Synopses & Reviews
A groundbreaking study of deafness, by a philosopher who combines the scientific erudition of Oliver Sacks with the historical flair of Simon Schama.
There is nothing more personal than the human voice, traditionally considered the expression of the innermost self. But what of those who have no voice of their own and cannot hear the voices of others?
In this tour de force of historical narrative, Jonathan Rée tells the astonishing story of the deaf, from the sixteenth century to the present. Rée explores the great debates about deafness between those who believed the deaf should be made to speak and those who advocated non-oral communication. He traces the botched attempts to make language visible, through such exotic methods as picture writing, manual spellings, and vocal photography. And he charts the tortuous progress and final recognition of sign systems as natural languages in their own right.
I See a Voice escorts us on a vast and eventful intellectual journey,taking in voice machines and musical scales, shorthand and phonetics, Egyptian hieroglyphs, talking parrots, and silent films. A fascinating tale of goodwill subverted by bad science, I See a Voice is as learned and informative as it is delightful to read.
Jonathan Rée teaches philosophy at the University of Middlesex. A reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement and The London Review of Books, he is also the author of Philosophical Tales and Heidegger. He lives in Oxford, England.
There is nothing more personal than the human voice, traditionally considered the expression of the innermost self. But what of those who have no voice of their own and cannot hear the voices of others? In this tour de force of historical narrative, Jonathan Rée tells the astonishing story of the plight of the deaf, from the sixteenth century to the present. He explores the great debates about deafness and its "cure," from the "oralists" who believed that the deaf should be forced to speak, to the "gesturalists" who advocated sign-language and even a separate homeland for the deaf. But these debates, as Rée shows, were distorted by systematic misunderstandings of the nature of language and the five senses. Rée traces the botched attempts to make language visible, through such exotic methods as picture writing, manual spellings, and vocal photography. And he charts the tortuous progress and final recognition of sign systems as natural languages in their own right.
I See a Voice escorts us on a vast and eventful intellectual journey, taking in voice machines and musical scales, shorthand and phonetics, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and dance notation. A fascinating tale of goodwill subverted by bad science, I See a Voice is an original history of deafness and the senses in the Western world.
"An exceptional book: adventurous in conception, finely argued and beautifully written. I See a Voice will become a landmark in the history of late-20th-century philosophy, and an inspiration for all those interested in the subject."Alain de Botton, author of How Proust Can Change Your Life
"Distinctive, ingenious, and engrossing . . . An important bookclearly written, intricately argued, remarkably gripping."Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times (London)
"I See a Voice explores the dilemmas of the deaf over the centuries with intelligence, lucidity, and a remarkable breadth of reference. Rée's wider ambition is to make the rest of us think about the senses, what distinguishes each of them, and how they interconnect . . . This is a wonderful book."Linda Colley, The Observer (London)
"Jonathan Rée writes with such clarity and elegance that his prose is a pleasure to read . . . The book is not only a fascinating history of the belated correction of our misperceptions of the deaf, but a demonstration that philosophy really can advance our understanding of the world and ourselves."Anthony Storr, The Literary Review (London)
"Brilliant . . . I See a Voice is a joy to read: bold, crisp in style, effortlessly erudite, slyly humorous, passionate and humane."Roy Porter, The Independent (London)
"An exhaustingly researched exploration of the history of deafness . . . Rée reports advances in teaching and tools to help the deaf communicate, as well as studies in linguistics indicating that sign language is as rich and complex as any other language."Kirkus Reviews
"Lucid and often witty."The Los Angeles Times
"Rée, who teaches philosophy at Middlesex University in England, presents a book that is both philosophy and science. In the two mainly philosophical parts, he considers how people have viewed the five human senses over the centuries. In the mainly scientific part, he focuses on one of the senses, hearing, and its close connection with speech, by way of examining the experience of people who lack the sensewho are deaf. 'Ever since the sixteenth century,' he notes, 'they have been attended by troops of priests, doctors, teachers and philanthropists dedicated to releasing them from their silent world (or perhaps expelling them from it against their will), by devising ways of making them understand language, despite their inability to hear it.' Rée bolsters his history of those efforts with a number of unusual pictures, among them a French 'voice machine' of 1908 that synthesized vowel sounds by pumping air past rotating perforated disks and then through rubber replicas of human mouths."Scientific American
Review
"Lucid and often witty." (Los Angeles Times)
Review
"...exceptional book: adventurous in conception, finely argued and beautifully written... will become a landmark in the history of late-20th-century philosophy...." (Alain de Botton, author of How Proust Can Change Your Life)
Review
"A superb achievement. An exceptional book." (Alain de Botton, author of How Proust Can Change Your Life)
"Brilliant. A joy to read." (Roy Porter, The Indepent (London))
Synopsis
In this tour de force of historical narrative, Jonathan Ree tells the astonishing story of the deaf, from the sixteenth century to the present. Ree explores the great debates about deafness and its "cure" between those who believed the deaf should be made to speak and those who advocated non-oral communication. He traces the botched attempts to make language visible through such exotic methods as picture-writing, manual spellings, and vocal photography. And he charts the tortuous progress and final recognition of sign systems as natural languages in their own right.
Synopsis
A groundbreaking study of deafness, by a philosopher who combines the scientific erudition of Oliver Sacks with the historical flair of Simon Schama.
There is nothing more personal than the human voice, traditionally considered the expression of the innermost self. But what of those who have no voice of their own and cannot hear the voices of others?
In this tour de force of historical narrative, Jonathan Rée tells the astonishing story of the deaf, from the sixteenth century to the present. Rée explores the great debates about deafness between those who believed the deaf should be made to speak and those who advocated non-oral communication. He traces the botched attempts to make language visible, through such exotic methods as picture writing, manual spellings, and vocal photography. And he charts the tortuous progress and final recognition of sign systems as natural languages in their own right.
I See a Voice escorts us on a vast and eventful intellectual journey,taking in voice machines and musical scales, shorthand and phonetics, Egyptian hieroglyphs, talking parrots, and silent films. A fascinating tale of goodwill subverted by bad science, I See a Voice is as learned and informative as it is delightful to read.
About the Author
Jonathan Rée teaches philosophy at the University of Middlesex. A reviewer for
The Times Literary Supplement and
The London Review of Books, he is also the author of
Philosophical Tales and
Heidegger. He lives in Oxford, England.