“Voice” and “voicelessness” in rhetorical studies

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“Voice” and “voicelessness” inrhetorical studiesEric King Watts aa Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication ,Wake Forest University , Winston Salem, North CarolinaPublished online: 05 Jun 2009.

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Quarterly Journal of Speech

Vol. 87, No. 2, May 2001, pp. 179-196

"Voice" and "Voicelessness" in Rhetorical StudiesEric King Watts

This essay begins with the observation that the term "voice" is frequently used in rhetorical studies literature.

Interestingly, rhetorical "voice" means different things to different scholars. This essay seeks to accomplish two

tasks related to "voice." First, it clarifies the conceptual confusion regarding "voice" found in the literature by

relating it to a tension between "speaking" and "language." Second, to avoid this tension, this essay presents a

case study in which a notion of "voice" is posited that is constitutive of the public acknowledgment of the ethical

and emotional dimensions of public discourse. Key Words: voice, agency, ethics, emotions, W.E.B.

Du Bois.

OVER the last several years, rhetorical studies has embraced and endured a numberof debates, tensions, and "turns."1 There have also been of late some key

discussions involving dialogism, polyphony, and polysemy (Murphy; Ceccarelli; Solo-mon-Watson). These conversations were each in their own way provoked by naggingquestions regarding what Donald Bryant years ago referred to as rhetoric's "function andscope" (404). Particularly, epistemological and ideological challenges offered by criticalrhetoric, cultural studies, feminist studies, and social theory have instigated examinationsof rhetoric's capacity to engender conversation, empathy, or provide for a genuinehearing of "voice." Indeed, not only is it commonplace to say that rhetorical texts arepolyvocal or multi-voiced (Murphy; Gronbeck), the concept of "voice" is rhetoric'snewest "hot topic."2 Thus, one can find numerous references to the term "voice" inrhetorical studies literature.3 Interestingly, rhetorical scholars do not have the samenotion in mind when speaking of rhetorical "voice." And so, in rhetorical studies and inliterature that informs our field there are echoes of different sorts of "voice."

This kind of conceptual slippage is perhaps expected as a field or discipline expandsinto territories not previously considered "rhetorical" (i.e. cultural studies and therhetoric of science). And yet, as we seriously begin to interrogate these "intersections"(Rosteck; Dow; Gaonkar), it becomes imperative that we clarify the theoretical assump-tions underpinning various determinations of "voice." We also need to consider whether"voice" is a useful construct for rhetoric. Our conceptual confusion about "voice" isbrought to light by some plain questions. For example, is "voice" a function of thelinguistic? Or, is "voice" an original impulse of being? Does a text contain the author's"voice"? Or does a text always already house multiple "voices"? Or, can a text be"voiceless"? Do speakers possess an authentic identifiable "voice"? Or, can speakerssound different "voices"? Not surprisingly, different critical approaches provide differentanswers to these questions. And yet, I maintain that these questions are vital to rhetoricalstudies. These questions serve as reference points for contemplating the relationshipbetween theory and practice, the "proper" object(s) of rhetorical study, and for generat-ing further discussion regarding the course of rhetoric writ large.

This critical orientation shapes this examination of "voice" and "voicelessness" inrhetorical studies. Hence, I will accomplish two tasks in this essay. First, I will explicatethe alternative senses of "voice" in rhetorical studies. My goal here is to demonstrate thatthere exists significant conceptual confusion regarding the phenomenon of "voice" thatcan be perceived along traditional borders between la parole and la langue. By clarifying

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how "voice" is conceived differently in terms of "speaking" and "language," this essaydiscloses how the inattention to the quandary over "voice" clouds the more centralquestion of the value of "voice" to rhetoric. Second, I perform a critical analysis of a casestudy so as to offer a sort of middle passage for the resonances of "voice." Rather thanconceptualize "voice" as strictly a possession of the subject or an effect of the linguistic, Iposit the concept of "voice" as a relational phenomenon occurring in discourse. In thismanner, "voice" is not reducible to the subject's agency nor does it reflect a limitlessrange of signification. "Voice," in this explication, is constitutive of ethical and emotionaldimensions that make it an answerable phenomenon. Thus, "voice" is the enunciation andthe acknowledgement of the obligations and anxieties of living in community withothers.

The "Voice" of the Speaking Subject and of the Speaking Text

The term "voice" arcs across the horizon of rhetorical studies literature much like thetail of Haley's comet. In one sense, the comet's tail is part of its vital organic being. Butfrom another perspective, the tail signifies the inevitable erosion resulting from thecomet's progression through the universe; it is a teleological trace. Seeing the matterthusly, "voice" is treated in the literature on the one hand as a stirring reminder of ourlocalized, speaking selves. And on the other, it is a teleological trace, denoting theprogression of rhetorical studies. The mapping of "voice" reveals a path that speechcommunication has taken; a path that perhaps makes rhetorical studies progressivelyvoiceless (Macke). Furthermore, this charting of "voice" illustrates how a conflictedconcept can function as the focus of study and sharpen our understanding of theinterplay between theory and practice. In this section of the essay, I delineate theconceptions of "voice" that reflect a tension between speech as a sensual, personal, and"authentic" phenomenon and language as an abstract impersonal symbolic system.

In La Parole, Georges Gusdorf remarks that "[t]o come into the world is to begin speaking. . . to transfigure experience into a universe of discourse" (9, original emphasis).Gusdorf s philosophy of language is embedded within aspects of phenomenology thatessentialize human being as a speaking subject and orients the subject toward a public ortoward others (119-127). To clarify the importance of this humanistic relationship to thisproject, let us ask two interrelated questions of speech that, taken together, specify for ushow conceptions of "voice" closely parallel a rift in rhetorical studies between notions ofspeaker agency and critical interpretation. First, what does it mean to speak as "/"in thisuniverse of discourse? Second, what does it mean to speak a universe of discourse?

