Autotheory’s echolalic circularity elevates voice’s timbre over its meaning

Evidence

The tautological maxims of contemporary culture are also enclosures of writing: autotheorists articulate, and their readers mirror, and then take the mic. Circularity and distributed multiplicity of speaking, rather than synthesis. The echolalic quality of speaking for oneself in turn elevates the timbre and tone and voice of the speaker—its sensuous intensity—above and beyond its sense. No wonder, then, that corporeality as the bed of the voice becomes a main motif in autotheory. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 273

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains why voice/corporeality dominate autotheory: the emphasis on speaking subjectivity’s texture follows from refusing synthesis in favor of circular self-articulation.