Homer's disembodied Siren, the missing player, or, what’s in Faux Rock?

Abstract

What are the Homeric Sirens? This article argues that the non-presence of these creatures’ bodies, which has, for the most part, eluded scrutiny, equates to an absence of their promised song. In place of a singing body, Homer’s audience is told only of hushing winds, an island, blooms and sailor bones. I suggest that this entangled presentation is clarified in Siren Serenade (2010), a sculpture by the American artist, Rachel Harrison. The installation, which features a purpose-built black rock, a satellite dish, and a vinyl record with absent turntable, captures both the Sirens’ disembodied voice and the emptiness of their claim. More intriguingly, it also recasts the rock, the Sirens’ island, as disrupting epic teleology, which correlates their home with death. Instead of an endpoint, the deadly island broadcasting the never-to-be-fulfilled promise can be re-read as fitting within a broader scale and as open to lithic ontology. I substantiate this proposition with insights from Jeffrey Cohen’s work on stone, and suggest that the Sirens’ promise of vast knowledge is death only if conceived from the standpoint of the epic hero’s apprehension of immortality through song. In a lithic timescale, the disembodied voice as rock is life, albeit experienced as ‘non-human’.