Singing Beyond the Body

One of the central issues that occupies Adriana Cavarero in her book on the philosophy of vocal expression is the concept of uniqueness in the vocal sphere. Cavarero opens her book with reflections on Calvino’s story of an obsessive king whose world is built upon what he can hear and who governs his kingdom via sound, discovering that “‘the voice could be the equivalent of the hidden and most genuine part of the person’, a sort of invisible, but immediately perceptible, nucleus of uniqueness.” ¹ Cavarero writes that Calvino calls her attention to what she designates as the “vocal phenomenology of uniqueness,” and continues: “this is an ontology that concerns the incarnate singularity of every existence insofar as she or he manifests her- or himself vocally.” ² What she underlines is her intention—along with Calvino—to make a transition from a world centered on images to a world centered on sounds, and above all, the sound of the human voice that enables a perception of a corporeality “from inside.” ³