Voice At The Test Of Schooling: Recitation, Rhythm, And Subjectivation

Abstract

This article examines school recitation as a philosophical problem at the intersection of poetics, philosophy of language, and subjectivity. Drawing on Émile Benveniste’s theory of enunciation and Henri Meschonnic’s poetics of rhythm, it argues that traditional practices of recitation tend to reduce poetry to a formal utterance, thereby obscuring its enunciative and rhythmic dimensions. Through the analysis of classroom situations observed in Algerian primary education, the study shows how recitation often suppresses voice and prevents poetic experience as a process of subjectivation. The article proposes a reconceptualization of memorization as an enunciative practice, in which poetry becomes a lived experience rather than a reproduced text. By placing voice at the center of poetic practice, it defends an understanding of poetry as an event of language inseparable from rhythm and from the emergence of the speaking subject.