Silences that Ride the Air: Soundscaping Slavery in Caryl Phillips’s Crossing the River
Abstract
Is anyone listening out there? The artists who write and produce radio dramas believe that a limitless imaginative world is possible. Radio drama is the most flexible of forms, allowing a freedom to experiment usually inhibited by considerations of space, time, and money in live theatre. It is no coincidence that the experimental nature of Caryl Phillips’s radio plays fits perfectly into Brater’s idea of “performative voice” (Brater 1994). Caryl Phillips’s Crossing the River (1985), in particular, illustrates the necessity of filling silence with something, anything at all, by telling the Africans’ trade story and trauma created by way of soundscaping sounds, pauses and silences.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFDOI: https://doi.org/10.7358/ling-2020-001-temp
Copyright (©) 2020 carla tempestoso – Editorial format and Graphical layout: copyright (©) LED Edizioni Universitarie
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Linguæ & - Rivista di lingue e culture moderne
Registered by Tribunale di Milano (06/04/2012 n. 185)
Online ISSN 1724-8698 - Print ISSN 2281-8952
Dipartimento di Scienze della Comunicazione, Studi Umanistici e Internazionali: Storia, Culture, Lingue, Letterature, Arti, Media
Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo
Editor-in-Chief: Roberta Mullini
Editorial Board: Maurizio Ascari - Stefano Beretta - Antonio Bertacca- Tania Collani - Chiara Elefante - Marina Guglielmi - Maryline Heck - Richard Hillman - Reinhard Johler - Stephen Knight - Cesare Mascitelli - Sonia Massai - Aurélie Moioli - Maria de Fátima Silva - Bart Van Den Bossche
Editorial Staff: Margaret Amatulli - Alessandra Calanchi - Riccardo Donati - Ivo Klaver - Massimiliano Morini - Antonella Negri - Luca Renzi
© 2001 LED Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto