Brandon Labelle

Lexicon of the Mouth (eBook, PDF)

Poetics and Politics of Voice and the Oral Imaginary

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Lexicon of the Mouth surveys the oral cavity as the central channel by which self and surrounding are brought into relation. Questions of embodiment and agency, attachment and loss, incorporation and hunger, locution and the non-sensical are critically examined. In doing so, LaBelle emphasizes the mouth as a vital conduit for negotiating "the foundational narrative of proper speech." Lexicon of the Mouth aims for a viscous, poetic and resonant discourse of subjectivity, detailed through the "micro-oralities" of laughing and whispering, stuttering and reciting, eating and kissing, among others. The oral cavity is posed as an impressionable arena, susceptible to all types of material input, contamination and intervention, while also enabling powerful forms of resistance, attachment and conversation, as well as radical imagination.

Lexicon of the Mouth argues for the revolutionary promise of the laugh, the spirited mythologies of the whisper, the schizophonics of self-talk, and the primal noise of gibberish, suggesting that the significance of voicing is fundamentally bound to the exertions of the mouth. Subsequently, assumptions around voice and vocality are unsettled in favor of an epistemology of the oral, highlighting the acts of the tongue, the lips and the throat as primary mediations between interior and exterior, social structures and embodied expressions. LaBelle makes a significant contribution to currents in sound and voice studies by reminding that to hear the voice, and to consider a politics of speech, is first and foremost to assume the mouth.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
• Seitenzahl: 232
• Erscheinungstermin: 19. Juni 2014
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781623561628
• Artikelnr.: 48421728

Autorenporträt

Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer and artistic director of The Listening Biennial and related Listening Academy. His work focuses on questions of agency, community, and poetics, which results in a range of collaborative and extra-institutional initiatives. In 1995 he founded Errant Bodies Press, an independent publishing project. His publications include: Dreamtime X (2022), Acoustic Justice (Bloomsbury 2021), The Other Citizen (2020), Sonic Agency (2018), Lexicon of the Mouth (Bloomsbury 2014), Acoustic Territories (Bloomsbury 2010, 2019), and Background Noise (Bloomsbury 2006, 2015).

Inhaltsangabe

Preface: AssociativeIntroduction: Movement1. Bite, Chew, Eat2. Burp, Choke, Cough, Gag, Spit, Vomit3. Cry, Scream, Shout, Sing4. Gasp, Growl, Grunt, Sigh, Yawn5. Gibberish, Gobbledygook6. Inner voice, Self-talk7. Kiss, Lick, Suck8. Laugh9. Murmur, Whisper10. Lisp, Mute, Stutter11. Recite, Repeat, Vow12. WhistleConclusion: DirtyEtc.NotesBibliographyIndex

Rezensionen

LaBelle shows how the mouth envelops and develops bodies, languages and subjectivities. He constructs what he calls the 'oral imaginary', the forms of figuration and function that define the role of the mouth as a cultural artefact . the many choreographies of the mouth that he presents and the many ways in which those choreographies envelop and inflect voice, culture and politics leaves us in a dizzying, vertiginous space of possibility and potentiality. John Melillo Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies