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Dragana Stojanović The Inscription of the Feminine Body in the Field of Sound...
The Inscription of the Feminine Body
in the Field of Sound: Vocal Expression
as a Platform of Feminine Writing (écriture féminine)
Dragana Stojanović
1
Faculty of Media and Communications, Belgrade
Abstract
This paperbrings together several theoretical issues relevant both to the elds of
musicology/ethnomusicology and feminist/gender studies – above all, the issue
of the status of the voice within the complexity of a body-textuality tension,
and the issue of mapping the strategies of in the contemporary
vocal performance. Through the analysis of chosen case studies it highlights the
possibility of making an alteration, transformation and re-signication of a rm
structural linguistic/social order in the eld of sound, thus creating a space for a
feminine body to be .
Key words
, performance, vocal expression
1. Introduction: The Turn of the Century
and the Revision of the Theoretical Approaches
in the Fields of Art, Sound and Performance
Following the extreme complexity of methodological and in-
terpretative approaches in the elds of theory of art and performance,
in the continual line of the multiplication of viewpoints in theoret-
ical and analytical discourse, the turn of the 20
th
and 21
st
centuries
brought a new issue into focus: instead of striving to nd some kind
of new, original interpretation technique (which marked a lot of the
modern and even postmodern theoretical approaches of the last cen-
tury), the contemporary views on the elds of art, performance and
media tend to contain a more reexive approach. This does not mean
that there was a reversion to the known discourses, to be used again
in their original formula – on the contrary, they are being reinves-
tigated, reinterpreted, their dynamics revisited and revised, leading
to the new reception and new strategies of their use for the contem-
porary times. The disciplinary approach, turning into multidiscipli-
narity and interdisciplinarity by the end of the 20
th
century, shifted
1
ddstojanovic@yahoo.com
DOI: 10.2298/MUZ1518115S
UDK: 78.01:141.72
7.038.531:78
305-055.2
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Музикологија 18 – 2015 Musicology
to a need for transdisciplinary analysis at the beginning of the 21
st
century, creating a wide potential for both the revision of previously
developed theoretical and analytic discourses and the application of
such renewed (trans)positions in the eld of the theory of art, as well
as sound and performance.
2. The Body in the Field of Sound: Understanding the
Voice Within the Performing Context
The relations between the sound phenomenon and performance
are close and complex, intersecting through the performing body.
Both being an embodied experience, the sound and the performance
effectively shift the focus onto the body (Case 2001). Secondly, a
performance is almost always a sonorous experience; it is almost
impossible to perform without making a sound, without making the
happening of a – whether or not the voice is included.
Following Slavoj Žižek’s thesis (Žižek 1996), absolute soundlessness
is not quite possible, since absolute silence is something that would
mark the suspension of life (ibid.: 93) – thus the performance can be
dened as a living thing of its sonority, because of the body
that . Having all this in mind, the performance is always a little
bit than just a textuality presented, read and comprehended.
So the movement, the breathing body, and especially the speak-
ing and the singing body stands in the place of an , being a
symptom of a and (Silverman 1988; Fisher 2010),
of the practically physical, bodily contact of the performer and the
audience without even a touch or the context of a performance.
2
According to Mladen Dolar (Dolar 2006), the voice – vocal expres-
sion – is an especially challenging category because of the specicity
of the phenomenon of voice. As Dolar stresses, the voice is some-
thing that, being produced by the body and through the body, always
contains the traces of the body which are, simultaneously, and
paradoxically, torn from the body and frozen into a readable textuali-
ty, into the voice of the Other (ibid.). So, basically, the voice and
mine. Tearing from my body, being produced by the very breath
and muscles of my carnality, the voice refers to my body’s inevitabil-
2
In other words, the sound transcends the boundaries of time-space contextuality,
preserving the physical contact of a vibration and a body that listens to it, even in a
situation of mediated performance (a performance emitted through a recording and
even watched later, in another space from the one in which it actually took place
originally). Or, to put it another way, the sound, whenever heard (recorded or live),
produces that strange loop that, as Dolar says, binds together time and space (Dolar
2011: 119): “The sound implies a missing link of time and space at the point of
their overlapping. This is the point from which it sounds” (ibid.: 131).
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Dragana Stojanović The Inscription of the Feminine Body in the Field of Sound...
ity,
3
but still loses it by solidifying into a text – a readable textuality
pronounced by the Other – by the Law of the Symbolic order which
introduces the cultural comprehension code (ibid.). My voice is, so
it seems, always-already the voice of the Other. Since the Other (the
Law) doesn’t have a body but still uses bodies to enact and exercise
its power (to inscribe the signier into their raw substance, to domes-
ticate to civilize it), my body is lost in the process of solidication of
the textual meaning. Or, as Roland Barthes puts it, “what is lost in the
transcription is quite simply the body” (Barthes 1977: 183).
Following this thesis, it would seem that the bodily – sonorous
and textual – semantic dimensions of the voice expression are mu-
tually exclusive (Dolar 2006: 3). But is this completely true? Is the
carnal sonority of the voice completely shut out once a concentration
on the meaning takes precedence, once the signier penetrates into
the sonorous body? According to Roland Barthes (Barthes 1977), the
“grain of the voice” is something that cannot be completely erased,
completely ignored by the signifying process (Barthes 1977). It is the
carnal quality of the voice – a crack, the air inhaled or exhaled while
talking or singing, the effect of the granulated materiality of the vocal
cords, mucus and the oral and nasal cavity vibration – that becomes
audible in the very process of from the perfectly clean tex-
tual meaning, from the perfectly blunt cut of the signier that signs it-
self into a body. It is this signier that results in turning the body into
a pure textuality, a platform – a carrier of intelligibility, of the legit-
imacy within/of the Law. So what happens with this carnality of the
voice within the performance context? If the performance is going to
be understandable only at the point of being representable by a text
(within a certain discourse), only if its content is being interpellated
by the Other (to which the audience should respond by recognising
it in/by the signier network), cleaned of all of its debts to nature
(Creed 1999), then the bodily element – the carnality of the voice, the
body – is perceived precisely by being a , a ten-
sion within a seemingly smooth text (Douglas 2007: 4). This tension
draws attention, making the body audible and visible within the per-
ception eld (making the body intrude into the text, creating a trans-
gressive in-break), turning the performance effect into a performative
intervention. Since the voice is so close to the body – it is in fact an
effect of the sonorous body – the vocality can be seen as a very much
performative dimension of the sound expression (Fisher 2010). The
term here refers to the specic act that something
3
“A voice means this: there is a living person, throat, chest, feelings, who sends
into the air this voice, different from all other voices. The voice is always the voice
of ” (Cavarero 2005: 207).
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Музикологија 18 – 2015 Musicology
(else) by its ongoing (Austin 1976, Šuvaković 2005: 454).
4
In other
words, the quality of the utterance is performative when it makes a
change into an existing order, when it relocates the existing point of
perception and/or understanding. Having this in mind, what follows
is that the intrusion of the bodily element into a (musical/sonorous)
text is a symptom of performativity, which inevitably changes or at
least destabilises (even for a moment!) the rm structure of a(n im-
agination of) purely textual-Symbolic order (Lacan 2006); and if the
Symbolic order is destabilised and thus provoked to re-establish it-
self, the intervention (of the body) proves itself to be the transforma-
tive potential of the order ( discourse meaning), allowing the
possibility of the entrance of alternation, re-signication and change,
which can be of immense importance when it comes to the redening
of the dominant discourse and social structure and, consequently, the
subjectal position in everyday living.
The question of the performative quality of vocal writing
(which basically consists of an inscription of the sonorous body into
a text, weaving the textuality in a new way, challenging the existing
meanings and producing a dislocated, re-signied, renewed Symbol-
ic order)
5
is especially important when it is written from a margin-
alised or less easily grasped subjectal position. The position of not
being so easily grasped by a signier (and the Symbolic order) stems
from a situation of not having a place within the Symbolic order, of
having been described by the words, but not being able to express a
particular position with the words, and that is precisely the position
of the feminine subject in the phallogocentric Symbolic order.
6
4
In Austin (1976), the term is specically tied to the spoken language
which performatively changes a certain element of the social order; thus,
something actually becomes something (an often cited example is the answer
“yes” which establishes the legal contract of marriage). However, I nd Austin’s
concept highly potent in the broad eld of utterances made either with one’s voice or
one’s body/behaviour (see Butler 1990), where a simple act or a vocal performative is
not only an act, but actually something in the social/cultural discourse, changing
or establishing the status of the subject.
5
The term would designate the particular way of making an expression
in the eld of vocal performance (musical or other). It also stresses the way in which
a performer imprints his/her body onto the discursive text, creating a specic way of
weaving the vocal textuality from the dialogue of the performer’s body and the vocal
text (the written or imagined score/performance platform) within a certain discourse.
6
The term is used to denote such an order that privileges the phallic
and logocentric mode. Both being oriented around the (of the phallus or of the
spoken word) as a privileged quality (in contrast to absence), they put into mutual play
the privilege of the patriarchal order guided by a Word – in fact, the sociocultural Law
(the Symbolic!) – which functions as a standard, the code of understanding the culture
that makes us recognise ourselves as interpellated subjects and respond to our given
(already assigned) positions (Irigaray 1985; Shiach 2002).
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Dragana Stojanović The Inscription of the Feminine Body in the Field of Sound...
3. Feminine Writing in the Field of Sound and Vocal
Expression: A(n) (Im)Possibility?
Being at the same time both inside and outside of the lan-
guage/Symbolic order/Law, trapped within the prescribed forms of
description, yet not being able to use that same language to express
her specic position of an absence, of a ,
7
the feminine
subject shares the paradoxical position of the voice within a Sym-
bolic order, which is not the consequence of her being
such-and-such, or being essentially different from the male subject.
On the contrary, her difference is not a cause, but an effect of a
previously existing Symbolic order that assigns a place for the sub-
ject before he/she recognises himself/herself within the language
(Grosz 1989: 19). In other words, we are not the owners of the dis-
course – we are produced as subjects within the already existing and
prescribed network of positions and relations within the discourse,
or the Symbolic order (Grosz 1989: 19). Since that order is phal-
logocentrically structured, the relation of the masculine and femi-
nine subject is mirrored not in the formula A:B – as being equally
different, but as A:-A – as being caught into a , where a
masculine subject occupies the position of a presence, of a standard,
and a feminine subject serves as a negativity, as a raw, almost outer
cultural element (Irigaray 1985).
The same theses related to the feminine subject position are
found in the eld of theory of the sound and voice. As Mladen Dolar
conrms (Dolar 2006), the voice, being in a state of difference to
the textuality, has always been lined with femininity and seen as a
potentially senseless play of sensuality which, in its meaningless-
ness, possesses a threat to the predictive, neat, meaningful order of
intelligibility (ibid.: 43; Fisher 2010: 87). The feminine paradoxical
position (being inside and outside of the structure) is reected both
in language as an order, and in the eld of the sound or vocal expres-
sion within which she is in a permanent state of inability to speak
intelligibly:
“...the stereotype according to which (...) the woman appears rst of all as
a body and as an inarticulate voice. She must be beautiful, but she must
not speak. What she can do, however, is emit pleasing sounds, asemantic
vocalizations, moans of pleasure. (...) The division of logos into a purely
feminine phone and purely masculine semantikon, nally, accomplishes
and conrms the system” (Cavarero 2005: 107).
