The Multivoiced Body: Society and Communication in the Age of Diversity

Fred Evans

Published by Columbia University Press 2009

The Multivoiced Body

Society and Communication in the Age of Diversity

Fred Evans

https://doi.org/10.7312/evan14500

Overview
Contents

About this book

Ethnic cleansing and other methods of political and social exclusion continue to thrive in our globalized world, complicating the idea that unity and diversity can exist in the same society. By envisioning the public as a multivoiced body, Fred Evans offers a solution to the dilemma of diversity. The multivoiced body is both one and many: heterogeneous voices that at once separate and bind themselves together through their continuous and creative interplay. By focusing on this traditionally undervalued or overlooked notion of voice, Evans shows how we can valorize simultaneously the solidarity, diversity, and richness of society and resist the pervasive countertendency to raise a chosen discourse to the level of "one true God," "pure race," or some other "oracle" that eliminates the dynamism of contesting voices.To support these views, Evans taps the major figures and themes of analytic and continental philosophy as well as modernist, postmodernist, postcolonial, and feminist thought. He also turns to sources outside of philosophy to address the implications of his views for justice, citizenship, democracy, and collective as well as individual rights. Evans straddles both philosophy and political practice, confronting issues of subjectivity, language, communication, and identity. For anyone interested in moving toward a just society and politics, The Multivoiced Body offers an innovative approach to the problems of human diversity and ethical plurality.

Ethnic cleansing and other methods of political and social exclusion continue to thrive in our globalized world, complicating the idea that unity and diversity can exist in the same society. When we emphasize unity, we sacrifice heterogeneity, yet when we stress diversity, we create a plurality of individuals connected only by tenuous circumstance. As long as we remain tethered to these binaries, as long as we are unable to imagine the sort of society we want in an age of diversity, we cannot achieve an enduring solution to conflicts that continue unabated despite our increasing proximity to one another.

By envisioning the public as a multivoiced body, Fred Evans offers a solution to the dilemma of diversity. The multivoiced body is both one and many: heterogeneous voices that at once separate and bind themselves together through their continuous and creative interplay. By focusing on this traditionally undervalued or overlooked notion of voice, Evans shows how we can valorize simultaneously the solidarity, diversity, and richness of society. Moreover, recognition of society as a multivoiced body helps resists the pervasive countertendency to raise a chosen discourse to the level of "one true God," "pure race," or some other "oracle" that eliminates the dynamism of contesting voices.

To support these views, Evans taps the major figures and themes of analytic and continental philosophy as well as modernist, postmodernist, postcolonial, and feminist thought. He also turns to sources outside of philosophy to address the implications of his views for justice, citizenship, democracy, and collective as well as individual rights. Through the seemingly simple conceit of a multivoiced body, Evans straddles both philosophy and political practice, confronting issues of subjectivity, language, communication, and identity. For anyone interested in moving toward a just society and politics, The Multivoiced Body offers an innovative approach to the problems of human diversity and ethical plurality.

Author / Editor information

Fred Evans is professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Interpretive and Qualitative Research at Duquesne University. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on continental and political philosophy and is the author of Psychology and Nihilism: A Genealogical Critique of the Computational Model of Mind and coeditor of Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty's Notion of Flesh. Many of Evans' academic projects have been inspired by his teaching and developmental work in Laos, Colombia, and other countries of the global South.

Reviews

Evans' text is a thrilling account that is as performative in its exchanges with other theoretical frameworks, as it is novel in its uses and divergences from those frameworks.

Robert Drury King:
The Multivoiced Body is the kind of book that establishes new, more interdisciplinary fields of study in social-political philosophy.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface and Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Part I. The Dilemma of Diversity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part II. The Primacy of Voices Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
Part III. The Political Dimension of the Multivoiced Body Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	331

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 368

eBook

Published: March 30, 2009
ISBN: 9780231519366