Call for Contributions: Voice (s) (deadline March 5, 2026)
guest editors:
Hardy Frehe, Anna Shcherbak, and Maria Jose Rios
Pen and paper, printing press, typewriter and word processor are but some of the technologies of and for written language. But language is voiced in poetry and prose, in conversation and song, at the lectern and on stage, in cries of pain and moans of pleasure. To find and have a voice is fundamental to human existence, requiring technologies of the self but also coaching or speech-therapy. To have one"s voice heard is fundamental to conviviality and sociability, a matter not just of politics but also of megaphones and media platforms. But the technologies of voice reach much more deeply into our daily lives. 1) Voices themselves are tunable instruments that can be used strategically: actors and public speakers do it, and so do the designers of the voices that announce train-delays or sell products. In sports commentary, hypnosis, or ASMR the voice is a technical tool of one"s trade. 2) Voices are subject to technical change not only in the age of AI when the human voice might be displaced. After the initial shock of the disembodied recorded voice, the question of voice was deeply implicated when the era of silent movies (never quite) came to an end: Do mute people and things NOT have a voice as well? Voices can be distorted and multiplied through the actor"s and ventriloquist"s art and the electronic synthesizer, or they can be «naturalized» and «normalized» to not draw any attention to themselves. 3) Human and machinic voices serve also as an interface to technology as we are interrogated by and speak to devices. There is, for example, the echo in its ancient and modern guise: Through sonifcation in science, technology, and art, we can interact with material constellations and otherwise inert things. Indeed, the birth of humanity itself has been associated with the evolutionary origins of voice production that gave rise to language and technology at once. — All these aspects of voice have been subject to movies and critical commentary, they involve divergent fields beyond philosophy: The history of media and technology, theatre and film, disability and cultural studies, voice coaching and education, acoustics and neurophysiology, musicology and anthropology. We invite scholars from all these fields who seek to dialogue with the others at the level of case-studies, grand narratives, or theory