"Voice" of the Speaking Subject

Interestingly, when speaking of "voice," one must first look toward a conception of"voice" as pre-discursive. In the beginning of human awareness, writes David Appelbaum,the time when we first recognized ourselves in our own voices, humanity embarked upona profound flight away from the body. As we came to think about ourselves and expressthese thoughts, the body was increasingly written out of history (59-60). For Appelbaum,"the voice arises in roughly the same manner for everyone. Air moving along the chordsof the voice box causes vibration like the river wind against a simple reed" (3). In a sense,the "voice" announces the body's presence; it utters the body's sensory experience of itsenvironment and of others. "Voice" asserts the "truth" of a kind of physiological

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understanding of the immediacy and interconnectedness of the world before the mindlearns how to "talk" itself into an understanding based on an "I-Thou" division. And sowith the advent of discourse, cognition supercedes (and displaces) the body and thesubject learns to speak-that is, achieves an understanding of self as "I" (Appelbaum).

If we situate the question of the speaking "I" within philosophical hermeneutictraditions,4 a Gordian knot of sorts apprehends us. The one who speaks as "I" is the onewhose self-understanding is caught up in the historical problem of understanding as such(Risser). The identity of "I" is not stable because "I" can only be understood in relationto a surrounding world. Knowledge of the speaking "I" is contingent on the interpreta-tion of on-going history (Gadamer; Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination). Thus, as a problem ofphilosophical hermeneutics, rhetorical "voice" must be considered an ontologicalconcern, not a physiological one. This is so because human understanding is not merelyderived from language; rather, the manner in which understanding is achieved exhibits"an ontological (primordial) structure constituting the nature of human being (Dasein)"(Hyde and Smith 347). As living bodies, however, we experience ourselves as open andendless since we cannot "objectively" determine our own boundaries. Indeed, Heideg-ger tells us that Dasein's temporality constitutes its essential openness (Hyde 377). Thislack of complete self-perception prohibits us from understanding our own finitude. Andso the fact that "I" am writing these words refers to an instability, a rupture inunderstanding as much as it denotes a person "speaking." Thus, the question of thespeaking "I" vectors toward the modern project of stabilizing the subject in order toconstitute authorship and authority.5 Although it is language that mediates humanunderstanding with "living history" (Risser 123), "speaking" designates an activity thatcan be localized and, thus, stabilized by referring to a particular body. In this way, asubject's agency and capacity for interpretive understanding is linked to "voice" as "anactivity within the body, one that makes use of the material organs of speech . . . theessential unity of a word with its point of enunciation" (Baumlin xxiii). The concept of"voice" as a bodily and organic action has a delimited place in rhetorical studiesliterature.

For much of the 20th century rhetorical studies shifted analytical interest from studiesof artistic merit, to studies of effect, to studies of ideas. Each of these postures is organizedaround a shared belief in the importance of the "Great Speaker"—the "Voice" ofhistory.6 More recently, some prominent rhetorical scholars tacitly treat "voice" as thesound of an orator's authority.7 For instance, James Darsey characterizes W.E.B. DuBois's "voice" as an "aerialist" based on the orchestration of themes and images thattransport the scholar and activist to a universal horizon (93). However, a more peculiardefinition has also emerged in recent years. Michael Huspeck, in Transgressing Discourses:Communication and the Voice of the Other, characterizes this distinction in the introductionto the volume by suggesting that "voice" is resistance to oppression (4). Given Huspeck'shermeneutic bias, "voice" is liberated by critical academic practices that are geared to"promote a genuine exchange of meanings between self and other" (7). The point here isnot that sensitive critics are unimportant in illuminating the dimensions of "voice."8

Rather, it is that Huspeck suggests that "voice" is a phenomenological effect ofmarginalization. This allusion is understandable. When the subject speaks, one an-nounces one's idiosyncratic presence in the world. Recall that Appelbaum argues thatlinguistic processes and society's rationalization hide one's "voice" behind mechanizedcoded relations. The rationality of the sign is privileged over the private body as

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concerns with the efficacy of the polis promote die status of the social body (43-45). Thusone can see how "voice" can be elided into a concept of alienated'speech. Risser remindsus that philosophies of the subject insist on "letting that which is far and alienated speakagain" (172). Michael J. Hyde and Kenneth Rufo consult the writings of EmmanuelLevinas in their vibrant analysis of how the disability civil rights group known as "NotDead Yet!" performs a "rhetorical interruption in its purest form." These scholars positthe idea that a "call of conscience" is a phenomenon with a "voice" (3). FollowingLevinas, Hyde and Rufo imply that "voice" is the tone of temporality itself, thetaken-for-granted sound of Dasein's becoming (10). Whether conceived as a sayingwithout words or speech, the idea that "voice" is the sound of the misanthropic body istypical.

Many rhetorical scholars share die concern that alienated persons be able to "finddieir own voices" (Campbell 37), to tell their own stories (Taylor 273). For example,Elizabeth Bell argues that we must look toward the "reality of women's silence" (91) if weare to find "voice." Philosophically, "voice" is conceived as an "original" capacity ofhuman being. However, as rhetoric endures ideological turns and seeks out previouslymuffled discourses (Black), rhetorical scholars refer to "voice" as a mode of speakeragency that is subject to distortion and mutation (Olson, "Margins of Rhetoric"). Forsome scholars, the recollection of "voice" has become synonymous with the emancipa-tion of die oppressed (Appelbaum). This characterization of "voice" is nearly alwayscoupled with notions of contested identity or authenticity (Cooper and Descutner). Thus,because of die critical interest in the recovery of lost voices, the "voice" of the speakingsubject is transfigured in rhetorical studies into the "voice" of the racial, ethnic,gendered, and sexual other.9 But, if this is so, what is the significance of speaking?

The Comet's Tail

Returning to the "essential unity" that "voice" shares with language allows one tocompare "voice" to M.M. Bakhtin's notion of utterance. As a "primary genre," anutterance arises out of the daily flow of lived existence [Speech Genres 67). And so anutterance shares with "voice" an animated point of contact with life. The association of"voice" with an utterance, however, moves one along the comet's tail, away from thebody and toward a person's "intention to signify" (Risser 177, original emphasis). Thisrelationship brings us squarely to the second query regarding the meaning of speaking.Signification is about sense-making.