7
Speaking about the difference via the existing linguistic models would only produce
that same – phallogocentric – language that shuts her out (Irigaray 1985).
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Музикологија 18 – 2015 Musicology
Anyway, what is more frightening than as an im-
possibility in terms of access to writing and expressing ourselves as
women ( the feminine position, inscribing the difference that rubs
against the phallogocentric order, thus making the difference )
is the thought of the impossibility of expression caused by the
outcast position of the feminine subject within the phallogocentric
order. To put it simply, being (also) irreparably outside the language,
lined with the semiotic, irrational, monstrous, abject (Kristeva 1982;
Grosz 1989; Creed 2001), the real question is how a feminine subject
could ever intervene into the language and its meanings, how could
she ever express herself if her voice is deemed to be an impossibility
in regard to its intelligibility and its power of utterance?
But she is also within the language, included in language itself
and, more importantly, she is in her difference: “If I had such
a voice, I would not write, I would laugh. And no need of quills so
more body. I would not fear being out of breath. I would not come to
my aid enlarging myself with a text. (...) If I had such a voice, I
would not write, I would ght” (Cixous 2000, 49–51). What Hélène
Cixous suggests is a model of ()
– a writing that involves (and neither ignores nor excludes) a femi-
nine position in a text, and does so by the inscription of the female
body (as the site of a ) into a language/sound/visual or other
text. In the eld of sound, would include working
with an alternative () techniques of a sonorous expres-
sion – especially within vocal writing, or vocal expression – since
revolves around the inscription of the body into the
text, and the body is, as already explained, deeply intertwined in the
problem of the voice, voice production and voice reception. In other
words, using the voice as a tool that will enhance the performative
quality of basically includes nding the alternative,
dialogical ways of a vocal expression (in contrast to the dominant,
phallogocentric, One/Same [Irigaray 1985] writing of an intelli-
gible letter). This means nding the path of asking the questions that
would disturb the machinery of expected vocality, being subversive,
transgressive, shifting, resignifying and altering the existing order
that manifests itself as much in the eld of vocal expression as in
verbal or visual expression and elsewhere (Kristeva 1980: 179, 181;
Turner 1999). It would not be another language, another writing; it
would be a kind of creation of a writing which weaves
itself into the existing order, provoking it to . So it is not the
writing against the writing (as in the highly problematic idea of fem-
inine against masculine) – it is about recognising and exercising a
dimension already present within a language, within a range of vocal
abilities. Or, as Mladen Dolar says: “The secret may be that they [the
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Dragana Stojanović The Inscription of the Feminine Body in the Field of Sound...
logos and the materiality of the voice] are both the same; that there
are not two voices, but only the object voice which cleaves and bars
the other in an ineradicable ‘extimacy’” (Dolar 2006: 56).
The struggle to nd a vocality performative enough to contain
and bring out the from and within the usual, prescribed
and expected vocal writing norms has been a constant feature in the
recent history of composing and vocal performing.
8
Since the end of
the 19
th
century the avant-garde movement has enhanced the interest
in widening the concept of vocal expression, focusing on
forms of vocal writing
9
which would challenge the existing bounda-
ries of what was perceived as an intelligible vocal expression – be it
singing, reciting poetry or performing in any other way that includ-
ed vocality (Mabry 2002; Austin Crump 2008). As such, the dada
movement explored the eld of avant-garde vocal expression, trying
to challenge and cause the breakdown of the institutionally construct-
ed discourses of art and artistic expression; futurism worked with
the experimental sound techniques inspired by rapidly changing and
mechanising societies; and avant-garde vocal expression techniques
were also closely tied to cubistic and surrealistic ideas, working with-
in the fascination of a dehumanised perspective (cubism) and dream-
like dissipating of the accepted and expected social and discursive
norms (surrealism) (Austin Crump 2008). This interest in exploring
the differential forms of vocal writing continued well into the 20
th
century and even continuing at the beginning of the 21
st
century, cre-
ating a continual line of using to express a
possibility of a different () vocal writing, of the inscribing
of a certain difference, writing a different vocal letter, trying to make
the silent or not yet explored positions to make them to
make them into an existing discourse of expression.
