Microphonaime

At the core of Creative Writing is the concept of voice. Far from being easily elucidated, this concept becomes even more problematic when a creative work is performed, foregrounding as it does in the performance, the speaker’s accent. Whether this accent is deemed ‘regional’, ‘foreign’, or purely ‘idiosyncratic’, it embodies the grain of the voice. This paper seeks to define the nature of the accent with respect to the voice by utilising Lacan’s concept of the split between the eye and the gaze as expounded in Seminar XI, speculating that the invocatory drive which partakes of the aural field summons more archaic material than the scopic field does. By dint of the creative artefact, this paper exposes psychoanalysis’ complicity with the conventions it aims to subvert, and situates the speaking subject in an anti-conventional discourse the listener is compelled to encounter.