I continue here on a side path the research I have been doing for years on the anthropology of the body. The voice, although it escapes from the body, is rooted in it, there is no voice without a body. It is particularly difficult to tackle, as the historian Arlette Farge has already pointed out, but in this sense it offers an exciting challenge for the researcher. This research has taken me years marked by fragmented notes in which I sometimes felt the impossibility of bringing this project to fruition. Although the voice is a frequent occurrence, it does not stop slipping like water through the fingers. However, in previous years I reflected on equally difficult to address issues that posed similar difficulties: I think of Faces or The Silence.

The face above all is an object marked by sensitivity and singularity, but impregnated with the social bond. In Faces, I tried to capture the almost discourse of the face, its representations, its meanings, its values, without omitting how much it moves us and connects us with the social bond. In various ways, there are multiple coexistences between the face and the voice, both show the singularity of the person and their anchorage in social relationships, both are signs of identity because although we recognize each one by their face, we also recognize them by their voice, and the alteration of the face or voice cuts the individual from the social bond generating discomfort towards him. Wondering about the voice, I found the same doubts and the same wonders as when I wrote about silence or the face, and the same amazement at seeing that in the end little by little the work is born. It is a matter here of clearing the way towards a sensitive anthropology and exploring the 'half-saying' of the voice.

Excerpt from the introduction