Towards a Hopeful Plurality of Democracy: An Interview on Vocal Ontology with Adriana Cavarero

Abstract

Marking the philosopher’s seventieth anniversary as well as fifteen years since the original publication of For More than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression, this interview with Adriana Cavarero considers the ongoing resonance of her propositions on vocality for the expanding interdisciline of voice studies. Cavarero situates her work on voice within the matrix of its contemporaneous discourses as well as current critical debate. In entering a dialogue with other voice scholars, Cavarero expands on her project of dismantling the aporous, solipsistic subject of Western metaphysics and foregrounds notions of responsibility as fundamental to her understanding of relationality. Cavarero further attends to vocal practices, within the remits of academic exchange as well as in contemporary art, and postulates the key tenets of her current project on contingent politics, demagogy and the necessity to reconfigure the voice of the masses as plural.