10
8
More about the history of experimental, extended and avant-garde vocal
techniques applied in classical music repertoires and also in the performing arts
can be read in Mabry 2002 and Austin Crump 2008.
9
here refers to: 1) that which is conceived and brought from the point
of difference; 2) that which refers to the difference; 3) that which constitutes
the difference, or 4) that which functions differently or in regard to difference.
can also refer to something which produces an effect by the very
difference it achieves, that which focuses the difference, or that which is dependent
on it (related to it in any way).
10
Of course, there always remains a question over whether the full interventional
potential of a by the means of can
be achieved. In other words, is the interventional potential actually weakened by
the eld of vocal expression, making that part a regular piece
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Музикологија 18 – 2015 Musicology
Since also aims at making differences heard,
/
11
and the herit-
age of avant-garde vocal expression techniques have been particular-
ly used and explored as a tool in enhancing the performative quality
of in the eld of sound. Working with such different
(and !) techniques as shouting, whispering, crying, laugh-
ing, screaming, , altered or eliminated , inhalation,
exhalation, vowel morphing, amplied or electronically generated
vocal alterations, nonsense syllables or phonemes, humming, tongue
clicks or tongue trills, whistling etc. essentially calls for a serious re-
thinking of the dominant discourse of expression in the eld of sound
and, more precisely, vocality, opening a space for different feminine
bodies (and their individual positions and subjectal placements) to be
heard, thus also opening the issue of exploring the voice as an agent
of the performative quality of .
In searching for case studies relevant to the issue of the per-
formativity of in the eld of vocal sound I concen-
trated on contemporary performance and experimental vocal praxis
within the past 15 years, covering the period of the turn of the century.
As there are many female artists and performers present in the con-
temporary context of vocal performance who explore the eld of
, I tried to focus on those especially connected
to the strategies of . In other words, what
drew my attention was not the challenge to the vocal limits of the hu-
man body, but the actual that it has on both the performer’s and
listener’s perceptions of a vocal writing and its intelligibility.
In the vast range of important strategies of in
challenging the constructed – and expected – discursive and textual
order in the eld of sound, three of them seem especially prominent:
1) working with the dissipation of a verbal textuality, but keeping the
musical discourse intact; 2) working with the dissipation of a musical
of a vocal expression range? Or is it just the opposite – that the extensions keep
reminding the listener of the constructed nature of the boundaries of a regular
vocal discourse? Where is the actual borderline between and
vocal expression and does it change with the longer exposure of a listener to it
(see also Austin Crump 2008)? Is the cut made by the effect of an
only temporary, given that it can only be exercised in a performance
context which makes clear the demarcation line between the actual living and art
(and does it always do so)? These are certainly important questions that should
be investigated further, but to do so here would be to exceed the given length of
the paper. However, these topics surely draw attention to the complexity of the
theoretical problem of in art, and in general.
11
Both terms are used in Austin Crump 2008.
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Dragana Stojanović The Inscription of the Feminine Body in the Field of Sound...
textuality, but keeping the verbal discourse intact; and 3) working
with the dissipation of both verbal and musical textualities/discours-
es or using some other, hybrid technique of working with these plat-
forms.
This actually draws attention to the fact that the verbal text and
musical-sound platform are still mostly seen as the main, distinguish-
able elements of a vocal performance. It is almost as if the necessity
of a spoken/sung language still cannot be escaped, for there is still a
clear need to work with the verbal language, as if it is a symptom of a
rm Symbolic order that needs to be reworked, revised and subverted
by the potential (Pellegrini 2001).
