Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0612021108000.4407@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: voice.
Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2006 11:08:13 -0500 (EST)
voice. "[The voice is active hearing, purely in itself, which is posited as universal; (expressing) pain, desire, joy, satisfaction, (it is) _Aufheben_ of the single itself, the consciousness of contradiction. Here it returns into itself, indifference. Every animal finds a voice in its violent death; it expresses itself as a removed-self (_als aufgehobnes Selbst_). (Birds have song, which other animals lack, because they belong to the element of air--articulating voice, a more diffused self.) In the voice, meaning turns back into itself; it is negative self, desire (_Begierde_). It is lack, absence of substance in itself.] (Hegel 4, p. 161) Thus, in the voice, the animal expresses itself as removed: 'every animal finds a voice in its violent death, it expresses itself _als aufgehobnes Selbst._' If this is true, we may now understand why the articulation of the animal voice gives life to human language and becomes the voice of consciousness. The voice, as expression and memory of the animal's death, is no longer a mere, natural sign that finds its other outside of itself. And although it is not yet meaningful speech, it already contains within itself the power of the negative and of memory." (from Giorgio Agamben, Language and Death, The Place of Negativity, trans. Karen E. Pinkus with Michael Hardt, Minnesota, 1991.) http://www.asondheim.org/storm.mp3 (voice of a building in a storm in Brooklyn, recorded with Westinghouse vibration transducer directly input into CoolEdit and raised in pitch.)