When "I" intend to signify, "I" intend to speak of my lived experience; my "voice"captures "my sensual, bodily insertion" into the world (Macke 136). This speaking isalways simultaneously an interpretive act because a universe of linguistic possibilitiesconstitute our "hermeneutical situation" (Hyde and Smitii 352). Appreciating rhetoric's"primordial function" of disclosing meaning to audiences (and to oneself), means diatcommunication cannot take place without our ability to structure our understandinglinguistically (Hyde and Smith 350). Although a phenomenological inquiry into theconditions of speaking keeps us in close correspondence widi lived experience, concernswith the linguistic lead one to comprehend signification as primarily symbolic, havinglitde to do with the ontic. That is, exchanging symbols not only creates our universe ofdiscourse, it puts a higher premium on the functional processes of symbolic exchange(Habermas 77-112). "The need to hear oneself as voiced is supplanted by the desire tocommunicate signs" (Risser xi). This desire can also be understood as die way in which

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we are seduced into forgetting how language forces upon all of us a separation from theworld. 'Just as standing is, anatomically speaking, a perpetual flight from falling, so isphonemic articulation, vocally speaking, a perpetual flight from the truth" (Appelbaum58). This desire has greater significance when read in correspondence with a dualmovement. First, as mentioned above, the "voice" of the subject has become the "voice"of the marginalized other. Second, rhetorical studies have increasingly shifted toward theconsideration of symbol systems in studies of speech (Macke), thus, transferring criticalattention toward the manner in which dominant language authorizes or silences forms ofdiscourse (Olson, "Liabilities of Language"). And so when "voice" is conceived in termsof otherness and critical reflection is cast on the effects of the text, rhetorical projectsinterested in retrieving or understanding "voice" are increasingly concerned withconfronting, deconstructing, and interrogating a dominant language system that deniesdifference and, thus, mutes "voice" (Huspeck 5; Dow, "Politicizing Voice").

Narrative emerges here as an important form of rhetorical agency that allows for apublic hearing of the other's "voice" (Fisher; Taylor; Smith; Cooper and Descutner).This is so because storytelling entails a depiction of the manner in which persons makesense of their lives as historical and cultural events. Indications of the other's "voice" areoftentimes embedded in the public act of storytelling (Campbell; Morris; Taylor, "HomeZero"). The same forces that mute "voice"—rationalism and scientism—however, chal-lenge the very idea of narrative authority. Feminist and Afrocentric theory bring thecharacter of this challenge to rhetorical studies most sharply. Concerned with "howepistemic authority is established and withheld," Lorraine Code argues that historicallythe discourses which establish knowledge claims are "disembodied [and] disconnected"(204). That is, "epistemology makers" are anonymous no ones who speak from nowhere(204). Such a rationalist language system privileges Anglo-American masculinity as auniversal construct and disavows the lived accounts of women, people of color, andhomosexuals (Thayer-Bacon; Kaplan; Collins; Asante).

At this point in the exploration, "voice" helps one perform a critical moiety; that is, onthe one hand one can sense its physiology and return to the speaker's lifeworld. Here, thespoken "voice" bears and constitutes lived narratives and experiences. The "voice"irrupts into language and "locates theory, knowledge, and experience production withinsocial-historical situations and epistemic struggles" (Code 206). Again, this is whyrhetoricians who link "voice" to the speaking subject conceive of it as rhetorical agency.This is also why "Leftist" critique associates "voice" with power. Alternatively, one mayalso follow the "drift" (Risser 175) in the "voice" and enter the realm of the text where"voice" operates as a sign of a set of cultural meanings or stands for the body of aninterpretive community.

"Voice" of the Speaking Text

In The Dialogic Imagination, Bakhtin refutes the notion in literary theory that style is areflection of an autonomous subjectivity or an independent effect of language. Ratherthan get "bogged down in stylistic trivia" (239), an excursus into how the features of thetext reveal the mind of the author or indicate the possibilities of signification systems,Bakhtin suggests that critics attend to how utterances enter into the work as a whole andparticipates in its "most immediate unity...." (262). Bakhtin's theory of the novel, insome important ways, hinges on the fact that he treats semantic content as a "thirdperson" endowed with a living history and culture (Morson and Emerson 136). This

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"person" is not a self-governing being, however, but is an animated reference for asystem of cultural practices and a set of communal meanings. And, what of the "voice"?Bakhtin recognizes in the text multiple "voices" speaking from a plethora of historicalplaces and cultural milieus [Dialogic Imagination, Speech Genres). Rhetoricians havegenerally treated such polyphony in terms of stylistic or idiomatic variables; as such"voice" references a set of cultural meanings, vocabularies, or interpretive communities.

As a function of the symbol system, "voice" is a trope that refers to the publicperformance of culturally specific idioms or vocabularies (Huspeck and Kendall 3). Forexample, Robert Scott refers to an "Eastern voice" that he attempted (and by his ownadmission failed) to adopt stylistically (9). Michael Graves delineates the "voice" of theQuaker sermon by focusing on metaphor (369). Kent Ono comments on his mother's"voice" in a public "letter/essay" and reflects on how "[voice] seems to be an aptmetaphor for how we think about who we are in the world" (115). Thomas K. Nakayamaexplores the ways in which he substitutes "voices" as he plays with language (235). AndJohn Murphy explores how Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "voice" invests Bill Clinton withthe cultural authority of the black church (280). Although these examples point outslightly varying notions of textual "voice," they each understand "voice" as a stylisticand idiomatic variable. With the advent of postmodern theory and the presumption"that language speaks us, that voices are already inscribed within us" (Swearingen 121),the conception that subject positions are constitutive of the way texts address us issignificant (Charland; McGee; McKerrow, "Critical Rhetoric"). The critical task here isto reveal how the text "voices" a subject position that we, in turn, take up. For example,Barry Brummett and Detine L. Bowers argue that African American cinematic represen-tations position viewers as subjects of the text's cultural "voice" (121-125). Althoughthese scholars assert the idea that "voice" is an organic phenomenon bound to a person'sbody, their analysis lifts it as a signifier (133).

At this juncture it would be useful to clarify in terms of "voice" the tension betweenspeaking and language. As the capacity of the speaking subject, "voice" emanates out ofthe distinct lived experiences of persons. "Voice" interrupts the on-going flux of timeand space by projecting the subject into it; the sound of one's "voice" bends space andtime. The experience of "voice" jars us from the illusion of sameness and continuity thatresults from conformity and mindlessness in society. This disruption is perhaps similar toNietzsche's will to power or Heidegger's "call of conscience."10 One's "voice" entailsone's capacity for moral agency. "Voice" is a puissant phenomenon.

