Showing posts with label phonocentrism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label phonocentrism. Show all posts

31 Oct 2015

On the Art of Speaking Without Speaking

A speaker presenting work in an approved manner; i.e., staying resolutely 
with the script and making no attempt to engage or interact with the audience


Although I frequently present work in public, as a rule I never speak without notes and prefer where possible to read without deviation or interruption from a carefully prepared text - much to the annoyance of members of the audience who subscribe to the metaphysics of presence and feel they are entitled to my fully being there in the capacity of speaker. 

I do this for a philosophical reason; namely, to counter the Socratic prejudice that speech is superior to writing and that thinkers should pride ourselves on their ability to memorize information and chat freely in an impromptu manner, thereby demonstrating a lively intelligence and an essential depth of true knowledge or wisdom. 

Put simply, I don't want to speak from the heart, or reveal the secrets of my soul. Like Derrida, I think it's perfectly legitimate - and important - to challenge the privileging of speech over writing (something that remains crucial to the structural presuppositions of philosophy). Indeed, if I had my way I'd use one of those voice synthesizers made famous by Stephen Hawking to depersonalize the whole performance still further and counter the pernicious stupidity of phonocentrism in this manner.

Thus, for me, writing is never a mere supplement to speech and the spoken word is not sovereign, or in a superior (because in a more direct and immediate) relationship to thought itself. And, although I'm quite happy to read a script in public, if invited to do so, I insist on my right to somehow absence myself from the whole event (cloaked, as it were, in anonymity, ambiguity, and invisibility) and to speak in a voice that is not necessarily my own.

I'm not then what might be thought of as a parrhesiast - a free-speaker of the truth without concealment. Nor am I one who says what he means and means what he says. Rather, I offer perspectives, not personal opinions or beliefs, and I attempt to move about in a transpositional manner without attaching myself anywhere.

That said, I would like to think that, as a philosophical provocateur, I share something with the parrhesiast and that is the courage to risk offending my listeners; of irritating them, of making them angry and provoking them to conduct which may be abusive (You're worse than Hitler) or even violent.

In sum: there's no fundamental bond between what I say and what I may (or may not) think, but I am prepared to piss people off. Mine is a modality not of truth-telling per se, but of enigmatic provocation. Or perhaps - as one woman said following a presentation at The Hospital Club - a form of mental illness ...        

         

30 Aug 2013

Return to Plato's Pharmacy


Say what you like about Socrates, but at least he didn't take any shit from poets.

This - of all things - was recently said to me - of all people (and in all seriousness) - by someone who really should have known better before offering not only a highly dubious defense of the spoken word, but what has become after Derrida a philosophically untenable privileging of the latter over the written text.

Who would have imagined that phonocentrism would still be making its voice heard in the digital age?

But, unfortunately, it is. And so we must return to ancient Greece once more and re-examine the Socratic prejudice against writing, which is conceived as a pharmakon - i.e., as a type of drug that has both beneficial and potentially lethal aspects.

According to Socrates, the gift of writing was one of many given by the Egyptian inventor-deity Theuth to the god-king Thamus. Theuth informs the latter that writing is useful as a powerful aide-memoire, but Thamus protests that its effect is likely to be quite the opposite; that whilst it might superficially remind people of the truth, it will not help them to genuinely remember and to know the truth as it essentially resides within the soul. In other words, writing creates the appearance or illusion of wisdom, but not the reality. The gift is thus returned and determined to be a grave danger rather than a great blessing (a poison, rather than a pleasure).

Developing this theme, Socrates tells his young companion, Phaedrus, that a written text is not to be trusted because, unlike an actual speaker, it lacks living, breathing presence and cannot answer questions or defend itself. A true lover of wisdom will always wish to address an audience in person and have his words heard directly by the ears of his listeners, rather than make use of the external marks of writing to be seen by the eyes of unknown (and perhaps unworthy) readers in private. Or, if a philosopher does succumb to the temptation to inscribe his thoughts, he will nevertheless be ready and willing to defend them in discussion with others; affirming his paternity or authorship of the text whilst at the same time having the decency to concede that his writings are derivative and of little value in comparison to his spoken words.

Derrida would have none of this Ideal nonsense and he rejects the myth of presence and the privileging of the voice and ear over the hand and eye. His reading of the Phaedrus is exemplary I think - despite predictable objections coming from some quarters. Without either agreeing or disagreeing with the arguments put forward by Socrates, Derrida exposes their gaps and instabilities, deconstructing the very logic upon which the Socratic method is founded. In other words, Derrida shows how Plato's attempt to casually insert writing into a system of metaphysical dualism fails because writing's status as a pharmakon means it cannot be fixed or stabilized; rather, it remains a play of possibilities that moves in, out, and across all oppositions slowly but surely infecting or polluting the entire system.

In the end, suggests Derrida, if you wish to understand language, then you need to acknowledge that it rests upon a model of arche-writing - and not the spoken word. This is not to advance an empirical assertion to the effect that writing emerged chronologically earlier than speech. That would be silly and factually incorrect. But writing is not secondary nor some kind of parasitic supplement to speech.

And the poet is not simply a poor relation to the philosopher ... 

15 Jan 2013

Dare to See the World Through Deaf Eyes



Sometimes, I like to pretend that I'm deaf and I try to imagine what it would be like not to be able to hear ... 
It's not so bad.

Perhaps we should all try like Larry to imagine what it would be like not to be able to hear and dare to see the world through deaf eyes. Perhaps we'd find the silence beautiful. And liberating as well as instructive.

For to live in a soundless, speechless world without birdsong or the insistence of the human voice, is not to live without contact or to be loveless: we do not become fish simply because we surrender our ears and enter a mute but amazingly dexterous world of sign and physical gesture.

But, of course, most people will never concede the point that the profoundly deaf are neither disabled nor stupid. For audism is deeply-rooted within our culture and draws philosophical support from what Derrida has identified as phonocentrism: i.e. the belief that the voice is the privileged medium of truth and meaning and that hearing is the deepest of all the senses, sound acting directly upon the great affective centres of being.

Until we deconstruct, or, if you prefer, curb our enthusiasm for this metaphysical prejudice, then we will continue to remain enthralled by orality and continue to discriminate against those who cannot hear and find the idea of reading lips offensive and humiliating.