Die Stimme schafft Beziehung: ,Critique du rythme' heute

Meschonnic’s major work, Critique du rythme. Anthropologie historique du langage, casually provides heuristic formulas. One of them makes it possible to link the theory of rhythm to the theory of voice and relation: “The voice is relation” (Meschonnic 1982: 294). The present chapter aims to show what the theoretical and practical power of ‘rhythm’, as Meschonnic defines it, is in his own writing. It is the strongest possible connection of Meschonnic’s theory of voice with the practice of criticism that will be illustrated by the rhythm of his essay: Our whole notion of science would be transformed by such a practice of theory, for experience would take the place of application, and the essay would become a poem, against all the dualisms that nowadays exempt science and research from any risk of thought. At the same time, it is about a politics that could be thought from experience and thus from the democratic and social challenges of the present. A politics that would be directed against those expert opinions and discourses that dehistoricize and de-voice reading and writing––and, of course, translation. The article finally arrives at a reformulation of Meschonnic’s formula on the level of a continuous