Dramatic Theories of Voice in the Twentieth Century By Andrew Ki ...

syntactic, and grammatical characteristics of language at the expense of the auditory. But were we to deemphasize the weight afforded sight, the denigration of the voice as Cavarero understands it might then be comprehended in the recognition that the tradition of Western philosophy generally has been less concerned with individuals and the circumstances of their embodiment than with universals, the abstract, and at times, the metaphysical. A concrete and individual voice, replete with gender, ethnicity, age, and dialect, has little room within this frame. Therefore, despite the resistance sensory habits might present, when the unique, resonant, and particular human voice surfaces and makes itself heard, it unhinges the scaffolding upon which visualist philosophy is secured, as evidenced in Cavarero's careful and delightful critique of the Old Testament, Plato, and Greek and Roman myth.

Cavarero echoes a line of thinking instituted earlier in the century by two scholars affiliated with the University of Toronto, Harold Innis and Eric Havelock. In Innis's Empire and Communications (1950) and Havelock's Preface to Plato (1963), they argue that the introduction of handwriting as a mode of communication in ancient Greek civilization prompted changes in the way philosophers conceived of truth and knowledge. Prior to Plato (roughly 428 to 347 BC), philosophical discourse and Greek education transpired as an oral activity without any books, paper, or writing implements. Socrates's dialogic method—the process of asking a student over and over to clarify and refine a thought in response to challenges presented—privileged the spoken word, encouraged the preservation of knowledge in memory, and stimulated the generation of new knowledge through discursive activity. In other words, thinkers did not work in isolation but were present to each other in embodied proximity and engaged in talk. In Plato's day, the educational system of Athens introduced alphabetic writing, and, for Plato, knowledge took on an objective cast: the written word allowed him to see knowledge as fixed. The written word also allowed him to claim authority. But the transition within a culture from one mode of communication to another is never smooth, and Plato's corpus reveals the tension he experienced. In the Phaedrus, he wrestles with the crisis stimulated by writing and seems