It is precisely this context that is seen in the strategy of working
with the verbal component of a vocal performance in order to pro-
duced . In other words, what happens in these cases
is a kind of dissipating of the verbal-intelligible linguistic component
in the vocal expression, while keeping the musical discursive intel-
ligibility intact. Examples of these strategies can be found in Anna
Homler’s (1948) sound and visual installations
(1987)
12
and (1995),
13
and also in Catherine Jauniaux’s
(1955)
14
and from her solo
album (1983).
15
They demonstrate working with imagined
language
16
or with illogically structured syllables, sometimes paired
with unconventional techniques of vocal expression, such as sharply
formed vocals, different references to singing techniques taken from
the traditional music repertoire,
17
multi-layered voices, and so on.
But although this strategy can be seen as revolutionary, subversive,
transformative, as a kind of poetic language that sets the listener’s
perception free from the conventions of a language order and its re-
pressions (Butler 1989),
18
there remains the issue of the potential to
12
More can be found at http://annahomler.com/portfolio/pharmacia-poetica/,
accessed 19
th
January, 2015.
13
Full audio can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq194e4BnMY,
accessed 19
th
January, 2015.
14
Audio can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnUkCyByZIM,
accessed 19
th
January, 2015.
15
Full audio at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5Y3SH5_QIk, accessed 19
th
January, 2015.
16
In a text published in LA Weekly, John Payne says: “Anna Homler (...) sings,
in an invented language that ‘nobody knows but everyone understands’...” (Payne
1996).
17
“In all of her work, Homler creates a persona who expresses herself in a newly
invented language that appears to be rife with tradition, ritual, ceremony, and culture
of its own. The language is couched in lyrical and somewhat exotic melodies sung
with a pure vocal style sans vibrato, which gives the work an ambience of authentic
folk tradition” (Suzuki 1993).
18
Compare the theses explained in Julia Kristeva’s
(Kristeva 1982).
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Музикологија 18 – 2015 Musicology
slip into a fantasy of drowning in some encircled, separate linguistics
which would, in the end, afrm its disconnection from the dominant
phallogocentric linguistic order, instead of making an intervention
into it, instead of nding a way to open up a dialogue with the rm
order of its relations, which would provoke a necessary destabilisa-
tion by offering something else from , not from such
an established language. In other words, the transformative, altering,
performative quality of that can enable a feminine
subject and body to be would be hard to attain if
has accepted its already assigned position
19
– of a place which
is silent (unable to intelligibly, actively, visibly and audibly express
itself within the language), of a place which is lined with irration-
ality (incomprehensibility in speaking/singing), monstrosity (the
indistinguishable ow of a body and a rhythm in speaking/singing)
and weakness. In that sense, Homler and Jauniax’s vocal writing can
also be called a or even a
20
which certainly offers, if their essentialist interpretation is
avoided, an appealing and rather present strategy of .
For this strategy see also performances of Shelley Hirsch (1952), who
explores similar possibilities of the dissipation of a verbal language.
21
A different kind of strategy of verbal language/discourse dissi-
pation in a vocal performance is found in the work of Meredith Monk
(1942). Differing from the and strategies previous-
ly explained, Monk puts a calculated, prepared idea of a linguistic
dissipation in motion, deconstructing both the intelligible linguistic
platform and the lining of to a kind of irrational,
spontaneous, owing-in-its-way writing; this is also an important
strategy in the project of deconstructing the idea that to speak from
the feminine position is to be close to irrationality and inability to
express that position in language. By actually working with the lan-
guage, referring to it and not escaping from it, deconstructing it in the
exact process of a vocal performance, Monk points out the possibility
of acting from a post-linguistic position, offering a
way of shedding light on its own transformability, on its own evolu-
tion to a writing which is certainly close to the feminine
position of speech (Cixous 1976, 1991; Irigaray 1985; Lacan 1999).
19
Assigned by the phallogocentrically structured language/Symbolic (Irigaray
1985).
