13 Cardiff, Janet. (with George Bures Miller) VILLA MEDICI WALK (2001) – excerpt
Perhaps a way to engage Cardiff and Miller’s work—and headphone listening in general—is with Lacan’s concept l’extimité. Developed in the later phase of Lacan’s writing, the idea of the l’extimité continues the importance of the voice in the psychoanalytic tradition since Freud first outlined the foundations for the “talking cure.” L’extimité is a neologism by Lacan that combines exterior and intimacy. Linked in his seminar VII with the german term das Ding, Lacan defines the concept as that “something strange to me, although it is at the heart of me.” This phrase could be used to describe the fundamental listening experience wearing headphones, but a phantom voice inside the head suspended by headphones is the ideal example of this strangeness.. In a dynamic space that links the exterior with the interior via the topology of a möbius loop or better yet a Kleinnian bottle, the subject listens. And in this listening the outside is on the inside of the listener. The difference between contained and container slides, as does the difference between you and I. We easily identify with our phantasies once we have become the Hollow Men making room for an Other. Janet’s words commands us to listen, and touched by a phantom intimacy we do. “Listen to me” Janet’s voice seems to beg, and already having donned headphones I “always already” have obeyed before even hearing her voice. I listen carefully and confess with the words of Roland Barthes, “The Other collects [her] whole body in [her] voice and announces that I am collecting all of myself in my ear.” #