As a function of language, however, "voice" becomes exponentially more pliable andmore synthetic. Freed from its material and organic moorings, "voice" can signifyidentity across history and can be recollected from within a Diaspora (Gates; Baker, LongBlack Song; Adell). Metaphorically, "voice" operates as a vehicle for a set of culturalmeanings that come into play in a text. When a text is said to be multi-vocal, it isconsidered to be the site of tendentious languages or ideological struggles (Hall).Listening to the speaking text involves a sensitive hermeneutic; the critic is empowered,therefore, because it is the critical act that generates textual "voice." Indeed bothorientations serve important functions for rhetorical studies scholars. The ways in whichrhetorical traditions (Murphy) are re-made and reinvigorated by speakers with agencyaids in our understanding of modes of invention. Also, when we store these traditions asknowledge, rhetoricians are charged with the problem of accounting for the deploymentin public discourse of social knowledge (Farrell, "Knowledge").

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Clearly, concepts of "voice" arise out of a history of bifurcated scholarly interestsbetween speaker agency and critical interpretation—between the phenomenon of speak-ing and the possibilities of language. Even with this dichotomy, notions of "voice" orbitthe now central concern in rhetorical studies to deliver or disclose the lives andperspectives of those at the margins of society. I have, therefore, attempted to do morethan suggest that the term "voice" is polysemic. Cracking along traditional lines betweenspeaking and language and shaped as responses to domination, the differences in "voice"correspond to disagreements about not only the proper object of rhetorical study, but theideological bent of criticism. The dispute over whether scholars ought to examinerhetorical texts that tell us about eloquence or search out a wide variety of discursive"processes" is relevant (Leff; Warnick). But I am not here arguing about how "voice" is amark of speaker authority and how we ought to look to icons for exemplars ofmagnificent speaking. Neither do I posit the idea that "processes" of power ought to betransfigured into linguistic formations that silence "voice." The argument that I make inthe following section is stimulated by the question, "how can the notion of 'voice'enhance rhetorical studies?"

Drawing from insights made by previous scholars, I argue that "voice" is a particularkind of speech phenomenon that pronounces the ethical problems and obligationsincumbent in community building and arouses in persons and groups the frustrations,sufferings, and joys of such commitments. Rhetorical "voice" is not a unitary thing thatinhabits texts or persons either singly or collectively. It is itself a happening that isinvigorated by a public awareness of the ethical and emotional concerns of discourse.Saying that persons or groups have "voice" does not offer it as a unidirectional,primordial and autonomous projection out of the body, nor does it become a semioticproject. Rather, speakers can be endowed with "voice" as a function of a publicacknowledgment of the ethics of speaking and the emotions of others. This recognition isoften intertextual and mediated. "Voice," then, is the sound of specific experientialencounters in civic life.

As it stands now, "voice" is an ambiguous and redundant concept. It is another termfor the "speaking" subject. It represents the vocabulary of an interpretive community. Itis a synonym for "style." It is a catchall term that means too many things and, thus,means virtually nothing. Except for the tendency in our field to talk of "voice" whenreflecting on gendered or cultural revisions and subversions of dominant language orpractices, rhetorical studies are, in a sense, "voiceless." So, this essay now turns to a casestudy that promises to help clarify "voice" in terms of ethics and emotions and providean appreciation its importance to rhetorical studies.

The "Voice" of America's National Character: W.E.B. Du Bois's"My Country 'Tis of Thee"

By the time W.E.B. Du Bois appropriated the national song, "America," in 1907, ithad already served the rhetorical ends of abolitionists, suffragists, and labor organizers.11

Penned in 1831 by Samuel Francis Smith, "America," better known as "My Country 'Tisof Thee," was consciously adopted by politicians and educators as a means of shapingthe national character during a time of seeming world disorder (Branham, " 'Of Thee ISing' " 623-27). As an ideological device, "America" instructs its "citizen singers" abouttheir civic responsibilities to a set of national principles and encourages citizens to " 'feelrightly' " about them (Branham 623,627). The singing of national songs, Branham writes

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elsewhere, offers a cultural practice where persons affirm their values and sentimentsregarding the nation and their citizenship (" 'God Save The !'" 19-20). Such apublic affirmation is problematic for persons who are barred from sharing in thefreedoms celebrated by the song. And so, "America" serves as a site of subversion andcontest. It acts as a vehicle for those who want to enter into a national dialogue aboutrights and liberties and question the myths inscribed in the song.

Rather than pay tribute to America, Du Bois's version of the song-like otherappropriations-calls into question the national character by performing a public critiqueof the song's ideals. Moreover, Du Bois's "My Country" constitutes a civics lesson. Thesong addresses the ethical concerns and anxieties shared among African Americans thatoccasion the public ritual of singing "America." In this section of the essay, I explore theoccurrence of "voice" mediated by Du Bois's "My Country 'Tis of Thee." There arethree interpenetrating aspects of "voice" illuminated by my critical approach: First,"voice" is energized by public reflections on the ethics of speech. Du Bois meditates onthe ethical dilemma blacks face regarding public displays of patriotism. The songexploits a moral tension in "America" that invigorates "voice." Second, "voice" iscultivated through shared emotions. "My Country 'Tis of Thee" arouses in the audiencethe angst that accompanies the denial of America's rights and the passions associatedwith their potential deliverance. Shared emotions among persons addressed by thispublic ritual edify "voice." Lastly, "voice" is actualized by public acknowledgment. DuBois's version of "America" posits a public encounter with Americans. It is the veryacknowledgement of the ethical and emotional entailments of "My Country" thatrealizes "voice." "My Country" alerts both white and African Americans to the politicalchallenges and civic responsibilities always already facing them and demonstrates apublic hearing that makes "voice" possible.

