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
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .