the signatories insisted that all ideas, including bad ideas, deserve “exposure, argument, and persuasion” rather than “trying to silence or wish them away.”1 More recently, a number of universities faced condemnation for tolerating displays of antisemitism. Contrary to the earlier claims of Harper’s that we need more free speech on campus, think pieces and media personalities condemned anti-genocide protests as the wrong kind of speech. Most people broadly accept that free speech is a democratic value and good for democracy. But those signatories of Harper’s letter in the summer of 2020 and the more recent outcry against antisemitism both suggest that campus activists are practicing the value of free speech incorrectly. What is it about the liberal democratic notion of speech that seeks, on the one hand, to encourage a proliferation of some speech while, on the other hand, to limit other speech? What discursive legacy gives the current pejorative heirs of “political correctness”—“cancel culture,” “woke,” and “DEI”—their political salience in maintaining the boundaries of democratic speech? In looking at the demographics for whom these phrases are most valuable, we can glean an anti-egalitarian tendency in their invocations. To “cancel” does not mean “to silence.” Neither recent anti-Trans legislation in the United States nor opposition to queer book displays in public libraries has meaningfully been perceived as attempts to “cancel.” Relatedly, anti-Zionist Jews engaged in opposing the foreign policy situation in Gaza are also not legibly targets of “being canceled” when city councils and boards of trustees institutionally pressure them into silence. Instead, “canceling” seems only to occur when speech derived from traditional hierarchies and sources of authority is challenged. Refusing to host anti-abortion Christians is to “silence” them (Bruce 2021). To refuse an audience to trans-exclusionary feminists is to reject “civilized debate.”2 It is rejecting both the free market of ideas and “standards of moral judgement” to not hear out “an argument” against “same-sex marriage or transgenderism” (Arkes 2018). Tradition is entitled to free speech; challengers are not. The liberal democratic imaginary of speech lends itself to the preservation of hierarchies even while it theoretically insists on the power of critique. Herein, I want to frame respect for traditional authority as constitutive of the liberal democratic imaginary of free speech. The authority owed to speech can be seen by the way certain thinkers in the liberal canon have theorized the role of the listening audience. In tracing the role of speech and listening through Hobbes and Locke, we glean that speech is the entitled prerogative of the sovereign or of citizens constituting the sovereign; listening is the obedience owed to such persons. Listening is a passive position that is not merely a choice but a necessary function without which the speaker cannot exist. Mill, perhaps the patriarch of free speech, pushes the burden of listening further: it is active listening that all speech, even bad speech, is entitled to. For all three thinkers, speech expressed from a position of power is owed a receptive audience. The refusal to listen is tantamount to a disregard for either the sovereign or society at large. In what follows, I contextualize the politics of free speech in the present moment. I juxtapose the progressive and rightwing rhetoric around free speech before clarifying the crux of the issue: that certain rightwing actors demand institutional respect and legitimization of inegalitarian speech, which requires the presence of an audience to hear it. Refusing to listen is thus an act of disrespect and delegitimization. Such a perception of delegitimization follows from the way Western political theory traditionally conceives of the listener: as passive or effete in contrast to the assertive and authoritative role of the speaker. Excavating the position of the listener in our political discourse is therefore key to understanding the free speech invocations. this I the speech and listening in Locke, and I these three thinkers of their in Western political theory as as for the in liberal I not mean to that or I through the of the that we to whom that we and what kind of political listening society I Hobbes and I not only a of claims but also a that the refusal to listen is a political in a speech about the value of free speech have the actors that free speech in the is of a “free of speech against progressive on speech; that about speech politics in contrast to liberal of and speech one of the a rightwing the free speech, it the to that want to be to their when the free speech, it is for the to and that politics are a of rightwing in the of to rightwing speech on campus as of campus for the rightwing The the rightwing value of free speech as from the and progressive campus opposition 2021). this rhetoric an liberal and progressive attitudes free speech have the progressive commitments free speech or as a on political on inegalitarian speech and in the moral to the public good in to limit speech, a more in the way the United States has free speech the and actors this rightwing that the rightwing to free speech are not to a market ideas but are to institutionally for the that that speech be and liberal speech in that rightwing about free cannot in that to be but to the are of the this a rather both progressive and rightwing actors to the rhetoric of free speech to either or their political that and of about speech more of on the other But this lends itself to a that a more democratic The against which both have to democratic and by and on inegalitarian speech and speech against actors free speech at this to it as a to their inegalitarian speech. in the of a democratic a moral a of is the of the against and other of and speech. 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