Sounding Bodies

Identity, Injustice, and the Voice

Ann Cahill, Christine Hamel

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350169609
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

"In compelling and intricately argued ways, the authors make a resounding case for understanding how vocal sonority is intrinsic to self-identity and self-reception … Required Reading." - Jane Boston, Principal Lecturer, Voice Studies, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama A new, provocative study of the ethical, political, and social meanings of the everyday voice.
Utilising the framework of feminist philosophy, authors Ann J. Cahill and Christine Hamel approach the phenomenon of voice as a lived, sonorous and embodied experience marked by the social structures that surround it, including systemic forms of injustice such as ableism, sexism, racism, and classism. By developing novel theoretical constructs such as "intervocality" and "respiratory responsibility, " Cahill and Hamel cut through the static between theory and praxis and put forward exciting theories on how human vocal sound can perpetuate -- and challenge -- persistent inequalities. Sounding Bodies presents a powerful model of how the seemingly disparate disciplines of philosophy and voice/speech training can, in conversation with each other, generate illuminating insights about our vocal lives and identities.

1 Voice

In this chapter, we develop a conceptualization of voice as human-generated sound that is irreducibly bodily and political, and thus replete with ethical relevance. Voice is marked, sonorously and politically, by the fact that it emanates from a human body, a material entity comprising multiple surfaces, cavities, textures, and physical structures of different densities, shapes, and locations. Moreover, that body is persistently situated within a specific political and social context. As we detail our understanding of the embodied, political, relational voice, we demonstrate how our analysis diverges from those offered by previous philosophers of the voice.

Thinking along the lines developed by contemporary feminist theories of the body (e.g., Alcoff 2006, Bordo 1993, Braidotti 1994, Butler [1993] 2011, Collins 2004, Lugones 1987, Ortega 2016, Weiss 1999, Wendell 1996, and Young 2005; for a detailed exploration of our reliance on this field, see Cahill and Hamel 2019) grounds our analysis in specific philosophical commitments. First, we hold that bodily practices, habits, modalities, and so on, are existentially and ontologically significant as vital and inescapable mechanisms of self-construction (and destabilization) and as necessary elements of human sociality. Ontologies of the human that fail to address the ineluctable nature of embodiment and materiality with regard to human existence, or portray embodiment as regrettable, irrelevant, or even threatening to authentic humanness are profoundly misguided and deeply implicated in systems of oppression (see Cahill 2001: 50–108).

Second, we understand human embodiment as necessarily enmeshed in and deeply marked by overlapping systems of power, signification, and relations. The physiological channels, surfaces, fibers, and the like that are involved in vocalization develop in specific historical, political, and social locations. What food voiced bodies had access to, how it was prepared, and by whom; the shape of the architectures they inhabit, and their coinhabitants; the available clothing and adornment, and the means of their production; technologies of health and well-being: all produce specific bodily shapes and capacities. More to the point, no human body unmarked by such specificity can exist.

Third, we reject dominant Western models of subjectivity privileging autonomy and self-containment, emphasizing instead the intersubjectivity of human embodiment and existence. Human bodies come into existence only within the context of complex social relations; to be human is to be-with other (human and other-than-human) beings. Human beings are thus ontologically relational. In addition, individual human beings are existentially relational, in that the particular traits, characteristics, capacities, and so on contributing to their sense of self are developed only and always in relation to human beings, other-than-human beings, built and organic environments, and so on. Even the identities possible and available under specific social and historical conditions (whether one thinks of and experiences oneself as, say, cisgender, or disabled, or a parent, or Irish-American) are inevitably shaped by social relations.

Taken together, these commitments frame our understanding of human existence as simultaneously, and irreducibly, material, political, and relational. When it comes to the phenomenon of voice as human-generated sound, its embodied quality establishes its social and political meaningfulness; that it is a persistent, although by no means universal or exclusive, medium of human interaction underscores its ethical relevance. Yet its materiality, its intersubjective quality (what we are terming intervocality), and its relation to identity all remain undertheorized.

The Materiality of the Voice

For the purposes of grounding the voice in bodily materiality, we begin by articulating a (simplified) Western anatomical and physiological overview of the event of voicing.¹ Voicing engages complex physiological systems, which include all systems of the body, most prominently the musculoskeletal system, the psychoneurological system, and the respiratory system (Sataloff 2017: 1003). These governing systems bring a great number of organs, tissues, and structures into intricate interactions, including the coordination and synchronous timing of more than a hundred muscles. Bones, muscles, mucous secretions, glands, cartilage, fibrous tissues, ligaments, dense collagen, fat, membranes, elastic fibers, nerves, cavities, blood vessels, and airway structures root the formation and functioning of the human voice. On a structural level, the skeleton (and the interweaving, connective tissues of cartilage, tendons, muscles, and fascia) provides the architecture for all of the body’s major functions; its givens (genetic determinations, form, size, density) as well as its lived experience play fundamental roles in voice production. On the level of organs, the larynx (or “voice box”) tends, as the primary organ of sound formation (phonation), to receive the most attention, and it is itself composed of material forms such as skeleton, mucosa, and intrinsic and extrinsic muscles (Sataloff 2017: 157). Interactions of anatomy throughout the entire body are vital in the formation of the voice which is, at its most basic level, the physical conversion of “slow-moving breath (gas) into rapid sound wave motion” (Boston 2018: 9).

