Giving Voice
Giving Voice
This chapter considers how the speaking voice was called upon in court in the Bikindi case. It begins with the ‘solemn declaration’, which it argues is both highly anomalous from an institutional perspective and, in a sense, foundational: an act of community formation by means of vocalization. With the ‘principle of publicity’, by contrast, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is less concerned with the act of vocalization than the voice’s audibility, a fact that is particularly obvious in relation to its treatment of ‘protected witnesses’. The chapter then turns to the role played by text in the judicial soundscape, and in particular to the practices of pronouncing judgment, court reporting, and speaking ‘for the record’. In each case the chapter observes a highly ambiguous dynamic whereby the voice is at once privileged in relation to the written word and simultaneously made ancillary to it.
Keywords: soundscape, courtroom, voice, speech, oath, text, ICTR, metaphysics
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