20
See Kristeva’s concept of , which refers to the intrusion of a bodily,
carnal ow of rhythms, pulsations and inconsistencies that are incompatible
with the symbolic dimension of a language, but that are at the same time vital
for renewing, subverting, altering and transforming the overall linguistic system
(Kristeva 1982, 1984).
21
An example is the video entitled which can be found at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPAezNFXOOA, accessed 19
th
January, 2015.
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Dragana Stojanović The Inscription of the Feminine Body in the Field of Sound...
This form of could be called
, with an example such as (2008).
22
The other kind of , in which the strategy is
to work with the dissipation of intelligibility of a musical material
(at the same time retaining the linguistic meaning), usually uses the
full range of human vocal possibilities, relying heavily on
. It almost plays with the concept of the
(Creed 2001), at some moments mocking it, inverting the
stereotype of the madwoman by fully preserving the linguistic mean-
ing, thus enabling the performed from a femi-
nine position (thus becoming ) to mix, to interfere
with(in) the intelligible (phallogocentric!) language. Faced with the
constant announcement of a collapse that nonetheless never happens
(because of the rm structure of the linguistic referential points), it
places the linguistic order (and all its relations) into a constant ten-
sion, a continual intervention that is hard to endure, leaving a perma-
nent mark on what was thought to be an intactible structure, and at
the same time redening the notion of the impossibility of a feminine
body to be . Here this body screams, breathes, howls, moans,
yells, shouts, whispers, but in a way that allows it to be ,
which is the crucial point that refers to its interventional potential.
Excellent examples of this are the works and
performances of Romina Daniele (1985) and Diamanda Galás (1955)
(Jarman-Ivens 2011).
23
There are also many strategies of in the eld
of sound and vocal expression that can fall into the category of
, that either work with the destabilization of both
the linguistic and musical platforms of an expression (Yoko Ono
[1933],
24
Ami Yoshida [1976]
25
) or with the cyborgization of one’s
own feminine voice (La Barbara [1947]).
26
These strategies under-
line the idea of the general crisis of the subject (and consequently, a
crisis of the phallogocentric linguistic system as a whole) (Haraway
1991; Kember 2003); there are also a vast number of other strategies
of that point to the relevance of this kind of writing
22
The audio can be heard at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kjJle_NmRs,
accessed 19
th
January, 2015.
23
The examples are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG2tDoEQAmQ,
accessed 19
th
January, 2015 (Romina Daniele’s performance in Banska Bystrica,
Slovakia, 2008) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cchf2QH63bI, accessed
19
th
January, 2015 (Diamanda Galás, ).
24
See, for example, one of her performances here: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=HdZ9weP5i68, accessed 19
th
January, 2015.
25
The whole audio of her album (2003) is available here: https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF4QszdBvl0, accessed 19
th
January, 2015.
26
The example of this kind of voice cyborgization can be found at https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=opfTWzP3HPU, accessed 21
st
January, 2015.
126
Музикологија 18 – 2015 Musicology
in the eld of sound, vocality and performance. This
also stresses the continual need for reworking, reinterpreting,
re-signifying and reinventing the discursive and linguistic structure
from the feminine subjectal position, creating a space for a feminine
subject to be heard.
4. Instead of a Conclusion: She Can Do It
In her interpretation of Dick Higgins’ No. 17,
Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje (1973)
27
offers a rather unusual tactic:
instead of performing it live, she comes onto the stage on which there
is only a chair and a table with a music player on it; she sits on the
chair and plays the audio recording of her performance of Higgins’
uxus piece, all the time remaining quiet and still. When the record-
ing is over, she stops the tape, grabs the music player and goes off
stage.
