User:Angeliki/Grad-thesis-essays

Introduction

  The thesis is a series of 6 essays which relate to the voice and its mediation. The texts deals particularly with the voice as a medium for collective practices (see The roots of collective voice). Historically, some voices and modes of addressing have been marginalized and shut out of the public domain (see the monstrosity of female voice); collective voice affords the amplification and multiplication either with the aid of technology or embodied practices (see Multiplication vis a vis amplification); there is a fear of ugly forms of address which are connected to the female body _ blood, birth, death, mourning &c. These are forms of vocalization which are excluded public discourse which centers on “self-control”, “reason”. Such things are creating noise and disorder and "have to be kept" silent according to the patriarchal norms (see transmitting ugly things). There are technologies for such things, the men are taught to disport themselves in particular ways and they are taught to teach the women to be silent. In the current era we see how technologies serve to filter forms of collective voices; again this aims to reduce “noise” (see oxymoron of democracy). Practices of resistance (see Let’s talk about unspeakable things)

2. The Monstrosity of the Female Voice

Notes: Become meshy, monstrous The annoying noise

Words for how this female sound sounds like/judgments from ancient mythologies to today's assumptions (from Carson's text): high-pitched, loud shouting, having too much smile in it, decapitated hen, heartchilling groan, garg, horrendous, howling dogs, being tortured in hell, deadly, incredible babbling, fearsome hullabaloo, she shrieks obscenities, haunting garrulity, monstrous, prodigious noise level, otherwordly echo, making such a racket, a loud roaring noise, disorderly and uncontrolled outflow of sound, shrieking, wailing, sobbing, shrill lament, loud laughter, screams of pain or of pleasure, eruptions of raw emotion, groan, barbarous excesses, female outpourings, bad sound, craziness, non-rational, weeping, emotional display, oral disorder, disturbing, abnormal, "hysteria", "Not public property", exposing her inside facts, private data, permits direct continuity between inside and outside, female ejaculation, "saying ugly things", objectionable, pollution, remarkable

What modes: The perception of female voice in Ancient Greece and its validation today_

Historically, some voices and modes of addressing have been marginalized and shut out of the public domain. The exclusion of them has been established since the age of Ancient Greece. At that moment there was a mystification around the high-pitched voice that was connected with the evil. The human nature, as defined by the patriarchy, is differ from the others on the ability on articulating the sound and creating the ‘logos’, speech. All the other forms of expression are wild and not rational, including sign language and the 'hysterical' exposures of women. Aristotle believed that the vocal sound is based on the physiognomy, the genitals, of a person and that is why men speak in a low pitch. The high-pitched utterance of women, called 'ololyga' which was a ritual practice dedicated to important events of the life, like the birth of a child or the death of a person, was considered a 'pollution' to the civic space. They were annoying sounds. If they were expressed in public they would create chaos and craziness. In mythology, when Odysseus awakens in the island of Phaiakia, he is "surrounded by the shrieking of women (...) and goes one to wonder what sort of savages or super-natural beings can be making such a racket". These women were Nausica and her girlfriends that are described by Homer as "wild girls who roam the mountains in attendance upon Artemis" (Carson, 1996, pg. 125). Similarly Alkaios, an archaic poet that had been expelled, was left outside of the public assembly and was disgust by the women’s voices talking nonsense. In the ancient world women were excluded in the margin, the dark and formless space. This disorderly loud female noise was related to a non civilized wild space. With this perception Ancient Greek thinkers had set the gender binary expressed also in space. A very recent example of how bad a female sound can be is the voice of Gerdrude Stein. Ernest Hemingway would judge her for her big physical size and her monstrous voice that could not be tolerated. Even today the women in public life worry if their voice is too light or high to deserve respect. Thus radio producers and politicians, like Margaret Thatcher, are trained to learn how to speak in public, deepen their voice and being taken seriously. Carson (1996, pg. 120) observes that the female voice in public is related to madness, witchery, bestiality, disorder, death and chaos. An thus has to stay hidden from sight.

