ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the research on listening, interspersing it with a Deleuzian critique. In a mode of immanence, listening makes perceptible what is as yet imperceptible. From a Deleuzian perspective, such listening oscillates between the real and the possible, and the actual and the virtual. These ontological couplings capture the complexity of listening. The notion of listening as an experimental mode opens up the plane of immanence. As immanence, listening resembles nothing outside itself. From a Deleuzian perspective, immanent listening 'demands "only" movement that can be carried to infinity'. Stead asks whether Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the desiring-machine would offer a more productive theoretical model for listening practices in the academy. The author has critiqued some of the listening models that are widely used in music institutions. In effect, she has shown that these are bound up with politics.
