The politics of the voice and of saying in Adriana Cavarero

Abstract

One of the purposes of this article is to present the link between politics and speech proposed by Adriana Cavarero in "For More Than One Voice". Under declared influence of Hannah Arendt, Cavarero places uniqueness at the center of her thought, and the second purpose of this article is to show that uniqueness is a key idea for the fight against patriarchy. A fine analysis of Plato and Aristotle shows that they split logos into both, a sound and a logical aspect, and buried voice under semantics; this movement established a hierarchy that would mark the whole tradition. Gender difference is placed under this hierarchy, since tradition would attribute voice to woman and semantics to man. Fleshy, sensual and particular, voice and woman remained in the shadow of the spiritual, rational and universal guaranteed by man and his voiceless logos. Going one step further, Cavarero presents a vocal phenomenology of uniqueness in order to show that the voice carries human uniqueness. It is then necessary to bring speech back to its vocal root, which is specifically acoustic and traditionally feminine, in order to elaborate a post-patriarchal policy.