Ordinary Oralities: Everyday Voices in History

Open Access Published by De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2023

Ordinary Oralities

Everyday Voices in History

Edited by: Josephine Hoegaerts and Janice Schroeder
Funded by: European Research Council (ERC)

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111079370

Overview
Contents

About this book

Open Access

Histories of voice are often written as accounts of greatness: great statesmen, notable rebels, grands discours, and famous exceptional speakers and singers populate our shelves. This focus on the great and exceptional has not only led to disproportionate attention to a small subset of historical actors (powerful, white, western men and the occasional token woman), but also obscures the broad range of vocal practices that have informed, co-created and given meaning to human lives and interactions in the past. For most historical actors, life did not consist of grand public speeches, but of private conversations, intimate whispers, hot gossip or interminable quarrels.　

This volume suggests an extended practice of eavesdropping: rather than listening out for exceptional voices, it listens in on the more mundane aspects of vocality, including speech and song, but also less formalized shouts, hisses, noises and silences. Ranging from the Scottish highlands to China, from the bedroom to the platform, and from the 18^thuntil the 20^thcentury, contributions to this volume seek out spaces and moments that have been documented idiosyncratically or with difficulty, and where the voice and its sounds can be of particular salience. In doing so, the volume argues for a heightened attention to who speaks, and whose voices resound in history, but refuses to take the modern equation between speech and presence/representation for granted.　

Author / Editor information

Josephine Hoegaerts, University of Helsinki, Finland; Janice Schroeder, Carleton University, Canada.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	V
Ordinary Oralities: Introduction Josephine Hoegaerts and Janice Schroeder Open Access Download PDF	1
I
Becoming Kuniong: Vocal Encounter and Female Missionary Work in Gutian, China (1893–1895) Esther Hu Open Access Download PDF	17
“Good evening, you hag”: Verbalizing Unhappy Marriages in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam Tessa de Boer, Ramona Negrón and Jessica den Oudsten Open Access Download PDF	31
Sounding Sex: Erotic Oralities in the Late-Nineteenth-Century Archive Riley McGuire Open Access Download PDF	49
George Catlin’s Shut Your Mouth, the Biopolitics of Voice, and the Problem of the “Stuttering Indian” Daniel Martin Open Access Download PDF	65
II
Reading Olaudah Aloud: Elocution, the Commodity-Form, and Transverse Culture Peter J. Weise Open Access Download PDF	81
Traces of the Ordinary: The Guthrie Brothers and the Voices of Victorian “Nobodies” Hayley Smith Open Access Download PDF	99
A Shifting Swarm of Vocalities: An Assemblage Approach to PA Systems and Morning Assemblies in Finnish Primary Schools (1930s–1980s) Kaarina Kilpiö and Tiina Männistö-Funk Open Access Download PDF	113
III
Performing Waulking Songs as an Emotional Practice in Gaelic Scotland Rona Wilkie Open Access Download PDF	133
Voicing Imperial Order, Identity, and Resistance: The Singing of British Child Migrants Susanne Quitmann Open Access Download PDF	153
The Speechless Patient: Charcot’s Diagnostic Interpretation of Vocal, Gestural, and Written Expressions in Hysterical Mutism Paula Muhr Open Access Download PDF	171
Afterword
Speak, Shout, Beseech – Making History in the Streets of the Eighteenth Century: Afterword Arlette Farge and Liesl Yamaguchi Open Access Download PDF	189
Contributors Open Access Download PDF	199
Index Open Access Download PDF	201

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
Audience: Academies in the fields of history, cultural and social studies.
Pages
- Front matter: 6
- Main content: 204
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 16
Keywords: Orality; history of everyday life; voice; space

eBook

Published: August 7, 2023
ISBN: 9783111079370

Hardcover

Published: August 7, 2023
ISBN: 9783111078298