Although the performance is probably open to different inter-
pretations, what she presents here can be read as the representation
of the exact position of a feminine subject within the phallogocentri-
cally structured language. The seemingly powerless and motionless
body is exhibited, unheard and mute, screaming from inside, not hav-
ing control over it, not able to express herself without just repeating
the words of an already existing order, without just going back into
the closed circle of fullling the assigned position of a woman as it
should function within the mentioned order. We see her, seeing what
we have already been told about her. She sits there, being nothing
else than what she has been taught to be. The language, the expres-
sion betrays her. Being let down, she is in a state of (Barthes
1998: 20).
But is she so powerless? Is such a reading just the effect of a
phallogocentrically structured language, of a known Symbolic order
(Lacan 2006)? Or is there something , something (Lacan
1999: 74)?
By guring out the position that is assigned to her in the present
linguistic/Symbolic order, by (neither denying it nor
reconciling with it) through developing specic and new –
– ways of writing (from) her feminine position, the feminine
subject able to start a dialogue, both with the other subjects within
the order and with the order itself. Paradoxically, she can have con-
trol over her position precisely by knowing that position well and by
27
This performance took place at the Henie Onstad Art Centre in Høvikodden,
Norway, in October 2010. The full video can be seen here: https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=l5YaAgjXiYo, accessed 15
th
January, 2015.
127
Dragana Stojanović The Inscription of the Feminine Body in the Field of Sound...
using its specicities to make a movement, an alteration, a transfor-
mation. She can produce her own writing by interweaving her voice
– her specic position – into the present discourse (Cixous 1976;
Irigaray 1985).
Just as Maja Ratkje did in her performance, she can think it
over, go onto the stage, and make a difference with her own body.
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Cixous, H. (2000) “Soufes”, in S. Sellers (ed.) , London: Rou-
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83–95.
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УПИС ЖЕНСКОГ ТЕЛА У ПОЉЕ ЗВУКА: ГЛАС КАО
ОРУЂЕ
(Резиме)
На прелазу из двадесетог у двадесет први век подручја музикологије и
студија перформанса сусрећу се с новим теоријским поступцима истражи-
вања, концентрисаним пре свега на стратегије реинтерпретације и ревизије
претходно развијаних дискурса унутар датих дисциплина. Штавише, до-
скорашњи дисциплинарни приступ трансформише се најпре у мултидисци-
плинарни, а потом и у интердисциплинарни, отварајући надаље пут тран-
сдисциплинарним теоријским перспективама. Такође, развијене методе
дискурзивних и текстуалних анализа звука довеле су до интензивних распра-
ва на тему концепта као специфичног начина уписивања индивидуалне
позиције извођачког субјекта у музичко-текстуални дискурс. У подручју во-
129
Dragana Stojanović The Inscription of the Feminine Body in the Field of Sound...
калног извођаштва и вокалне експресије посебну пажњу привлачи феномен
гласа, који извире из тензионог пресека телесне (карнално, тело) и
текстуалне димензије (солидификација гласа у отворен дискурзивном
читању). Иако се чини да се телесна и текстуална компонента вокалне експре-
сије међусобно искључују, константно присутан материјални остатак тела у
гласу који се таре о дискурзивни/културални текст указује на ону тачку из које
глас говори .
Важност ове тезе посебно се указује у подручју теоријског истраживања
говора које је уско повезано с питањем теоретизације .
Појам односи се на вид које истражује
начине уписа женског тела у подручје изражавања. Иако је увек-већ уписана
у предвиђено, немо место унутар дискурса фалогоцентричног Симболичког,
жена ипак (уписује се у текст), што је посебно интересантно пратити
унутар поља звука, или, још конкретније, у контексту вокално-експресивних
стратегија у домену уметничко-звучног перформанса. Користећи ресигнифи-
кацијски потенцијал вокални перформанс се трансформише у
перформатив, а различите студије случаја савремених уметница перформанса
изнете у раду указују на широк интервентни потенцијал извођења и примене
стратегија у пољу звука.
Submitted January 21, 2015
Accepted for publication May 7, 2015
Original scientic paper