This gas-to-sound conversion event is a highly complex one, during which many bodily processes seem to be functioning simultaneously, but are in fact sequenced and timed in an identifiable order of anatomical and neuromuscular events. An impulse to make sound in the brain’s cerebral cortex serves as a command to the motor cortex, which then imparts instruction to motor nuclei in the brainstem and spinal cord, which then communicate via neural pathways to breath, sound, and speech structures at varying bodily locations (Sataloff 2017: 186). These instructions initiate a coordinated deployment of actions in the larynx, chest, abdomen, and vocal tract articulators and resonators (920), which cause the respiratory musculature to contract and the vocal tract to open, so that breath may enter and leave the body (Linklater 2006: 13). The power source for sound (the unified coordination of diaphragm, lungs, abdominal and back muscles) compresses air and pushes it toward the larynx (Sataloff 2017: 186), and when the right amount of air has been inspired (a vacuum effect has drawn air into the lungs’ alveoli), the respiratory system reverses, and by a “combination of elastic recoil and distended tissue and by abdominal and thoracic muscle contraction” (Linklater 2006: 13–14), air is forced out of the alveoli to create a sound-producing stream. Air pressure from the alveoli is responsible for the creation of the subglottal pressure necessary for phonation.

The event of respiration (breathing) itself, independent of but coincidental with sound production, is also the event of a dynamic exchange of gases in the body. During the event of voicing, oxygen passes through air sacs into the bloodstream, resulting in newly oxygenated blood reaching every cell in the body, whilst carbon dioxide passes from the bloodstream into the lungs and is released from the body as breath and sound. The formation of sound requires that the expiring air be somewhat impeded at the level of the oscillator, or larynx. The vocal folds come together, eliminating the glottis (space between the folds) and stopping airflow (Linklater 2006: 378). At this point, the building air pressure below the folds then pushes them apart: the vocal folds’ mucosal cover opens and closes, allowing small bursts of air to escape between them, separating and colliding “like buzzing lips” (Sataloff 2017: 186). As the folds are progressively pushed apart by this subglottal pressure, the Bernoulli force (the physical principle by which, for instance, shower curtains are drawn inward by the flowing stream of water) (Sataloff 2017: 264) continues to draw the folds together. The frequency at which they open and close determines the fundamental frequency of pitch, or the highness or lowness of sound.

Lastly, these puffs of air and initial vibrating sound flow into the vocal tract, the cavities of pharyngeal (throat), oral (mouth), and nasal (nose) passages, giving the vibrations space and bony surfaces through and off of which to resonate or “re-sound.” The particular structures and shapes of these cavities determine the “overtones” in the harmonics of the sound released, creating the timbre (or distinct qualities) of the voice (Linklater 2006: 14). And if the intention in the sounding body is speech, the movements in the oral cavity of the various parts of the tongue and lips interacting with soft palate, hard palate, gum ridges, teeth, and uvula comprise another variety of resonance: not one that determines color or tone of voice, but one that articulates sound into phonemes, the distinct units of speech that are the acoustic building blocks for language (14). The materiality of voice as human-generated sound includes the functionings of the material human body but is not limited to it, as the materiality of the environment surrounding the voiced human being is also sonorously relevant. The acoustics of the architecture of the spatial environment is vital to the amplification and production of human sound, as are varying levels of humidity, particulate matter, air temperature, quality and porousness of adjacent surfaces, and the positioning of the listener or listening device.

It is crucial to recognize that all of the physiological dynamics that we have described so far—and the accompanying physiological dynamics that are involved in the act of receiving sound—do not occur in isolation from other sensory input, but in conjunction with them. Vocal sound may be experienced acoustically and spatially, both through the sense of hearing and as vibrations of soundwaves conducted through matter. In this way the sense of touch on the skin works in concert with vibrations conducted by the bones in the skull: sound is “felt” and “heard” simultaneously in a multisensory integration that aids in gathering consistent environmental information (Ro et al. 2013). Sound is also experienced in concert with visuality which connects sounds to the bodies that produce it and the material and “narrative” contexts in which it is taking place. Information that accrues about “what is happening” shapes the readiness to perceive and process sound meaningfully. For instance, the sound of a sudden scream when watching someone sneak up on another person in order to frighten them will hit one’s body differently than it would have without that visual preparation. Oral posture, gestural movements, facial expressions, and bodily comportment of a speaker are expressive cues that inform the parsing and processing of voice from that body in ways that are highly significant to and coincidental with the experience of hearing it. The information (and bias) attached to visible identities is therefore a key component in shaping how the listener processes the vocal form and content (including accent and language) connected with those sounding bodies.

