Posthumanist Voices in Literature and Opera

Abstract

From a background that critically investigates conceptualizations and understandings of the relations and dialectics between the inner and the outer voice and the discursive implications of the posthumanist appraisal of vocality, Jason D’Aoust examines the “operatic voice” or the vocality of opera as it is practiced and understood in the present period. From a philosophically informed perspective, D’Aoust engages with recent reappraisals of phonocentrism in voice studies, and analyzes artistic works from different genres, comprising opera (Mozart’s The Magic Flute), literature (Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), and film (Scott’s Blade Runner), in order to show how opera practitioners, authors, and film-makers use the sonorous imagination to deconstruct the canon.