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Postgraduate Profile

Carrie Giunta

Abstract

In this thesis, I use a close reading of the silent films of Charlie Chaplin to examine effects of listening, diunital relations and rhythm, drawing on works by Derrida and Nancy. The thesis makes a series of consequential points about subjectivity, alterity, and identity.

In Chapter One, I consider Fiumara’s assertion that philosophy has failed to address the topic of listening because a logocentric tradition claims speech as primary. Nancy complicates the problem of listening, asking what kind of listening philosophy is capable. I distinguish between Nancean l’écoute and l’entente, arguing that l’écoute is an attending to and answering the demand of the other and that l’entente is directed inward toward a subject. This frames l’écoute and l’entente as sensibility and intelligibility, though I refine this distinction in Chapter Two to show it is not simple Platonism. I focus on the peculiarly dialogical figure derived from Chaplin that communicates meaning without using speech. Through a rereading of Heraclitus fragments, I challenge previous interpretations that privilege l’entente as the attention given to logos. Themes emerge from the rereading of the fragments from African philosophy that position logos in polyphonic dialogue. I argue that l’écoute is openness to the other in dialogue, recalling Heidegger’s hearkening (hörchen), with which Being-with listens to others. I argue that Chaplin, through silent dialogue with himself by way of the other, the audience, makes his listening listened to. This discussion illustrates how Chaplin, in the role of a silent figure, listens to himself (s’écoute) in speechless discourse with objects and through discourse with himself-as-other.

In Chapter Three, I argue Chaplin’s listening is Nancean resonance, a movement in which a subject refers back to itself as another subject, in constant motion of spatial and temporal non-presence, which makes it neither an idealism of listening nor a material process. In the fourth chapter, I argue, when Derrida questions Nancy’s thesis on touching, he posits a non-presence that is at the same time immediate and interrupting, similar to diunitality and to Merleau-Ponty’s non-dualistic divergence. Chaplin resisted the change from silent films to talkies because the talkies would institute a change in the way in which his work would be listened to. This chapter asks the question, ‘what happens when the Tramp speaks’? When the Tramp speaks, is it day or is it night; is it l’écoute or is it l’entente? Mutually touched by your eyes, Chaplin manages to balance the harmonious pair. He makes himself understood (se fait entendre) and he makes himself listened to (se fait écouter).

In Chapter Five, a reading of rhythm in Chaplin’s silent work reveals a connection between l’écoute and l’entente that deconstructs the distinction because, I argue, speech is derivative of rhythm. Chaplin’s refusal to make his silent character speak amidst a culture obsessed with the self-present talkies illuminates my overall project that listening is a more originary immediacy than speech and a more originary non-presence than writing, thus questioning Western philosophy.

The last chapter, “Can the Subaltern Listen?” will argue that the Tramp is beyond alterity. I will conclude that philosophy is capable of meeting the demand of listening as both l’entente and l’écoute when it listens as Chaplin does.

Supervisors: Professor James Williams and Dr Rachel Jones

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Contact Information

Carrie Giunta
Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Dundee
Dundee DD1 4HN
Email: carrie.giunta@gmail.com

Superviser: Professor James Williams

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