In emphasizing the materiality of voice, we are seeking to challenge the associations of voice with an insubstantial ephemerality perceived as less existentially and politically hefty than visible or tactile aspects of embodiment. We are struck, for example, by the inaptness of referring to recorded or transmitted human voices as “disembodied,” a description that implies that only the visible or tactile body counts as such. Although we cannot touch the bodies we see represented in film, we do not describe them as “disembodied”; the visible body, even when not touchable, registers as present, whereas the body as sounded but not seen is portrayed as bereft of embodiment, associating it with the uncanny, the alienated, the eerie. To the contrary, we argue, voice always necessarily sounds a body. Like Roland Barthes, we hold that the grain of the voice, its sonorous texture accompanying but distinct from the conveyed linguistic meaning, is necessarily grounded in particular bodies and brimming with meaning:

Listen to a Russian bass … something which is directly the cantor’s body, brought to your ears in one and the same movement from deep down in the cavities, the muscles, the membranes, the cartilages, and from deep down in the Slavonic language, as though a single skin lined the inner flesh of the performer and the music he sings. The voice is not personal: it expresses nothing of the cantor, of his soul; it is not original (all Russian cantors have roughly the same voice), and at the same time it is individual: it has us hear a body which has no civil identity, no “personality,” but which is nevertheless a separate body. Above all, the voice bears along directly the symbolic, over the intelligible, the expressive: here, thrown in front of us like a packet, is the Father, his phallic stature. The “grain” is that: the materiality of the body speaking its mother tongue; perhaps the letter, almost certainly signifiance. (1977: 181–2, emphasis in original)

Our analysis parts ways with Barthes’s in some significant ways (we disagree that the embodied voice has no civil or social identity and will question the opposition between sound and social order), but share his focus on the bodily nature of voice, its reliance on and deployment of cartilage and cavities, the flesh of the surface and the interior.

Don Ihde’s (2007) phenomenological analysis highlights the hefty materiality of voice. Ihde points out that beyond its capacity to fill space and interact with built infrastructure, sound also has the ability to reveal the shapes of the objects making the sounds: “At the experiential level where sounds are heard as the sounds of things it is ordinarily possible to distinguish certain shape-aspects of those things … At first such an observation seems outrageous: we hear shapes” (61, emphasis in original). While Ihde points out that not every sound provides a shape-aspect, we hold that the human voice does sound the shape of the vocalizing body; not, we hasten to add, in a way that reveals specific bodily dimensions, but rather, in a way that consistently sounds general facts of human embodiment (e.g., that breath circulates through lungs floating in a chest cavity, or that the orifices through which voice is released are located at the top of the human form).

Ihde also describes sound (in contrast to visual phenomena) as simultaneously “omnidirectional” (75), and thus immersive and even “penetrating” (76), and directional to the extent that it instantiates varying degrees of intensity or presence (77). Ihde terms this the “bidimensionality” of the auditory field: it simultaneously surrounds the hearing person while being textured in varying degrees of intensity. Moreover, this bidimensionality of the auditory field identifies important elements in human vocal interactions:

Both these qualities of sound are used simultaneously in what is a most normal human activity, face-to-face speech. The other speaks to me in the “singing” of the human voice with its consonantal clicklike sounds and its vowel tonalities. It is a singing that is both directional and encompassing, such that I may be (auditorily and attentionally) immersed in the other’s presence. Yet the other stands before me. Speech in the human voice is between the dramatic surroundability of music and the precise directionality of the sounds of the things in the environment. (78, emphasis in original)

Distinguishing face-to-face speaking from the overwhelming, all-encompassing phenomenon of auditory engulfment produced by music, Ihde highlights the persistence of the other’s presence; th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Dedication Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Introduction
• 1 Voice
• 2 Vocal Injustice
• 3 The Ethics of Envoicing
• 4 The Gendered Voice
• 5 Envoicing in Sex, Maternity, and Childbirth
• 6 Ethical Spotlight: Envoicing in Voice Pedagogy
• 7 Ethical Spotlight: Envoicing in/and Philosophy
• Conclusion: Shifting Vocal Soundscapes in the Age of Trump and Covid-19
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Copyright Page