Media Ventriloquism

Abstract Media Ventriloquism repurposes the term “ventriloquism,” which has traditionally referred to the act of throwing one’s voice into an object that appears to speak, to reflect our complex vocal relationship with media technologies. Indeed, media technologies have the potential to separate voice from body and to constitute new relationships between them that could scarcely have been imagined before such technologies’ invention and mass circulation. Radio, cinema, television, video games, digital technologies, and other media have each fundamentally transformed the relationship between voice and body in myriad and often unexpected ways. This volume interrogates the categorical definitions of voice and body as they operate within mediated environments, exploring the experiences of ventriloquism facilitated by media technologies and theorizing some of the political and ethical implications of separating bodies from voices. It builds in particular on Steven Connor’s notion of the vocalic body, which he coined to identify an imaginary body that is created and maintained primarily through voice. In modifying Connor’s term to theorize the “technovocalic body,” the study focuses on cases in which the relationship between voice and body has been modified specifically by media technologies. The chapters in this collection demonstrate not only how particular bodies and voices have been (mis)represented through media ventriloquism but also how marginalized groups—racialized, gendered, queered, etc.—have used media ventriloquism to claim their agency and power.