Work

Voice as Constellation: Listening to the Voices and Silences of Displacement in Three Acts

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: This article conceptualises voice as a constellation, examining how objects, images, and sounds (or their absence) speak to the lived experiences of displacement. Drawing from a British Academy-funded project with a Syrian artist collective and a women-led social entrepreneurship initiative in Istanbul, we explore the affective assemblages of loss, belonging, and forced displacement through an ethnographic mode of listening. Bringing together a crocheted life jacket, a painting, and a piece of music that cannot be played, we consider how a politics of listening can offer new ways of understanding forced displacement and agency beyond voice as speech or narrative. We advocate for an approach that foregrounds thick solidarity, collective expression, and intersubjective relations of vocality.

Source: Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle

DOI: 10.1017/rrc.2025.2

Authors: Fiona Murphy, Evropi Chatzipanagiotidou

Institutions: Dublin City University, Queen's University Belfast

Language: English

Topic: Migration and Exile Studies

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,550