The Ethics of "Voice"

"My Country 'Tis of Thee" begins with a lamentation and an observation that ispersonally directed at the reader. The brief introduction orchestrates the themes of civicresponsibility, racial indignation, and social recognition into a familiar, yet painfullyawkward scene. I reproduce it here in its entirety:

Of course you have faced the dilemma: it ["America"] is announced, they all smirk and rise. Ifthey are ultra, they remove their hats and look ecstatic; then they look at you. What shall you do?Noblesse oblige; you cannot be boorish, or ungracious; and too, after all it «your country and youdo love its ideals if not all of its realities. Now, then, I have thought of a way out: Arise, gracefullyremove your hat, and tilt your head. Then sing as follows, powerfully and with deep unction.They'll hardly note the little changes and their feelings and your conscience will thus be saved(original emphasis).12

In this introduction, Du Bois addresses a personal and public African Americanbody-"you." As a reader, it is "I" who is addressed. "I" have faced the conundrumdepicted. It is a paralyzing moment brokered by the public ritual of singing "America."But the address is also a public characterization of a collective predicament; "MyCountry" addresses the problems of African American public discourse. The announce-ment of "America" signals a rhetorical double bind for black speech. On the one hand,singing the song may constitute an act of self-effacement. The "truths" of the song do notring true. The song ignores and degrades one's very life; the African American "citizen

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singer" recedes from view as "I" am rend from myself. The song's fantastic countrycannot really be "my country" and, thus, "I" am absent in it. And yet, if "I" refuse to singI risk denying an important American fact and ideal. It is my country.

For Du Bois the future of black America is not only inseparable from the future ofAmerica, America's destiny and "soul" depends on black America (Du Bois, Darkwater;Byerman). In other words, the health of the social body is at stake. Black public"agitation is supremely useful," Du Bois wrote three years later in Crisis, "for it tells thebody of decay... Without it the body would suffer unknowingly... The same is true of theSocial Body. Agitation is a necessary evil to tell of the ills of the Suffering" (1: 10,emphasis added). Although rhetorical efficacy is found in strategic silence, in mutenessthere is no "voice" (Huspeck and Kendall; Petronio, Flores, and Hecht). Indeed, DuBois's comment about caring for the health of the social body through speech parallelsAudre Lorde's concerns regarding the health risks that this kind of silence posesspecifically for a woman's body (Olson, "Margins of Rhetoric"). Thus one has a duty tooneself as well as a civic duty to negotiate the constraints imposed on one's speech. Andso, "What shall you do?"

The polarized constraints of muteness and ventriloquism imperil "voice" since withneither extreme can there be a public consideration of the ethics of speaking. Under suchconditions the social body continues to suffer unknowingly. "Now, then, I have thoughtof a way out . . ." Du Bois choreographs a collective public performance that could berepeated each and every time that "America" is announced. "Arise, gracefully removeyour hat, and tilt your head." Du Bois suggests an alternate version of "America"-onethat aids in the enunciation of America's corrupt history, shared deception, and yet to befulfilled promises:

My Country 'tis of thee,Late land of slavery,

Of thee I sing.Land where my father's prideSlept where my mother died,From every mountain side

Let freedom ring!

Du Bois characterizes his revisions in terms of "little changes." Aesthetically, Du Bois'sversion parallels the original and exploits this rhythmic familiarity as a vehicle forvoicing.13 But it is precisely these "little changes" that allow African Americans tofaithfully articulate themselves and their concerns, to speak in a way in which waspreviously unheard. The "little changes" represent ethical challenges to the "perfor-mance conditions" (McKerrow, "Centrality of Justification," 24) that are defined andinstitutionalized through the public ritual of singing "America." Appelbaum tells us thatsuch vocalizations are understood as a "cough." As a phonic alteration that unsettles thefamiliar cadence of taken-for-granted discourse. "The cough interrupts" (4). These "littlechanges" represent a form of "rhetorical interruption" (Hyde and Rufo) that may jarwhite "citizen singers" out of their normal ritual. The presence of such an ethicalchallenge is phenomenal; it is the challenge that invigorates "voice." This contest is,however, circumscribed by intense and deep-seated emotions that orient speakers andaudiences toward (and away from) one another. Let us turn now to a consideration ofhow "voice" is constitutive of shared experience.

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The Emotions of "Voice"

Craig R. Smith and Michael J. Hyde have argued that emotions play an essential rolein constituting community (446-7). These scholars note a controversy surroundingnotions of "public" in the literature and seek to resolve it by accenting the "communalcharacter of our existence." Moreover, "it is by way of our emotions and the 'moods' thatthey sustain that we come to see, interpret, and involve ourselves with the world" (448,emphasis added). Drawing from Aristotle's understanding of the pathe, Smith and Hydeassert that emotional intensity and tone augment group cohesion and heighten one'sperceived proximity and empathy toward persons. "Emotion modifies the lived timeand space of our everyday being-with-others" (453). It is this altered sense of ourrelationship with others in our world that enables us to "find the right word" (Risser 14)to touch die other. Emotions can incite our imaginations about the possibilities ofcommunion. It is this shared affective space that cultivates "voice."

Du Bois's prologue to "My Country" conveys anxiety, loathing, and a passionatededication to oneself and toward American ideals. The dilemma that opens the drama isexcruciating. And yet, Du Bois finds a way for "dieir feelings and your conscience [to]thus be saved." In this section, I delineate two sets of affiliations oriented by the emotionsthat cultivate "voice." First, African Americans addressed by "My Country" areencouraged to collectively experience and make sense of this public ritual. Second, as acultural practice that African Americans can now genuinely take part in, "My Country"constitutes a publicness where black and white Americans may constitute shared senti-ments about their social world. These two affiliations cohere into a shared reverence forthe ideals of "America."

The anxious "dilemma" that "you" the reader/singer of "My Country" face is ventedby the intense pleasure of public speaking. "Arise . . . [t]hen sing as follows, powerfullyand with deep unction." Du Bois's "way out" for black public speech serves a unifyingpurpose for African Americans. "My Country" is situated within a contentious blacksocial world. The public critique of Booker T. Washington in the Souls of Black Folk andthe highly publicized activities of the Niagara Movement put Du Bois in the eye of ahurricane (Lewis 285-350). Considered the "Negro" spokesman, Washington wieldedvast influences on the distribution of scarce resources for African American colleges,newspapers and journals (Johnson and Johnson 25-30). Washington's power over thedevelopment of black America was contested, however, by Du Bois and other membersof the "Talented Tenth" (Lewis 325). Despite Washington's preeminence, his reignsignifies a lack of consensus regarding how blacks should perceive themselves, theirhistory, and their future.14 As black people from many different walks of life who holddifferent ideas regarding America face the anxiety of "America," Du Bois's rhetoricalprescription mediates tile incoherence among black feelings by proposing both resis-tance and atonement toward "America."

