Can You Hear Me?
The Importance of Voice in Identity and the Recognition of the Other.
In this article I will argue for the importance of Voice in our understanding of human identity and argue that the recognition of the Other is not dependent on vision alone but is supported by at least two of the other senses; touch and hearing.
A child’s vision takes time to develop, a new born can only distinguish forms and object a couple of inches away, yet their hearing and sense of touch are often more, or even fully, developed at birth. Indeed a baby, before being able to recognize the Other visually and before they are aware of their bodily limits and image, Lacan’s ‘mirror stage’, they, through touch, are able to recognize the difference between touching and being touched, in other words, the physical limitation of their body. Or as Merleau-Ponty (1962) argues on the importance of the body; ‘the body catches itself from the outside engaged in a cognitive process […] and initiates ‘a kind of reflection’ which is sufficient to distinguish it from objects.’(107).
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