The human voice does not deceive. The one who is speaking is inevitably revealed by the singular sound of her voice, no matter what she says. We take this fact for granted - for example, every time someone asks, over the telephone, Who is speaking? and receives as a reply the familiar ulterance, It's me. Starting from the given uniqueness of every voice, Cavarero rereads the history of philosophy through its peculiar evasion of this embodied uniqueness. She shows how this history - along with the fields it comprehends, such as linguistics, musicology, political theory, and studies in orality - might be grasped as the devocalization of Logos, as the invariable privileging of semanlike over phone, mind over body. Female figures - from the Sirens to the Muses, from Echo to opera singers - provide a crucial counterhistory, one in which the embodied voice triumphs over the immaterial semantic. Reconstructing this counterhistory, Cavarero proposes a politics of the voice wherein the ancient bond between Logos and politics is reconfigured, and wherein what matters is not the communicative content of a given discourse, but rather who is speaking.
By:
Adriana Cavarero
Translated by:
Paul A. Kottman
Imprint: Stanford University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 16mm
Weight: 395g
ISBN: 9780804749558
ISBN 10: 0804749558
Pages: 296
Publication Date: 18 January 2005
Audience:
General/trade
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
,
ELT Advanced
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Table of Contents Translator's Introduction...Paul A. Kottman Introduction 1. The Voice According to Calvino Introduction 2. Preliminary Outline of the Theme of the Voice; or, Philosophy Closes its Ears PART I -- How Logos Lost its Voice 1. The Voice of Jacob 2. 'Saying,' Instead of the 'Said' 3. The De-vocalization of logos 4. The Voice of the Soul 5. The Strange Case of the Anti-Metaphysician Ireneo Funes 6. The Voice of Language 7. When Thinking Was Done With the Lungs... 8. Some Irresistible (and Somewhat Dangerous) Flute-Playing 9. The Rhapsodic Voice; or, Ion's Specialty PART II. Women Who Sing 1. 'Sing to Me, O Muse' 2. The Fate of the Sirens 3. Melodramatic Voices 4. The Maternal chora; or, The Voice of the Poetic Text 5. Truth Sings In Key 6. The Hurricane does not Roar in Pentameter 7. The Harmony of the Spheres; or, The Political Control of mousike PART III: A POLITICS OF VOICES 1. Echo; or, On Resonance 2. A Vocal Ontology of Uniqueness 3. Logos and Politics 4. The Reciprocal Communication of Voices Appendix: Dedicated to Derrida Notes Index
Adriana Cavarero is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Verona, Italy, and Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and New York University. Italy's most renowned feminist philosopher, she is the author of numerous essays and books, including (in English) In Spite of Plato (1995), Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood (2000), and Stately Bodies (2002).
Reviews for For More than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression
Cavarero is lyrical, commanding, sweeping. -- Theory & Event
