How Sapphic Songs Slay: A Queer Musicological Research on Sapphism, Vocality and Death in the Sirens' Voices in the Odyssey

Abstract

This research is a reparative reading and a queer mythopoesis of the mythological figure of the sirens in the Odyssey, and more specifically of their deadly voices. In order to explore how sapphism, vocality and death relate to the sirens’ voices and to each other, this thesis departs from principles of queer unhistoricism (Matzner, 2016; Traub, 2013) where anachronism and non-linearity are used to remember the white supremist and ‘straight’ classics differently. The figure of the metalepsis, a causal convergence of seemingly unrelated narratives, is used to connect the sirens’ song in the Odyssey to the radical SCUM Manifesto (1967) by Valerie Solanas. Murderous lesbian separatism is read with and through the sirens, and it is put into conversation with different lesbian theories of the second wave of feminism (Radicalesbians, 1970; Combahee River Collective, 1977; Lorde, 1978; Rich, 1980; Wittig, 1981). These theories are then linked to queer musicological concepts such as a lesbian relationship with music (Cusick, 2006) and sapphonics (Wood, 2006), developing arguments on vocality, queer subjectivity and erotic affect to better understand the sirens’ singing voices as a sapphic weapon of destruction. In addition to the analysis, the chapters of this thesis are accompanied by three siren songs that materialize some of the theories into my artistic practice as a singer, composer and theatre maker. Ultimately, this research aims to create a constellation of knowledges to better understand how sonic imaginaries such as the siren song can change the ways of listening to dangerous, sapphic voices that ask society to “change or die” (Solanas, 1967, 56).