Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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 utterance, "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 semantike 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.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Italian feminist Cavarero (political philosophy, Univ. of Verona) is regularly a visiting professor at New York University. Her best-known works in English are In Spite of Plato (1995), Stately Bodies (2002), and Relating Narratives (CH, Feb'01, 38-3158). This new book defends the thesis that voice expresses uniqueness and relations in saying rather than in what is said. Voice is visceral, rising rhythmically out of the chest, throat, tongue, and mouth as breath; it precedes thought and signification. The presemantic communication between mother and child and the seductive timbre of the female voice in song reflect voice over male expressions of signification and idea. Cavarero's arguments are developed through analyses of the works of ancient philosophers, especially Plato, and numerous modern philosophical and literary writers. The breadth of her coverage is substantial and includes some excellent commentary on the literature. Many of her arguments are etymological. Claims about voice are made with little phenomenological analysis. Cavarero's understanding of signification does not reflect acquaintance with the later Wittgenstein. Although this book is not for novices, it has stimulating insights for scholars versed in the issues. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Graduate students and researchers/faculty. J. H. Ware emeritus, Austin College

Author notes provided by Syndetics

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).