The “human mic,” as a form of expression, communication, and amplification, has the effect of undermining leadership. It interrupts charisma. It’s like live translation: the speaker can only utter five to eight words before having to shut up while the assembled masses repeat them. The effect is to defuse oratory momentum, or to render it numbingly repetitive. The human mic also forces the assembled masses to utter words and arguments they may not agree with—which also has the effect of slowing down political momentum and undermining the consolidation of leadership. (Bernard Harcourt in Occupy: Three Inquiries in Disobedience)
This is an interesting idea, and I wonder if its true. It's surely true that the human mic undermines the kind of longwinded grandstanding that passes for "rhetoric" at a lot of political events; although I don't think anyone actually listens to this kind of speech, the existence of certain designated speakers in this mode is a way of reinforcing leadership hierarchies, precisely through being numbingly repetitive. So to the extent that the human mic stops that, that's great, but I'm less sure it undermines rhetoric as such. Elsewhere in the same book, Michael Taussig says "with mic check, the rhetorical style alters towards the fundamental, the pithy, and the word jab," which suggests instead an alternative rhetorical style. Is this alternative "better," in the sense of being more accessible or egalitarian?