Shut out of the public: Separation of public and private space_

The philosophical western thought, based on Greek philosophers, supports the division between private and public domain. In the public space everybody should be civilized and resolve conflicts through dialogue but the inside of private spaces is ruled by a domestic power where violence is permitted. This separation has reached to a point were men are the main operators of politics in the public space. But the division is also between politicians and citizens, natives and immigrants.The representations of gender and space are not immutable but they consolidate dominant realities because of their repetition. The outside space has been historically connected to the male gendered subjects. Public spaces has been turned in gender constructions that privatize men and female subjects are expressing their needs and desires through them.

According to Kevin Fox Gotham (Ελιάνα Καναβέλη, 2012), territorial restrictions, identities and meanings are negotiable, as they are defined through social interaction and controversy. Thus the space is the material of the human action and the outcome of the social interactions. feeling of alienation bad sound as political disease

mechanisms of marginalization_

One of the mechanisms of marginalization of specific modes of addressing is the repetitive action of self-control that comes from the ancient tactic of control the emotional exposure of one's self. Carson (1996, pg. 126) says that patriarchal thinking on emotional and ethical matters is related to ‘sophrosyne’, self- control of the body. A man is feminized when he leaves his emotions come out of his mouth and so he has to control himself. "Females blurt out a direct translation of what should be formulated indirectly" (Carson, 1996, pg. 129). The masculine deep voice, by default, indicates self- control. So the doctors of archaic periods would suggest exercises of oration to men to cure the damage of the daily use of loud and high-pitched voice. This means that they would practice public speech so to learn how to filter their insides when they come outside. The low-pitched voice would be the right one to use in public assemblies so to be taken seriously.

The female version of this term was perceived more as a way for men to silence women when they get loud or scream of pain or pleasure. As from their nature they weren't able to control themselves, their order was to be silenced. Silencing of women, the female ‘sophrosyne’, had been an object of legislative arrangements in the ancient world. Women didn’t have the license to express their ‘noise’ in specific places and events and there was a also a restriction over the duration, the content and the choreography of their rituals in funerals so that they wouldn’t create chaos and craziness. So, women’s public utterance restricted in cultural institutions expressing nothing more than a self- fulfilled prophecy. But there was a form of curing the women and city from this. In Dionysian festivals the task of one selected woman would be to discharge the unspeakable things on behalf of the city, that was called ‘aischrologia’ leading to ‘katharsis’. Carson (1996, pg. 133) observes that this act seems similar to the therapeutical practice of hypnosis by Freud on hysterical women. Their emotions, the unspeakable things, were polluting their inside and ‘talking cure’ or otherwise ‘katharsis’ would help them. Female is associated with the bad things of the collective memory. Freud would cure that by channeling these negative emotions through politically appropriated containers, through 'speech'.

Complicated power relations create that exclusion and define the limits of dominant public spheres. The gender binary affects the social construction of space. Women, for example, are related to housewifization and the private sphere of the house.

“emphasizing "fear" and its negative effects on women, reproduce stereotyped notions of women's "weakness"” (Ελιάνα Καναβέλη, 2012).

The dominant notion that men are the main operators of public sphere together with the idea that women are vulnerable lead to the normalization of fear of women in the outside space. Their presence in inappropriate and dangerous spaces is their responsibility. The idea that women are excluded from the public space because of the male violence doesn't mean that men are excluding women. There are complicated power relations that create that exclusion. Freedom of speech relates to the political participation and in theory everyone can have it but in practice unwritten rules and power relations define what is going to be said and from whom. The author believes that the factor of fear intervenes in that. These rules construct the public sphere and restrict female subjects in expressing harmless speeches. The voices and speeches of women in public are directed to “non-listening ears” and they remain silent.

Conclusion

The association of the female voice with bestiality and disorder justifies the tactic of patriarchal culture to ‘put a door’ on the female mouth since the ancient times. Different mechanisms have been developed to exclude specific forms of addressing from the public. This has lead to the division of private and public space based on gender?

3. Multiplication Vis a Vis Amplification

Collective voice affords the amplification and multiplication either with the aid of technology or embodied practices.

