09 May 2006
something to look forward to...
Mladen Dolar from his recent and quite splendid A Voice and Nothing More on vivas:
'...we can see that within Anglo-American academia there is an institution actually called viva voce, or just viva: the defense of a dissertation, of a doctoral thesis, which has to be made "in the living voice." In most universities all examinations and tests are nowadays done by writing, so in theory one could actually survive the whole of academic life and get a degree without ever opening one's mouth. Until the viva: at this point, when undergoing the key initiatory ritual, one has to "give voice," one must not just display one's knowledge but perform one's knowledge. the corpus of a candidate's knowledge has been written down in the dissertation, which - supposedly and optimistically - the members of the committee have all carefully read, but this is not enough, it has to be enacted through the voice and only thus made effective. The general experience of these tedious occasions shows that they are indeed simply a question of vocal display; the supposed testing and questioning of the candidate's knowledge has very little to do with that knowledge itself, and has an entirely ritual and vocal character (supplemented by narcissistic struggles and departmental politics under the banner of promoting pure science).'