Singing with "deep unction" refers simultaneously to a kind of religious fervor toward"My Country" and to a black "trickster" tradition (Baker, Long Black Song). As a spiritualreckoning, "My Country" affirms one's patriotism. As a pretence, a "deformation ofmastery" (Baker, Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance 24), "My Country" registers agrievance. These two moods and motivations interpenetrate one another in the singingof "America" and, thus, they coax a closer affiliation among diverse interests in the blackcommunity. Citizen singers can powerfully belt out Du Bois's "My Country" and neednot be dissuaded from singing by the fact that some fellow singers are principally

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affirming "America" while others are subverting it. As Alain Locke will posit years laterin The New Negro, cultural practices such as this transfigure black people from folks whomerely have a "problem" in common into a community with a common purpose (3-15).Through a careful invocation and juxtaposition of emotions, "My Country" converts ashared dilemma into a shared public utterance that supports "voice."

Meanwhile, Du Bois portrays white Americans as embodying ugly emotions regard-ing the double bind that African American speech faces. "[T]hey all smirk and . . . [i]fthey are ultra, they remove their hats and look ecstatic; then they look at you." To theirsurprise or, perhaps, dismay, "you" rise proudly and sing powerfully:

My country 'tis of thee . . .My native country theeLand of the slave set free,

Thy fame I love,I love thy rocks and rillsAnd o'er they hate which chills,My heart with purpose thrills,

To rise above.

The chorus of citizen singers experiences both harmony and discord. Love and hatemingle. In "My Country" whites despise the very idea of black participation in thecultural and political life of America. In fact, "America" in its original form can be readas a paean to white supremacy (Branham, "Of Thee I Sing" 629-30). But since suchhatred can only be divisive, Du Bois exalts the hearts of black America "to rise above"the bigotry and daily discriminations white America offers:

Let laments swell the breezeAnd wring from all the trees

Sweet freedom's song.Let laggard tongues awake,Let all who hear partake,Let Southern silence quake,

The sound prolong.

Rising out of public indifference and "Southern silence" is a spiritual commitment tojustice fostered by the souls of black folk. The "laments" of "My Country" include thesensual sounds of African American spirituals—the "sorrow songs." Embodying "therhythmic cry of the slave" (Du Bois, Souls 180), these songs awaken in "all who hear" arenewed devotion to "Sweet freedom's song." This emotional arousal relies upon a senseof community nourished by the "most beautiful expression of human experience bornthis side the seas" (Du Bois, Souls 181). Roger Scruton, in The Aesthetic Understanding,argues that objects and ideas are made sacred in public ritual and "reflect the formsthrough which our emotions are enacted, and will bear the stamp of shared humaninterests" (149-51). A synecdochic relation among black and white folk emerges,therefore, in "My Country" through the assertion of a common history and the sharedperformance of a national song. In Darkwater, Du Bois remarks upon black folk'sfundamental kinship with "the souls of white folk": "I see in and through them. I viewthem from unusual points of vantage. Not as a foreigner do I come, for / am native...bone of their thought and flesh of their language" (29, emphasis added). Seen from theperspective of a hermeneutical situation, Du Bois describes how die "fore-structure"(Hyde and Smith) of racism has, in part, constituted his subjectivity. Here Du Boisimplies that the souls of black folk are a function of American linguistic possibilities—

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products of an historical and supremacist interpretive act. But as a subject, performing aninterpretive act of his own, Du Bois transforms "America" into a homeland. "It is mycountry." A tense familial relation is, thus, rehearsed in song and makes available to allcitizen singers the depth of feeling associated with patriotism and alienation. White andAfrican American citizen singers testify to the potentially edified national character of"America" by prolonging the sound of freedom's song; a sound that gets its essentialtenor from the sorrow songs. This national chorus rises to a crescendo and is transmutedinto a collective prayer:

Our fathers' God to theeAuthor of liberty,

To thee we singSoon may our land be bright,With Freedom's happy lightProtect us by Thy might,

Great God our King.

The concern and piety for the promise of "America" is mediated by a respect for thespiritual contributions and the sufferings of black America expressed in "My Country."Taken together, the articulation of the ethical problems of black speech and the love andfrustrations Americans share regarding their common dwelling place15—ethos—stimulateand cultivate "voice." It takes an acknowledgement, however, for "voice" to beactualized. For at its core, "voice" is a phenomenon of public hearing.

The Acknowledgment of "Voice"

"My Country" sounds a painful and joyful noise; there is remembrance of racistindignity and death, as well as the promise of divine transcendence. The song isintroduced, however, by a paradoxical injunction that is acutely felt by the AfricanAmerican citizen singer and perceptible to the white American citizen singer. "If they areultra, they remove their hats and look ecstatic; then they look at you." Du Bois understandsthis moment of transfixion by the white gaze as an event that prohibits mutualunderstanding between the races.16 The black body is frozen as an object of "amusedcontempt and pity" in this gaze (Du Bois, Souls 8). It is held actionless and is muted; it,thus, does not constitute a being to which one must answer. Because of epistemologicalpresumptions held up by late 19th century scientific racism (Wilson), the black bodyappears transparent and simple. White supremacist thinking creates a fantasy of com-plete knowledge about the "objective" world of which the black body is a part.

This sort of mastery over the world instigates a crucial separation between the"knowledge" white folk claim and the actual act of seeing. Bakhtin, in Toward a Philosophy ofthe Act, bemoans the disjunction in Western philosophy between the "content/sense" oftheory and the "actual cognitional act as a performed deed" that structures knowledge(7). "And this concept of Being is indifferent to the central fact-central for me-of myunique and actual communion with Being. . . it cannot provide any criteria for the life ofpractice, the life of the deed, for it is not the Being in which I live, and, if it were the onlyBeing, / would not exist" (Bakhtin 9, original emphasis). Similarly, Thomas B. Farrellreminds us that "technical knowledge" is removed from public scrutiny by expertise andis not open to active critique ("Social Knowledge II" 330). This separation betweentheoria and "life in its actual aliveness" (Bakhtin 15), lets white folk off the hook in publicencounters with black folk.

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"My Country" bridges this gulf between the lives of black and white citizen singers byconstituting an emotional and ethical public ritual that compels an acknowledgement ofracial injustice. As black folk rise to sing "My Country," under the gaze of white folk, theact ofseeing is integrated into the activity of black speaking. Du Bois articulates a point oflived contact between the actual seers and the actual seen; this site (sight) is fusional. Thecommitment and courage of black "citizen singers" becomes apparent to white folk. Thepower and deep unction with which black "citizen singers" enunciate the "little changes"to "America" oblige acknowledgment. But Du Bois claims that "[tjhey'll hardly note"the alterations and "their feelings and your conscience will thus be saved." It is temptingto understand this notion as troubling to the actualization of "voice." Du Bois was apragmatist and an opportunist as much as he was a Romantic (Rampersad 48-52; Zamir192-98). He believed that even a small fissure in American thought and political practicecould be effectively exploited. And so, to say that white folks will "hardly note" thechanges to "America" is perhaps to say that they will note them in some small measure.

On the other hand, I believe that the phrase can be read ironically. Wayne Boothshows the "Ways of Stable Irony" that conditions a knowledgeable reading of "MyCountry" by African American citizen singers. According to Booth, irony is madepossible by the intended rejection of literal meaning. A covert message is revealed to anaudience through this practice. Moreover, Booth insists that this meaning is a form of"knowledge" (14-18). And so, what does Du Bois mean by "[t]hey'U hardly note the littlechanges ..."? If taken literally, it means that the black performance of song will besomehow overlooked and misheard. Historically, black folk survival often dependedupon such white misperception as in the way that white folks mistook references to"freedom" in plantation songs as signifying a celestial release rather than a worldly one(Baker, Long Black Song). The deliberate construction of such misreadings is a part of ablack folk discursive legacy where the storyteller becomes a "trickster" (Gates). But, asan instance of irony, we are compelled here to reject this meaning. In the space of beingseen and noted, Du Bois asks his knowing black audience to question how blacks arecomplicit17 in their publicness. As deceivers, "tricksters" mask their faces against theblows of white supremacy. White racists are tricked into believing that no challenge totheir authority accompanies such public performances. Du Bois understands that anovert form of public acknowledgement is required for the cultivation of a black publicvoice. And so he asks black citizen singers to reflect on the rhetorical potentialities ofspeaking unmasked and in the open. He tests the limits of subversion, ironically, through asubversive interpretive act. White Americans must note the stresses placed on publicspeech. Thus, in the space of this public acknowledgement of the ethics and emotions ofAfrican American speech, "voice" occurs.

Conclusions

In an attempt to clarify the meaning and place of "voice" in rhetorical studies, I haveargued that "voice" has been treated by scholars diametrically as the capacity of thespeaking subject, or as a function of the linguistic. Scholars who tend to comprehend"voice" in terms of the former operationalize it as speaker agency or authority. "Voice"retains some of its material or organic sense in this usage. "Voice" lives in oratory andthe orator's state of mind can be comprehended through textual analysis or close readingof style. I pointed out that as rhetoricians try to answer challenges offered by culturalstudies and feminist theory, "voice" has come to mean the sound of the dispossessed.

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"Voice" is also understood in rhetorical studies as a signifier. Postmodern turns andpoststructural fissions de-center the subject, critique discursive formations of power,encode "voice" as a variable of the text or convert it into the sound of anonymous socialprocesses. Idioms, vocabularies, and sets of cultural meanings are referenced by "voice"as the critic mines for hermeneutic depth in a text. Rather than being an authoritativeprojector of "voice," the subject is understood as being spoken by language. In this waylanguage inscribes "voice" because of its capacity for signification and variation. Each ofthese orientations toward "voice" suffers by being assigned an exclusively "political"function. As a strategy of resistance and reclamation, "voice" seems to occur at theboundaries of discourse; it announces the value and beauty of "otherness." To be surethis function is vital for the health of us all. But are we comfortable with the idea thatpersons or groups who enjoy "centrality" (as temporary as it may be) are "voiceless"? Isrhetorical "voice" principally a phenomenon of being liminal?

In an effort to address these sorts of issues I offered a case study of the cultivation of"voice" that highlights its essential character as an ethical and emotional occurrence inneed of acknowledgment. In "My Country" Du Bois is endowed with rhetorical "voice"due to the conflation and recognition of the ethical and emotional dimensions of publicspeech. This case sheds light on the character of this public, dialogic happening as well ason the particular stresses that African American speakers confront when attempting tocultivate a public "voice." Du Bois is quite poignant regarding the constraints on "voice"imposed by social life: "Outside this physical shrinking which we have in common withchildren, comes the mental recoil—the disinclination to have our thoughts and ideasdisarranged and upset. And still further on comes the moral dread of blame—of facing theman we have wronged and hearing the hurt from his own quivering lips" (Crisis 1:17).Our lives and histories are replete with such encounters; however, many potentialmeetings of the mind and heart slip by us unrequited. These moments represent lostchances for rhetoric.

If "voice" is to be meaningful to rhetorical studies it has to be capable of salvaging thecommunal features of discourse for the challenge to rhetoric over the horizon is to findnew ways to "keep it real" in a fast-approaching virtual reality. As we all increasingly feeldisplaced from one another, occurrences of "voice" represent events in which we cancharacterize our commitments and sentiments toward our social spaces. "Voice" groundsus by reminding us of our situatedness. We are also reminded of our needs. Such aninterest for criticism serves to return us to an examination of the basic requirements forliving with ourselves and with others. The universe of discourse we inherit and createcannot, therefore, become totally circumscribed by simulacra; nor can we bury ourcollective heads in the sand and wish for the fantastic "good old days" when everyonemeant what they said and said what they meant.

There is an instructive tension revealed by this explication of "voice." As I have said,some invocations of "voice" pay tribute to the power of the speaking subject, whileothers question the very idea of centrality or subjectivity. On the one hand "voice"registers the life of the human being among her fellows and on the other, "voice" signifiesideology and identity. The important point here is that "voice" is not detachable from abody (singular or collective). Similarly, it is always in excess of the body presumed tocontain it. I have proposed a notion of "voice" that concerns itself with the material orsymbolic conditions of "speaking" and "hearing." Constitutive of an ethical andemotional event, "voice" needs rhetoricians to explore the social commitments that

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speech entails. To attend to the character of our public promises and the care (orcarelessness) with which they are tendered. To appreciate how persons are invited to orprohibited from experiencing the lives of speakers. These matters not only further ourknowledge about our intellectual pursuits, they renew our own commitments to the polls.