The mediation of voice through multiplication

Saskia Sassen (2012, p.) observes that in the cities today a big mix of people coexist. The ones who lack power can make themselves present through face to face communication. According to her this condition reveals another type of politics and political actors, based on hybrid contexts of acting and outside of the formal system. Kanaveli (2012) says that something that is visible and can be heard is reality and can create power. The urban space hosts several political activities like squatting, demonstrations, politics of culture and identity that are visible on the street and non dependent on massive media technologies. This brings the conversation to the Speaker's Corner, "the home of free speech, where anyone can get on their soapbox and make their voice heard" (Coomes, 2015). This practice was very crucial in Occupy Movement ¹. Anyone could be a speaker and be heard by the people surrounding her/him. In the Occupy Wall Street, amplified sound devices, like microphone and megaphone, were not permitted in the city and the crowd could bot listen clearly to the speaker ¹. But "when the technologies above them are removed somehow, the foundational elements remain embedded and embodied in our cyborg bodies and brains" (Pages, 2011). The participants of #occupy used the 'human microphone', as they call it. This means that the crowd would repeat the words of the speaker for the benefit of those located in the rear. There the voice played an important role in the spreading of the speech to the farest points of the public space. "Even given that many of the participants of #occupy are in full possession of smartphones, verbal address to the crowd from a singular source is still important" (Pages, 2011). This is an interesting fact of the public space of today. Even though many new technologies exist the public space seems to exist in a more primitive face to face communication and bodily expression under the context of public assemblies.

From my point of view, the Occupy Movement revealed a lot about the relation of the media technology with the presence and resistance, emerged as an amplified process, in public. What I find interesting is that those people because of their multilayered relation to technology are able to spread the words and make them viral in internet. This process is also a way to archive and make public bottom-up initiatives in public spaces. At the same time there is a temporarity in this action as platforms in internet are constantly changing or disappearing. So, the events and speeches are appearing in fragments of videos, transcriptions, conversations in forums. It is more like the users, protesters are leaving traces online as many as possible. As it can be seen from the Youtube videos of the Occupy Movements the crowd is using a lot of different media technologies, like their smartphones, to record or stream the words of the public speakers.

The female collective voice (thrinos)?

The mediation of voice through amplification

According to Hanna Arendt the speech becomes possible with the existence of a group of people (public assemblies) and it is a civilized way to respond to violence. Suffragettes' speech-making workshops was a way to provide women with tools “with which to take their concerns out into the public domain” (Rose Gibbs, 2016). They focused on the voice because there is a uniqueness in it, that embodies the speaker and doesn’t apply to the abstract and bodiless universality of western thought. Even more, the voice through speech (songs, protest) connects one another in a group and at the same time keeps the individuality of the speaker. In contrast to mainstream political spheres the feminists, like anarchists, were looking for horizontal ways of communication were no voice was dominating over others.

The speeches of African American women, in the first part of 19th century, were very intense as they were tolerating a lot of violence because of their gender and nationality. The brave speech of Sojourner Truth, "Ain't I a Woman?" was one of the first speech acts of women in public of that time. She made that speech after gaining her freedom and she became well-known anti-slavery speaker.

Radio amplification-multiplication

Kanouse sees the use of prohibited technologies and the confrontation with these restrictions as a political act. An act that can propose an “anti-authoritarian radical democracy” (Kanouse, pg. 89) through the formation of small groups that learn to broadcast and produce alternate media cultures. An unlicensed broadcast can challenge what public art wants to: the creation of a public sphere willing to interrogate the “democratical” public space which is part of. (More on The oxymoron) The first project, called Talking Homes by John Brumit, was realized under the residency of Neighborhood Public Radio (little NPR) arts collective of Detroit. The author describes two iterations, part of this project, that broadcasted personal stories of inhabitants through transmitters located in their houses and other buildings, revealing the struggle and the daily routine of these people living in degraded neighbourhoods. The interviewers were trained by the artist to use their transmitters. It seemed that the exposition of the private sphere, reflected in the localization of the media and the gossiping produced, to the public reframed clearer the struggle for the neighborhood than the big radio programmes. The engagement of the public, which was not the privileged audience of art spaces, was deep because of the use of a certified from FCC technology and it didn’t care for the more technical context about radios and frequencies. Both iterations followed the spirit of NPR characterized by the smallness, site-specificity and listener’s participation. Even though these small transmitters have not many listeners because of the smalll range, NRC sees that as a way to link people and thus negates the separation of practitioner and public mentioned before. The little NPR, in contrast to National Public Radio (big NPR), embraces amateurism on the base of “polymorphous”. In other words it embraces the instability, diversity, discomforts and the contradictions that produces.

