The Pantomimic Voice

Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as scholars have demonstrated, can be read in dialogue with Roman pantomime dance, and the tale of Echo and Narcissus is one of its most ‘pantomimic’ episodes. While others have focused on the figure of Narcissus in this vein, I turn instead to Echo, whose vocal mimicry can be seen as a mirror of the pantomime’s art, and whose juxtaposition with Narcissus seems emblematic of the body-voice relationship in pantomime. Echo’s desire for Narcissus engages with an existing lyric tradition of depicting the relationship between singing voice and dancing body in erotic terms. In such situations, the desire is fulfilled if the performers are both singing and dancing, uniting body and voice in performance. The thwarted union of Echo and Narcissus, however, embodies instead the dynamics of pantomime: the subordination or absence of the voice in favor of the body, and the connection created between dancer and audience.

Can subordinate voice prevail with abusive supervision?

Purpose Drawing from conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to explain why certain voice types prevail while other voice types are inhibited in the presence of abusive supervision. Design/methodology/approach This paper surveys extant literature on abusive supervision, employee voice and COR theory and provides propositions linking abusive supervision and types of voice behaviours. Findings The paper develops a conceptual model linking abusive supervision and three types of subordinate voice behaviours – prosocial, defensive and acquiescent voices. It identifies psychological distress as a mediator and locus of control as a moderator to this relationship. Originality/value This paper deepens our present understanding of abusive supervision and voice relationship by explaining why only certain voice types prevail with abusive supervision while others do not. While extant literature concluded abusive supervision only as an inhibitor of voice behaviours, the present study identifies how abusive supervision could both inhibit and motivate different voice behaviours. Further, it links abusive supervision to multiple voice types, diverting from extant literature linking abusive supervision to only constructive voice. Lastly, this study contributes to resource acquisition strategies within COR theory.

Voicetracks

Moved by Aboriginal or Indigenous understandings of tracks, Norie Neumark’s Voicetracks seeks to deepen understandings of voice through listening to a variety of media and contemporary art works from Australia, Europe, and the United States. The author aims to bring voice studies into conversation with new materialism to broaden thinking within both. Through a methodology based in listening, she brings theories of affect and carnal and situated knowledge into conversation with her examples and the theories she works with. Through her examples, Neumark engages with artists working with animal sounds and voices; voices of place, placed voices in installation works; voices of technology; and “unvoicing,” disturbances in the image/voice relationship and in the idea of what voice is. Neumark evokes both the literal—the actual voices within the works with which she engages—and the metaphorical—in a new materialist exploration of voice encompassing humans, animals, things, and assemblages. Not content with the often dry tone of academic writing, the author engages a “wayfaring” process that brings together theories from sound, animal, and posthuman studies in order to change the ways we think about and act with and within the assemblages of living creatures, things, places and histories around us. Finally, she considers ethics and politics, and describes how her own work has shaped her understandings and apprehensions of voice.

LMX and employee voice

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating effect of employee psychological empowerment in the leader-member exchange (LMX)-employee voice relationship, and whether role clarity moderated the effect. Design/methodology/approach – A paired questionnaire survey was used to collect data by 295 employees and their supervisors from nine firms in the People’s Republic of China. Findings – The hypothesized moderated mediation model used in this study was supported. Psychological empowerment mediated the positive relationship between LMX and employee voice, and stronger role clarity tends to strengthen this indirect relationship. Originality/value – Few studies have explored the mediating mechanism in the relationship between LMX and employee voice. Based on role theory, this study broadens the research on the LMX-employee voice relationship by introducing employee psychological empowerment as the mediator. This study further explores role clarity as the boundary condition for this indirect relationship.

Interpersonal Processes and Attachment in Voice-Hearers

Background: Studies of both clinical and non-clinical voice hearers suggest that distress is rather inconsistently associated with the perceived relationship between voice and hearer. It is also not clear if their beliefs about voices are relevant. Aims: This study investigated the links between attachment anxiety/avoidance, interpersonal aspects of the voice relationship, and distress whilst considering the impact of beliefs about voices and paranoia. Method: Forty-four voice-hearing participants completed a number of self-report measures tapping attachment, interpersonal processes in the voice relationship, beliefs about voices, paranoia, distress and depression. Results: Attachment avoidance was related to voice intrusiveness, hearer distance and distress. Attachment anxiety was related to voice intrusiveness, hearer dependence and distress. A series of simple mediation analyses were conducted that suggest that the relationship between attachment and voice related distress may be mediated by interpersonal dynamics in the voice-hearer relationship, beliefs about voices and paranoia. Conclusions: Beliefs about voices, the hearer's relationship with their voices, and the distress voices sometimes engender appear to be meaningfully related to their attachment style. This may be important to consider in therapeutic work.

Envoicing the Future: Victoria Hanna's Exterior Voice

This essay examines theatrical dimensions of the future in Signals, a performance by the Israeli vocalist Victoria Hanna. An examination of four scenes from this performance, I argue, shows that the sounds in Hanna's voice act in the symbolic dualities of female–male, human–technological, and embodied–disembodied figures. These dualities amplify the discrepancy between Hanna's staged identity (female, human, embodied figure) and an absent exterior other (male, technological, disembodied figure). The notion of ‘envoicement’ is developed in order to analyse these dualities and, in particular, to explore the body–voice relationship that they compose. Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas's ethical theory in Time and the Other, I argue that the meaning attributed to the future is never conveyed in its presence but rather in its absence; that is, signifying practices that represent the absent exterior referent stage the future. Through this central claim, I thus assert that Hanna's disembodied voice ‘envoices’ the future.

Hearing the Difference: Theorizing Connection

Hearing the difference between a patriarchal voice and a relational voice defines a paradigm shift: a change in the conception of the human world. Theorizing connection as primary and fundamental in human life leads to a new psychology, which shifts the grounds for philosophy and political theory. A crucial distinction is made between a feminine ethic of care and a feminist ethic of care. Voice, relationship, resistance, and women become central rather than peripheral in this reframing of the human world.