The philosopher’s voice: Index n.45

“Hearing is a physiological phenomenon; listening is a psychological act.” R. Barthes

https://soundcloud.com/58_plus1_indicesonthebody/jean-luc-nancy-recording-index

After a year of deep interchange with the internationally famous philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, AMAE and Pier Giorgio De Pinto took their performative project “58 (+1) indices on the body” one step further and are now pleased to share with the audience the astonishing result.

Commencing today, a paragraph from the book 58 indices on the body, which was recorded by the philosopher himself especially for the project will be released every week on Soundcloud.

Each track is recorded in the philosopher’s voice and in their original language of French. Some of them will offer unexpected twists, backstage sounds and unpredicted mistakes, each of which prodded the philosopher to re-think and add new indices to his work.

According to Barthes, alerting, deciphering and understanding are the three levels of listening that can be determined.

With this project we want to give to the audience a voice to listen to that is open to interpretation, but it is also true that we want to share something that can also just be heard as a basic sound – or a noise.

The launch track is the recording of the Index n. 45, where Jean-Luc Nancy discovers a typing error in the french publication.

Share your thoughts with us. Leave a comment along the track and be part of the project.

https://soundcloud.com/58_plus1_indicesonthebody/jean-luc-nancy-recording-index

45. Le corps est nôtre et il nous est propre dans l’exacte mesure où il ne nous appartient pas et se dérobe à l’intimité de notre être propre, si jamais celui-ci existe, ce dont précisément le corps doit nous faire sérieusement douter. Mais dans cette mesure, qui ne souffre aucune limitation, notre corps est non seulement nôtre mais nous, nous-même, jusqu’à la mort, c’est à-dire jusque dans sa mort et sa décomposition dont nous pourrons et sommes décomposés identiquement.

From 58 INDICES SUR LE CORPS et EXTENSION DE L’ÂME
Éditions Nota bene, Québec, 2004.

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45. The body is ours and proper to us precisely to the degree that it doesn’t belong to us and evades the intimacy of our proper being, if this being ever even exists, something the body, precisely, should make us seriously doubt. But to this degree, which suffers no limitation, our body isn’t just outs but us, ourselves, even unto death, meaning its death and decomposition, in which we can be, and are, identically decomposed.

From Fifty-eight Indices on the Body (Corpus), Jean-Luc Nancy. New York, Fordham University Press, 2008