The Gaze of the Voice

Abstract

The present project begins in the middle of an always already becoming phenomenon: voice. In brief, I endeavour to explicate, expound, and articulate the phenomenon of “voice” without reducing the voice to any aspect of its embodied or theoretical forms, i.e., without a reduction to a simplistic account of the “material” phenomenon nor a divorce of the voice from its aesthetic-cum-theoretical registers. This means the project is situated across theorizations, not to reconcile them, but to uncover the voice in the constitution of subjectivity without reifying its uniqueness or, in other words, without devocalizing the voice we are attempting to index in a register of its constitution of subjectivity, as well as the theorization of that constitution and subsequent tracing of the refrain it articulates even as it departs from it. This project is informed by a comparative methodology where a recorded vocal piece in my own voice, which I accompany with written attempts to describe and think that very phenomenon of my own vocality; set in (unreconciled) dialogue with my own ancient texts of myth, modern story-telling, primary theoretical texts and my interpretation of them. The multivocality of comparative sources situates the present form as performative of its content; there are multiple voices without anyone voice reconciled as a master narrative.