Lexicon of the Mouth: Poetics and Politics of Voice and the Oral Imaginary

"While the eyes may lead to the soul, the mouth exposes the vitality of the body. Examining the movements of the mouth, or what LaBelle terms "micro-oralities," Lexicon of the Mouth considers the relation of voice and mouth, suggesting that the importance of voicing is inextricably bound to the exertions of the oral. Laughter, whispering, singing, burping and self-talk, among many others, feature as choreographies by which to gauge the exchange of self and surrounding. LaBelle argues for a more attentiveview onto voice by expanding appreciation for how whistling links us to animals, coughing ruptures all possibility for speech, and the inner voice, or "unvoice", operates as a shadow-body. Subsequently, assumptions around voice are unsettled, reminding discourses surrounding the performativity of the body, and the politics of speech, of the acts of the tongue, the lips and the glottis as primary negotiations between interior and exterior"--
Lexicon of the Mouth surveys the oral cavity as the central channel by which self and surrounding are brought into relation. Questions of embodiment and agency, attachment and loss, incorporation and hunger, locution and the non-sensical are critically examined. In doing so, LaBelle emphasizes the mouth as a vital conduit for negotiating "the foundational narrative of proper speech." Lexicon of the Mouth aims for a viscous, poetic and resonant discourse of subjectivity, detailed through the "micro-oralities" of laughing and whispering, stuttering and reciting, eating and kissing, among others. The oral cavity is posed as an impressionable arena, susceptible to all types of material input, contamination and intervention, while also enabling powerful forms of resistance, attachment and conversation, as well as radical imagination.Lexicon of the Mouth argues for the revolutionary promise of the laugh, the spirited mythologies of the whisper, the schizophonics of self-talk, and the primal noise of gibberish, suggesting that the significance of voicing is fundamentally bound to the exertions of the mouth. Subsequently, assumptions around voice and vocality are unsettled in favor of an epistemology of the oral, highlighting the acts of the tongue, the lips and the throat as primary mediations between interior and exterior, social structures and embodied expressions. LaBelle makes a significant contribution to currents in sound and voice studies by reminding that to hear the voice, and to consider a politics of speech, is first and foremost to assume the mouth.