Abstract
The ability to speak clearly and distinctly has long functioned as a defining criterion in determining who is human, and who will get heard. Articulateness determines subjectness. As a profoundly and congenitally deaf person for whom speech and articulateness did not come ‘naturally’ but arrived through the aid of technology, science, and perspiration, I am highly aware of how articulateness enables my subjectness. What could have been the conditions for the possibility of my voice, if I had failed to achieve articulateness? In this paper, I unpack the relationships between articulateness and subjectness by interrogating an alternative that I call communicability.
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Notes
I am grateful to Sushmita Chatterjee for this important reminder.
For example, as Brueggeman notes, Demosthenes, the great Ancient Greek orator, is said to have practiced speaking with pebbles in his mouth, against the background roar of the ocean, in order to correct his speech defects (Brueggeman, 1999, pp. 104–05). Further, Brueggeman also notes that Quintilian's ‘good man speaking well’ that is at the basis of western humanistic tradition also means that ‘he who does not speak well must be trained, maintained, contained, restrained’ (Brueggeman, 1999, p. 32). Or even more simply, just think about the voices of public professionals. Mladen Dolar observes: ‘Imagine someone reading the news on TV with a heavy regional accent. It would sound absurd, for the state, by definition, does not have an accent. A person with an accent can appear in a talk show, speaking in her own voice, but not in an official capacity. The official voice is the voice devoid of any accent’ (Dolar, 2006, p. 191). Speaking well, speaking articulately, is thus to have a material voice that, because of its neutrality, can project a subjectness of its choosing.
Others have made this claim as well. See, for example, the literature in contemporary deliberative democracy, especially Iris Marion Young (2000).
A cochlear implant is a medical device that is inserted into the inner ear and provides auditory stimulation through electric impulses delivered along electrodes placed inside the cochlea. I will explain more in Section III.
This origin story that I am telling is US-based, although not without its connections to Europe and Australia.
‘Operability’ is a coined term Cohen (1999). Cohen points out that ‘to be someone with choices is to be operated upon, to be operated on is to be someone with choices. ‘‘Operation’’ is not just a procedure with certain risks, benefits and cultural values; it confers to the sort of agency I am calling “citzenship”’ (p. 140). (My thanks to Sameena Mulla for directing my attention to this article.)
For example, see Jean-Dominique Bauby in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (1997).
A feminist science fiction novel that explored the possibilities and contradictions of implanting healthy human brains with severely disabled bodies into the control centers of galactic space ships.
See, for example, these headlines and titles: ‘Cochlear Implants: Restoring Hearing to the Deaf’ (Eddington and Pierschalla, 1994); and ‘Building the Bionic Ear’ (Clark, 2000).
An assistive listening device involving a microphone and transmitter worn by the lecturer and a receiver worn by me.
There is thus an interesting dichotomy between technological and human assistance.
For a useful overview of both technologies, see Sandra Braman, ed. (2004).
However, and very crucially, there are deaf bodies for whom the implant will not work, and they are even more marginalized as agents in this new era of digitized communicability. There will always be bodies that present themselves as inoperable, no matter the reach of technology. For those deaf people who cannot get an implant for economic or material reasons, a new disability digital divide has emerged that must be addressed if we are to enable articulation for all bodies.
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Schriempf, A. Hearing deafness: Subjectness, articulateness and communicability. Subjectivity 28, 279–296 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2009.16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2009.16