jim submits:
"Vox Pop: Locating and Constructing the 'Voice of the People'"
6th Annual University of South Carolina Comparative Literature Conference
26-28 February, 2004, Columbia, SC, U.S.A.
Building from a millennia-old maxim -- the voice of the people is the voice
of God -- the desire to locate, fabricate, and appropriate the vox populi has
been especially pervasive for at least the last two centuries. What
defines this voice of the people? Is it a voice charged with lore from the
ancient past or one as new as today's poll numbers? How is it mediated:
who speaks on behalf of the "grass roots," "the American people," the "Arab
street"?
The concept can challenge authority, promoting populist
subversions of hierarchy (carnival, protest, revolution), yet it also feeds
an age-old temptation to construct a monologic Voice of a monolithic
People, silencing heterogeneous, dialogic voices. Whether sought in
man-on-the-street interviews, the "voices of the People in song" (for
Herder these included everyone from Homer, to Shakespeare, to Ossian), or
contemporary advertising trends, the consensus of popular sentiment remains
as elusive (and deceptive) an ideal as ever.
The "Vox Pop" conference will consider the multitudes of peoples and voices
that have come under the heading of vox populi, from the ancient populus or
hoi polloi to the various "Peoples" of modern nationalism (das Volk, le
peuple, narod), and from folksong to political discourse to "the writing on
the wall." The conference invites a wide-ranging interrogation of the idea
of the voice of the people by scholars from a range of fields.
