“Future Auditions: Gramophonic Voice Letters and the Inscription of the Absent Other”

Prof. Thomas Y. Levin will deliver a keynote lecture on the media archaeology of phonopost. While all forms of epistolary are marked by the unavoidable risks of postality – letters get delayed, damaged, mis-delivered, lost, etc. – voice letters are subject to a very particular range of challenges. Among the many uncanny aspects of recording an audio message, one of the most striking is the absence of a proximate, real-time listener. Not surprisingly, many audio letters register this lack by means of a variety of rhetorical strategies that articulate medium-specific imaginaries of both production and reception. This lecture will examine and reflect upon such compensatory practices through a series of close readings of selected gramophonic voice letters from the Princeton Phono-Post Archive.