Mapping Meaning, the Journal (Issue No. 1)

In Conversation with Consciousness
Weston G. W. Wood
Within this framework voice can therefore
be understood as our relationality in
action. Mladen Dolar’s psychoanalytical
theory of the voice in A Voice and Nothing
More demonstrates voice as essential to
the thinking self. He argues that voice
“can perhaps also be seen as the lever
of thought” instead of the “vehicle of
meaning” or “fetish object” (2006, pp.
4-11)...and that voice can be better
understood as an enabler of thought,
bound with thought, or even being
thought itself (Dolar, 2006, pp. 1-11). Dolar
also discusses the voice as inherently a call
to the other at length throughout his book
(2006). Therefore, “voice” or vocalization
is information at points of interaction and
transformation between various human
and more-than-human “systems,” whether
they be orcas or old-growth stands of oak
(Wood, 2017, 8).
David Abram’s deep ecology lends insight
into what conversations are always
occurring and what voices may be better
heard. The phenomenology Abrams
grounds in ecology reveals that we are
beings perpetually perceiving the larger
world around us in an active, dynamic
process that shapes both perceiver and
perceived. (Abram, 1996, p. 31-72). This
occurs within “fields of flesh” from which
we can never truly remove ourselves to
an impartial objectivity – we are always
already interacting with our environments
(Abram, 1996, p. 66). One crucial insight
is that language itself is material, of the
“flesh,” arising out of “living speech” that
originated spontaneously in conversation
with the living field. (73-92). Reciprocal
perception occurs through vocalizations,
both narrowly and broadly defined.
Additionally, many in the industrialized
world have lost the ability to “speak to”
the larger biosphere and instead speak
merely “about” it (Abram, 1996, p. 22). Like
Bateson, Abram points out that very real
maladies of health have been a function
of imbalance with the more-than-human
world in a multitude of cultures, and
they have been cured by restoring this
balance (Abram, 1996, p. 22). This idea
invites exploration as to how our modern
voices remain ecological processes and
what nonhuman voices are waiting to be
engaged in a very material, “real” sensory
experience, and how these relationships
might play into our mental health.
This background framed the metalogues
I conducted in which I attempted to
trace the voices that function as points
of conversational contact between self,
human and more-than-human others and
demonstrate how we exist systemically. I
hoped it would prove useful for folks who
live under dominant assumptions about the
self as primarily individual and the merit
of personal gain over community, when
our own evolutionary history and ecology
suggests the opposite to be far healthier.
Bateson defines metalogue as “a
conversation about some problematic
subject…[in which] not only do the
participants discuss the problem but the
structure of the conversation as a whole
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