Listening with/to Nature’s Voice: An Ethical Polyphony

Abstract

I propose a holistic practice of interlistening (Lipari, 2014) with/to nature’s voice as an ethical eco-feminist intervention in the Western humanities that privilege speech acts (Corradi Fiumara, 1990, Location No. 15). As I discuss, this unfortunate cultural disengagement with listening as an object of desire is in fact a call of Western communicative praxis’ deep rooted disenfranchised grief, an inadequate and unrecognized pain of separation from the infant’s first point of connection, the mother’s voice. To address this loss, I offer that one attunes with/to nature’s fluid and nourishing voice much like Mladen Dolar’s (2006) idea of the acousmatic voice, the untraceable, material yet incorporeal sonic excess to re-enfranchise the mother’s lost voice in listening and imagine ethical communicative practices that welcome the Other.

Notes

¹ Bøe, Feist, & Øye, (2004)

² Translator of Hélène Cixous’ The Book of Promethea.

³ Tom Bruneau whose essay I cite in my work refers to pathologies of speed in relation to the wrecking nature of clock time, pace of life and a disrespect for silence in the American culture. I appropriate his usage in a playful sense to lament on listening in a pathological milieu of speech.

⁴ Joshua Gunn on the topic of mourning in his spring 2015 seminar, The Object.