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March 12, 2006
acroamatic
Now, why does Nietzsche (or the translator?) need to use this word, acroamatic oral would suffice? Is it because he needs to emphasize both the speaking (oral) and hearing (auditory)? Or because it is confined only to the Aristotelian method? But what delineates this mode as necessarily esoteric?
Derrida clarifies (if it can be called that!): "Abstraction itself: the ear can close itself off and contact can be suspended because the omphalos of a disjointed body ties it to a dissociated segment of the father" (1985:36). Ok, the omphalos here is the scar where the umbilical cord used to be attached. Is he arguing (metaphorically) that the ability to 'turn off listening' is an act of death/dying comparable to cutting the umbilical cord to one's mother, a.k.a. "life"? And, therefore, that this ability (to not listen) is only possible through some "tie" to a similarly-scarred feature of male parentage/parenting?
(The whole mother-father dichotomy is so riddled with heterosexuality I find it somewhat awkward to wrap my head around.)
Posted by Steph at March 12, 2006 2:09 PM