Abstract
Adriana Cavarero is an Italian feminist philosopher who has spent her career developing a philosophy of uniqueness rooted in the irreproducibility, agency, and possibilities of our enfleshed, relational, and ontological bodies. A significant aspect of her philosophy of uniqueness is a reappraisal of philosophy’s historical attitude toward the human voice. Cavarero proposes a new political landscape that deprioritizes a videocentric, text-driven world in favor of an aural and vocal topography, where our uniqueness is revealed through our voice’s materiality and sonorous beauty. Her approach to voice disrupts the semantic power of speech with the pleasurable power of voice. Fundamentally, Cavarero uses opera to ground her vocalic assumptions and elaborate upon her vocalic theory. More specifically, Cavarero uses opera to support two of her central presuppositions: the voice is unique, and the voice is gendered. She also uses opera to tease out three major tenants of her philosophy of vocality: that the voice obliterates the semantic power of words, that the ears are a neglected sensory organ, and that pleasure is to be found in the voice. This paper explores Cavarero’s vocality in the context of the “pure voice” practices of late-17th century, Venetian opera, particularly through the performances of Barbara Strozzi. Through this exploration we encounter the emergence of a new singing voice, one that escapes its authoritarian libretto in favor of a more expansive sonorous landscape.
Presenters
Joy HarrisAdjunct, McGovern College of the Arts, University of Houston, Texas, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Communications and Linguistic Studies
KEYWORDS
Ontology, Performance, Philosophy, Musicology, Opera, Voice
