F. Evans, The multivoiced body

Andrea Pitts

pp. 465-471

in: Human Studies 33 (4), 2010.

Abstract

In his latest book, The Multivoiced Body: Society and Communication in the Age of Diversity, Fred Evans proposes a novel philosophical framework for interpreting human communication within a 21st-century political milieu of pluralism and difference. Evans’ “multivoiced body” is, as the term suggests, a hybrid theory of society that engages writings as diverse as Chomskyan linguistics to postcolonial critiques of the Zapatista rebellion. Throughout the text, Evans skillfully places his conception of the social body in dialogue with numerous philosophical and literary theories of communication with the aim of articulating a new approach to contemporary questions of globalization, justice, and democracy. In response to what he calls “the dilemma of diversity,” Evans’ multivoiced body is an interpretation of the social body as a mutual interplay of subjectivities, cultures, and histories, which relies on the continual recognition of the interdependency of meaning. The dilemma that Evans...

Cited authors

Evans Fred