the dark side and fear of death, blood the female body
According to Hanna Arendt the speech becomes possible with the existence of a group of people (public assemblies) and it is a civilized way to respond to violence. Suffragettes' speech-making workshops was a way to provide women with tools “with which to take their concerns out into the public domain” (Rose Gibbs, 2016). They focused on the voice because there is a uniqueness in it, that embodies the speaker and doesn’t apply to the abstract and bodiless universality of western thought. Even more, the voice through speech (songs, protest) connects one another in a group and at the same time keeps the individuality of the speaker. In contrast to mainstream political spheres the feminists, like anarchists, were looking for horizontal ways of communication were no voice was dominating over others. The speeches of African American women, in the first part of 19th century, were very intense as they were tolerating a lot of violence because of their gender and nationality. The brave speech of Sojourner Truth, "Ain't I a Woman?" was one of the first speech acts of women in public of that time. She made that speech after gaining her freedom and she became well-known anti-slavery speaker. I will elaborate on that speech later.
radio attempts
Radio pirates/amateurs and antennas. Reaching the invisible other or being that invisible other. Practices of establishing multiple ways of spreading the voice in different spaces. The activation of those spaces as public forums. Listening to ‘invisible’ subjectivities.
feminist futurotopias
women in technology
# The mediation of the voice as detachment of the speaker. “the mediating role of all kinds of media that detach voice from its physical proprietor and enable its circulation in places and contexts in which physical bodies may not have access. (Panopoulos)
The technologies/media/tools/practices that relate the embodied and the distant voice enhance the presence of the person carrying it or turns against her/him.
Saskia Sassen (2012, p.) observes that in the cities today a big mix of people coexist. The ones who lack power can make themselves present through face to face communication. According to her this condition reveals another type of politics and political actors, based on hybrid contexts of acting and outside of the formal system. The urban space hosts several political activities like squatting, demonstrations, politics of culture and identity that are visible on the street and non dependent on massive media technologies. This brings the conversation to the Speaker's Corner, "the home of free speech, where anyone can get on their soapbox and make their voice heard" (Coomes, 2015). This practice was very crucial in Occupy Movement <sup>[1](#myfootnote1)</sup>. Anyone could be a speaker and be heard by the people surrounding her/him. In the Occupy Wall Street, amplified sound devices, like microphone and megaphone, were not permitted in the city and the crowd could bot listen clearly to the speaker <sup>[1](#myfootnote2)</sup>. But "when the technologies above them are removed somehow, the foundational elements remain embedded and embodied in our cyborg bodies and brains" (Pages, 2011). The participants of #occupy used the 'human microphone', as they call it. This means that the crowd would repeat the words of the speaker for the benefit of those located in the rear. There the voice played an important role in the spreading of the speech to the farest points of the public space. "Even given that many of the participants of #occupy are in full possession of smartphones, verbal address to the crowd from a singular source is still important" (Pages, 2011). This is an intersting fact of the public space of today. Even though many new technologies exist the public space seems to exist in a more primitive face to face communication and bodily expression under the context of public assemblies.
