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Saggi per la call-sezione sottoposta a peer review

No. 10 (2025): Miscellanea III

Voce, corpo, identità. Il potenziale politico della voce cantata

DOI
https://doi.org/10.54103/connessioni/29000
Submitted
June 8, 2025
Published
2025-12-31

Abstract

This paper is part of an investigation I conducted on the vocal phenomenon, aimed at revaluing and re-signifying the political and identity-related potential of the singing voice. As a reaction to the traditional supremacy of the word and the hegemony of discourse, the choice to specifically use the singing voice as the horizon of reference for my analysis reflects the desire to emancipate the voice from its traditional ancillary status as a mere medium of language and to reclaim its more intrinsic potential. The disciplinary framework of this research is clearly that of Voice Studies, which I have complemented with perspectives drawn from Gender Studies and Queer Studies, in an attempt to realize a productive and cooperative synthesis. The aim of this work is not to provide an overly ambitious and exhaustive treatment of the vocal phenomenon, but rather to propose—in series and drawing extensively from the disciplinary field of Voice Studies—those contributions that have outlined features of the vocal phenomenon which serve to reveal its implicit expressive and identity-forming potential. I will therefore begin with the recovery of vocal materiality as suggested by Roland Barthes and then bring in the valuable contributions of feminist philosophers Adriana Cavarero and Ann J. Cahill and ethnomusicologist Katherine Meizel, who have respectively discussed the uniqueness/plurality of the voice, the notions of intervocality and multivocality, as intrinsic identity-related characteristics of the vocal phenomenon.

References

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