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Here’s a taste of what we’re serving today:
Where do our voices come from? Marguerite Duras’ India Song 🗣️
PLUS: Racism and Swimming Pools, Death-Defying Rats, and Why AI Can’t Tell the Time ⏲️
LANGUAGES
Where do our voices come from? Marguerite Duras’ India Song 🗣️
No, not THAT voice.
Marguerite Duras was an Indochinese-French author, dramaturg, scriptwriter, and director, whose work in the 20th century pushed the boundaries of what was possible in French film and theatre. Her play India Song (1973), based on her earlier novel Le Vice-Consul (1965), perfectly illustrates this through its use of disembodied voices…
Marguerite Duras
The play tells the story of Anne-Marie Stretter, wife of the French ambassador to India. While their world slowly collapses, Anne-Marie Stretter relieves her boredom by having numerous affairs. She drives the Vice-Consul of Lahore crazy with his love for her, and eventually kills herself in the Indian ocean. This story, as is the case in the film of the same name, is told by four disembodied voices, simply labelled ‘Voix 1’, ‘Voix 2’, ‘Voix 3’, and ‘Voix 4’. Duras tells us that Voix 1 and Voix 2 are young women, whereas Voix 3 and Voix 4 are men. These voices remain anonymous throughout the entire story, and we never see where they are coming from. This allows us to question the relationship between voice and body.
💡 Things to consider
Separating sound from image: In the film of India Song, we never hear the actors themselves speak. Instead, the story is told through these voices, which means what we see and what we hear never quite lines up. As film, and indeed theatre, is such a visual art form, how does this disconnection impact the way we experience Duras’ work? Do we see through the sound of the film?
Narrative autonomy: In her own résumé (summary) at the end of India Song, Duras tells us that the voices witnessed the story they are recounting many years ago, and that certain voices know more about the story than others. Does this make the voices unreliable narrators? Are the voices characters in the story, even though we can’t see them? How do these comments from Duras impact the notions of past and present in the play and the film?
Us when we realise the narrator might be unreliable
Merging voices: Without the text in front of you, it is often difficult to tell the different voices apart from one another, as they continually echo each other’s thoughts. For example, when they are describing a beggar woman who’s not quite dead towards the beginning of the play, Voix 1 and Voix 2 both comment on the death in a very similar way. Voix 1 says ‘n’est pas morte’ (is not dead), whereas Voix 2 says ‘Ne peut pas mourir’ (cannot die), with only an ellipsis separating the two remarks. Are these voices really distinct entities, then? Does that matter, especially as Duras herself tells us that the voices don’t know they’re being listened to?
To be distinct or not to be distinct
🔎 Find out more
Marguerite Duras, India Song (Paris : Éditions Gallimard, 1983)
Marie-Claire Ropars-Wuilleumier, ‘The Disembodied Voice: India Song’ trans. by Kimberly Smith, Yale French Studies 60 (1980), 241-268
🍒 The cherry on top
🏊 Racism and Swimming Pools: This Code Switch podcast explores the history of public swimming pools in the U.S., and the legacy that pool segregation has had on swimming skills in the country today. A very interesting read for anyone interested in History or Sociology!
🐀 Death-Defying Rats: Most mammals flee low oxygen — but naked mole-rats actively seek it out. This mind-bending article explores how these underground rodents prefer air that would kill humans, and why their extreme hypoxia tolerance could unlock new treatments for stroke, lung disease and heart injury. Great for anyone who likes Biology or Medicine.
⏲ Why AI Can’t Tell the Time: AI can do all sorts: write code, paint portraits, write stories… yet ask it to draw a clock and everything falls apart. This article explores why analogue clocks expose a surprising weakness in modern AI, from skewed training data to the limits of pattern recognition without true visual reasoning. A funny, revealing look at what machines still struggle to grasp — and why telling time might be more human than we think. Perfect if you’re interested in Computer Science.
👀 Keep your eyes peeled for…
Wednesday 21st January
Thursday 22nd January
Monday 26th January
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That’s it for this week! We’d like to thank this week’s writer: Eva Bailey.
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