Notes

Eric King Watts is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Wake Forest University, WinstonSalem, North Carolina.

1 See Dilip Gaonkar's critique of the "globalization" of rhetoric in Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretationin the Age of Science Eds. Alan G. Gross and William M. Keith. (Albany, NY: State University of New York P, 1997); alsonote the extended response to Gaonkar, Quarterly Journal of Speech 85 (1999): 86-109; Bonnie Dow's critique of ThomasRosteck's "totalizing vision of cultural studies," a view that overlooks, she argues, feminist theory. Quarterly Journal ofSpeech 83 (1997): 90-131; Barbara Warnick, "Leff in Context: What is the Critic's Role?" Quarterly Journal of Speech 78(1992): 232-37; and the responses to Raymie McKerrow's formulation of "Critical Rhetoric," Robert Hariman,Quarterly Journal of Speech 77 (1991): 67-70, and Maurice Charland, 71-74.

2 Bonnie Dow, "Politicizing Voice," 245; this essay was part of a "Special Series on 'Voices'," in Western Journal ofCommunication, 61, Nos. 1-4 (1997).

3 There are more than a hundred examples of work done over the last 15 years that refer explicitly or implicitly torhetoric's capacity to give "voice" to the other. See Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, "The Power of Hegemony: Capitalismand Racism in the 'Nadir of Negro History,' " in Rhetoric and Community: Studies in Unity and Fragmentation ed. J.Michael Hogan. (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina P, 1998), 36-61; James Darsey, " "The Voice of Exile':W.E.B. Du Bois and the Quest for Culture," in Rhetoric and Community, 93-110; Dennis A. Lynch, "Rhetorics ofProximity: Empathy in Temple Grandin and Cornel West," Rhetoric Society and Quarterly 28 (1998): 5-23; Lester C.Olson, "On the Margins of Rhetoric: Audre Lorde Transforming Silence into Language and Action," Quarterly Journalof Speech 83 (1997): 49-70; Bryan C. Taylor, "Register of the Repressed: Women's Voice and Body in the NuclearWeapons Organization," Quarterly Journal of Speech 79 (1993): 267-285; Robert L. Scott, "Dialectical Tensions ofSpeaking and Silence," Quarterly Journal of Speech 79 (1993): 1-18; Michael Huspeck and Kathleen E. Kendall, "OnWithholding Political Voice: an analysis of the political vocabulary of a 'nonpolitical' speech community," QuarterlyJournal of Speech 77 (1991): 1-19.

4 The scope of this essay is inadequate for a full explication of the various hermeneutic traditions; I am merelysupplying one type of conceptual backdrop for seeing how subjectivity and voice come together in rhetoric.

5 James Risser makes the point that this reading of Gadamer's hermeneutic is flawed; however, it helped to instigatephilosophy of the subject projects that, in turn, were influential in general conceptions of the speaking subject in thehumanities. James Risser, Hermeneutics and the Voice of the Other: re-reading Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics. (Albany,N.Y.: State University of New York P, 1997) 122-123. Also see Stephen Toulmin's discussion of modernity's "strugglefor stability" in Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity. (Chicago: University of Chicago P, 1990) 89-137.

6 Martin J. Medhurst, "The Academic Study of Public Address: A Tradition in Transition," Landmark Essays onAmerican Public Address, ed. Martin J. Medhurst (Davis, CA.: Hermagoras Press, 1993) xi-xliii.

7 I am thinking of those scholars like Michael Leff and Stephen Browne who may not mention "voice" but treatoratory in ways that parallel my analysis.

8 Such an assertion would be self-defeating for I depend on my own hermeneutic sensitivity later in this essay.9 This is not to deny that every subject has a "voice." It is clear, however, that critical rhetoric, cultural studies, and

feminist theory have helped to shape this sense of "voice" in the literature.10 I do not mean to assert a neat identification here between Nietzsche and Heidergger; as Michael Hyde makes

clear, Nietzsche's notion of "will to power" is shaped by an impulse toward the self whereas Heidegger's conception ofthe "call of conscience" is ground in temporality. They both assume some measure of subjective authority. SeeMichael J. Hyde, "The Call of Conscience: Heidegger and the Question of Rhetoric," Philosophy and Rhetoric 27 (1994):374-96.

11 For an important discussion of the appropriation of "America" by diverse groups see Robert James Branham," 'Of Thee I Sing': Contesting 'America'," American Quarterly 48 (1996): 623-638.

12 W.E.B. DuBois, "My Country 'Tis of Thee," The Horizon 2 (1907): 5-6.13 Robert Branham shows that this feature is consistent across such appropriations of national songs. " 'God Save

The '. American National Songs and National Identities: 1760-1798," Quarterly Journal of Speech 85 (1999): 17-37.14 Indeed, disputes among accommodationists, integrationists, separatists, and expatriationists preceed Du Bois's

Souls of Black Folk and follow him to New York and to the NAACP. He revisits much of the same ideological groundduring the early 1920s in his debates with Marcus Garvey. See Robert E. Terrill and Eric K. Watts, "W.E.B. Du Bois,Double-Consciousness and Pan-Africanism in the Progressive Era," in Rhetorical History of the United States ed. J.Michael Hogan. (Michigan State University P) forthcoming.

15 Hyde and Rufo speak of the space that is created by our openness toward the different dilemmas of others in "TheCall of Conscience, Rhetorical Interruptions, and the Euthanasia Controversy," Quarterly Journal of Speech 65 (1979):347-63.

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16 See W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Study of the Negro Problems," in W.E.B. Du Bois Speaks: speeches and addresses,1890-1919. Ed. Philip S. Foner (New York: Pathfinder, 1970) 102-123.

17 For insightful discussions of complicity theory see Mark McPhail, "The Politics of Complicity: Second Thoughtsabout the Social Construction of Racial Equality," Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 (1994): 343-357; "Complicity: TheTheory of Negative Difference," Howard Journal of Communication 3 (1991): 1-13.

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Documents

“Voice” and “voicelessness” in rhetorical studies