EPS Seminar ｜ Mother’s Whisper: Voice, Body and Anti-Logos

  -EPS External Security Seminar – November 2023 Mother’s Whispering: Voice, Body, and Anti Logos The last work of the famous Italian female writer Elsa Morande, “Erachelli,” tells the story of an extraordinary journey in search of a mother. The protagonist Manuel sets off from Milan and embarks on a flight to Spain, only to […]

 
-EPS External Security Seminar – November 2023
Mother’s Whispering: Voice, Body, and Anti Logos
The last work of the famous Italian female writer Elsa Morande, “Erachelli,” tells the story of an extraordinary journey in search of a mother. The protagonist Manuel sets off from Milan and embarks on a flight to Spain, only to trace his mother’s whereabouts. The reason why this journey is special is that his mother, Eracheli, passed away forty years ago in Rome on the eve of World War II. The cemetery where my mother’s bones were buried was already destroyed in the flames of war. To reunite with his mother, Manuel had to go to Andalusia – her birthplace. The protagonist’s journey was invaded by memories, and in a daze, Manuel seemed to smell the breath between Eracheli’s lips and teeth, touch the lines of her skin, and meet her lowered gaze. He also once again heard the murmurs of his mother holding him, who was still a baby. My mother once hummed a song in Spanish. To this day, Spanish is no longer an understandable language for Manuel, but a special sound that can only distinguish its rhythm and rhythm. And this voice is embedded in his mother’s body, carrying the tension of Manuel’s original life and guiding him through the cruelty of history. 

Why does Morande write about her mother’s voice? In the Western philosophical tradition, language, as a law itself, has a symbolic core that points to “universality” and “identity”; On the contrary, sound, as a carrier of individuality, uniqueness, and diversity, has become an unrecognizable existence. Meanwhile, in the patriarchal discourse system, experiences related to language such as rationality, spirituality, and transcendence are often considered to be essentially “masculine”; And experiences related to the body, such as impulsiveness, materiality, laziness, and internality, are considered “feminine”. When humans produce sound, they need breath to resonate with the vocal cords in the chest and throat through the lungs, and then emit it through the mouth. Therefore, the essence of sound is a product of the body, and it also points towards the body itself. If language is a free, non essential, constantly repetitive, and overwhelming speech, then sound is a relational bond that connects the inside and outside of the body and flows between different bodies in an uncaptured and non replicable form. Therefore, sound is always attributed to women and is considered a disturbance to language. Therefore, in the metaphysical tradition, Logos is an absolutely silent rational and linguistic system, a field for the dissolution of uniqueness.
Hannah Arendt once discussed the human condition, saying that uniqueness makes each person a distinct existence from others. This indicates that the necessary condition for a person to be human is their indelible heterogeneity. In Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, two totalitarian countries, symbols ruled over the body and homogenized it, completely marginalizing the dimension of sound. What is not heard is not only mournful cries and desolate cries, but also lingering murmurs, delicate murmurs, and uncontrollable sighs during pleasure. And Eracheli’s low moan echoed through blood and fire, through death, once again in Manuel’s ear. Spanish, the language of a mother, with only sounds and rhythms but no symbols, flows through her body and nourishes the exhausted life of middle-aged Manuel. Erachelli’s low moans, the voice of women, piercing through historical lies and authoritarian narratives, lead Manuel to piece together a personal epic from shattered memories as a response to the silent universe.
Guest: Yuan Rui
PhD in Italian literature at Sorbonne University, Master’s degree in psychoanalysis at Paris VIII University
Host: Fu Zirui
Master’s degree in psychoanalysis at the Eighth University of Paris
Conversator: Wang Runchenxi
Ph.D. in Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry from the University of Paris de Seille