Description
Book SynopsisUsing a communicological perspective, Recovering the Voice in our Techno-Social World: On the Phone identifies voice (phone in Greek) as the essential medium for a re-enchantment of human communication in our highly impersonal techno-social environment. This book is a response to the growing concern by social critics that we are becoming a de-voiced society because of our preferences for hyper-textual, image-based forms of electronic connectivity. Ironically, while we are increasingly “on the phone,” we are sacrificing our vocality within immediate ear-to-ear relations. Framed by the trope of enchantment, Deborah Eicher-Catt argues that the immediacy of the sounding voice calls us and enchants us to make possible productive moments of resonance in which we might cultivate an interpersonal resilience in today’s fast-paced, media-saturated environment. Scholars of media studies, communication, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.
Table of ContentsIntroduction – Speaking and Listening from the Heart
Chapter 1 – On the Phone
Chapter 2 – Our Digital Age of Distraction and our Increasing Techno-Social Dilemma
Chapter 3 – Enchantments and Their Inauthenticity: The Play of Amusements
Chapter 4 – Echoes of the Acousmatic Voice in Cyberspace: The Impersonal Self
Chapter 5 – The Murder of the Phone in Plain Sight: The Voice of Articulation
Chapter 6 – The Enchanting Phone as Phenomenological Event: The Voice of Enunciation
Chapter 7 – The Pivotal Nature of Voice: Interper-sónal Relationality and its Authenticity
Chapter 8 – Resonance, Resilience, and Re-Enchantment: Voicing the Heart of the Matter
Bibliography
About the Author