The second project is The Public Broadcast Cart made by Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga, that is a portable home-made radio broadcasting the voice of the one driving the cart in several places. The voice of the participant becomes public on site through speakers and extends to radio frequencies and the internet. The legality of the radio cart doesn’t concern the present public and the unusual object attracts even more their attention. A manual on how to make this object is published in its website, and this detailed explanation of the technology, even more than the other project, demystifies the technology. Based on the open source and pirate radio spirit, this offering of access to the technology refuses the specialization and the prohibition of the airwaves. The parallel expanses of the voice and the uncensored speech in three different public spaces occupies at the same time the physical, online and electromagnetic realm. The DIY electronic media empowers the individual and collective voice.

Other examples: cars together playing the same frequency https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=28&v=GC8MIa98f-E max neuhaus people broadcasting different frequencies that compose a piece. More examples of amplification in feminist movements

Conclusion

The collective voice vis a vis multiplication and amplification. The collective voice is spread through different ways of mediation that overpass the mainstream and dominant modes.

Notes

<a name="myfootnote1">1</a>: It is an international movement since 2011 for social and economic justice and new forms of democracy with meetings in public spaces

<a name="myfootnote2">2</a>: "In NYC, a sound permit is required in order to use these devices in public, and the police may, or may not grant the permit" (NewYorkRawVideos, 2011, note)

4. Transmitting Ugly Things

Related to "The monstrosity..." opening the hollow cavity

What ugly things

Carson in her text explains how the direct mode of address of these women's voices was annoying for the patriarchal society. A woman would expose her inside facts that are supposed to be private data. The dark side and fear of death, blood the female body, "By projections and leakages of all kinds- somatic, vocal, emotional, sexual- females expose or expend what should be kept in" (Carson, 1996, pg. 129). Examples of these facts would be emotions that reveal pleasure or pain either from sexual encounters from before or the birth of a child. This direct continuity between the inside and outside was a threat for the human nature and society as it was not filtrated through the rational toll of human, 'speech'. It has been established that our inner desires and needs have to be expressed indirectly through speech and in the case of women through their men’s speech (text of Kanaveli).

As I described in "Monstrosity" one ugly form of address was an utterance, a high-pitched cry, called ‘ololyga’ and it is a ritual practice of women sometimes in important daily moments like death and the birth of a child. In their rituals women were also talking ugly and bad things. These unpleasant tendencies of them had to stay hidden from the men’s view. But in Dionysian festivals the task of one selected woman would be to discharge the unspeakable things on behalf of the city, that was called ‘aischrologia’ leading to ‘katharsis’.‘Aischrologia’ seems similar to the therapeutical practice of hypnosis by Freud on hysterical women. Their emotions, the unspeakable things, were polluting their inside and ‘talking cure’ or otherwise ‘katharsis’ would help them. A more recent one is 'hysteria', introduced by Freud, that expresses the psychic events within the woman's body aischrologia and unspeakable things in charge of the city pg.132-133 pg. 134 kaminada "untoward event"

Alternative ways of communication hidden in the private domains have been created in response to the exclusion of speech in public. Gossip, for example, "provides subordinated classes with a mode of communication beyond an official public culture from which they are excluded" (The Gossip, 2017, p.61). It is more an attempt to claim and exchange knowledge when there is no platform for them.

Talkativness/ gossiping aimless conversation, example of Alkaios the sory of Plutarch (Carson, 1996, pg. 130)

For feminists in the early 20th century the speech in public is externalizing the personal violence and suppression of women.

