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Giving the Microphone to the Other

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2020

Naomi Waltham-Smith Open the ORCID record for Naomi Waltham-Smith [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

This response to Pooja Rangan’s bold provocation in Immediations reflects, from a Derridean standpoint, on the impossible responsibility of speaking for the other. In particular, it examines the role played by the microphone as technological prosthesis for the voice in activist practices of audio documentary, analyzing the actions of performance artist Sharon Hayes and sound art collective Ultra-red.

Keywords

responsibilityvoicelisteningDerridaUltra-redSharon Hayes
Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry , Volume 7 , Issue 2: Black Panther Special Issue , April 2020 , pp. 216 - 224
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press, 2020

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References

1 Derrida, Jacques, Without Alibi, ed. and trans. Kamuf, Peggy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), xvGoogle Scholar.

2 Nancy, Jean-Luc, “The Free Voice of Man,” in Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe and Nancy, Jean-Luc, Retreating the Political, ed. Sparks, Simon (New York: Routledge, 1997), 49Google Scholar.

3 Derrida, Jacques and Nancy, Jean-Luc, “Responsibility—Of the Sense to Come,” in For Strasbourg: Conversations of Friendship and Philosophy, ed. and trans. Brault, Pascale-Anne and Naas, Michael (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 63Google Scholar.

4 Dubreuil, Laurent, Empire of Language: Toward a Critique of (Post)colonial Expression, trans. Fieni, David (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013), 109–10Google Scholar. On Derrida and the colonial character of linguistic exappropriation, also see Chow, Rey, “Reading Derrida on Being Monolingual,” New Literary History 39 (2008): 217–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Dubreuil, , “Notes Towards a Poetics of Banlieue,” parallax 18.3 (1998): 102Google Scholar.

6 Derrida, Jacques, Geschlecht III, eds. Bennington, Geoffrey, Chenoweth, Katie, and Therezo, Rodrigo (Paris: Seuil, 2018), 99Google Scholar.

7 Derrida, Jacques, Dissemination, trans. Johnson, Barbara (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 25, 104Google Scholar.

8 Cited in Hayes, Sharon, “An Ear for an Eye and Vice Versa,” in Catalogue for Katya Sander: The Most Complicated Machines Are Made of Words (Vienna: Revolver, 2006), 77Google Scholar. On both Parole and Richerche, see also Bryan-Wilson, Julia, “Sharon Hayes Sounds Off,” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context, and Enquiry 38 (2015): 16–27Google Scholar.

9 Bryan-Wilson, “Sharon Hayes Sounds Off,” 79–80.

10 On the generalization of fetishism, see also Szendy, Peter, “All the Marxes at the Big Store; or, General Fetishism,” boundary 2 42.1 (2016): 215–16n7Google Scholar.

11 Hayes, Sharon, “Again, in Another Time and Space: A Conversation on Restaging, Reconstruction, and Reenactment,” with Lent, Patricia and Schechner, Richard, moderated by Jackson, Shannon. FringeArts, Philadelphia, October 5, 2013Google Scholar.

12 Ultra-red, “Constitutive Utopias: Sound, Public Space and Urban Ambience,” 2000.

13 Ultra-red, 10 Preliminary Theses on Militant Sound Investigation (New York: Printed Matter, Inc., 2008)Google Scholar.

14 Responding to Nancy’s substitution of “order” for “question,” Derrida ventures: “Why wouldn’t I write like I had in 1964? Basically it is the word question which I would have changed there. I would displace the accent of the question towards something which would be a call. Rather than it being necessary to maintain a question, it is necessary to have understood a call (or an order, desire or demand)” (Nancy, “The Free Voice of Man,” 49).

15 Ultra-red, 10 Preliminary Theses on Militant Sound Investigation.

16 Ultra-red, 10 Preliminary Theses on Militant Sound Investigation.

17 Ultra-red, 10 Preliminary Theses on Militant Sound Investigation.