Streaming media in relation to continuity

In the ancient medical and anatomical theory women had two mouths, the upper and the lower, connected through a neck. The lips of both of them guarded the “hollow cavity” (Carson, 1996, pg. 131) and they should remain closed. Female is associated with the bad things of the collective memory. Freud would cure that by channeling these negative emotions through politically appropriated containers. Having two mouths that speak simultaneously is confusing and embarrassing and this creates ‘kakophony’.

streaming media in relation to voice and gender streaming-> sense of liveness streaming and continuity unalterated speech of radio broadcasting and direct (Ernst, pg. 104) - non controlled speech by female bodies (like hysteria and aischrologia, ololyga)

other essay?

radio attempts Radio pirates/amateurs and antennas. Reaching the invisible other or being that invisible other. Practices of establishing multiple ways of spreading the voice in different spaces. The activation of those spaces as public forums. Listening to ‘invisible’ subjectivities.

feminist futurotopias women in technology

The mediation of the voice as detachment of the speaker. “the mediating role of all kinds of media that detach voice from its physical proprietor and enable its circulation in places and contexts in which physical bodies may not have access. (Panopoulos)

The technologies/media/tools/practices that relate the embodied and the distant voice enhance the presence of the person carrying it or turns against her/him.

Index

Speech is the rational human way of expressing personal stories, opinions. It is what differs human from animals according to the patriarchal principles on human nature (Carson...)

Public Speech is the ability to talk in public about individual or collective concerns

Public Space is the space that hosts collective decision making activities, democratic processes and freedom of speech. Though many contemporary public spaces are controlled spaces that exclude many modes of address. Big corporations and states are defining the public space and it is more a space of consuming and public access instead of a free space for expression. This space refers to either physical or digital (Sassen...). There is a big separation between private and public spaces that has been established since the ancient philosophy.

Invididual/Collective

Individual empowerment

Democracy

Transmitting is the act of passing, communicating, sending, to spread from one to another

Amplification to increase the strength or amount of. Especially : to make louder. A figure of speech that adds importance to increase its rhetorical effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amplification

Streaming refers to the process of delivering, it is a steady current of a fluid, a technique for transferring data so that it can be processed as a steady and continuous stream.

Streaming Media

Voice is the vocal sound that comes from the inside of the body and articulates speech

Mediated Voice

Female Voice high-pitched, loud shouting, having too much smile in it, decapitated hen, heartchilling groan, garg, horrendous, howling dogs, being tortured in hell, deadly, ...........craziness, non-rational, weeping, emotional display, oral disorder, disturbing, abnormal, "hysteria", "Not public property", exposing her inside facts, private data, permits direct continuity between inside and outside, female ejaculation, "saying ugly things", objectionable, pollution, remarkable (from Carson)

past/present voice

Orality

Bibliography

• Benjamin, W. (2008) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. 01 edition. Translated by J. A. Underwood. London: Penguin.
• ‘Φύλο, φόβος και δημόσιος λόγος - Βαβυλωνία | Πολιτικό Περιοδικό’ (2012) Βαβυλωνία, 25 February. Available at: https://www.babylonia.gr/2012/02/25/filo-fovos-ke-dimosios-logos/ (Accessed: 26 November 2018).
• Kogawa, T. (2008) ‘Radio in the Chiasme’, in Elisabeth Zimmermann et al. (eds) Re-Inventing Radio. Aspects of radio as art. Frankfurt am Main: Revolver, pp. 407–409.
• Carson, A. (1996) ‘The Gender of Sound’, in Glass, Irony and God. First Edition edition. New York: New Directions, pp. 119–142.
• Rose Gibbs (2016) Speech Matters: Violence and the Feminist Voice, Institute of Contemporary Arts. Available at: https://archive.ica.art/bulletin/speech-matters-violence-and-feminist-voice (Accessed: 3 December 2018).
• Federici, S. B. (2014) Caliban and the witch. 2., rev. ed. New York, NY: Autonomedia.
• Lilja, M. (2017) ‘Dangerous bodies, matter and emotions: public assemblies and embodied resistance’, Journal of Political Power, 10(3), pp. 342–352. doi: 10.1080/2158379X.2017.1382176.