[Linganth] Voices that Matter

[Ilana Gershon]

Dear Colleagues,
Andrew Bush asks  Marlene Schäfers about her book, Voices that Matter, today
on the CaMP anthropology blog.

https://campanthropology.org/

Best,
Ilana

Press blurb: “Raise your voice!” and “Speak up!” are familiar refrains that
assume, all too easily, that gaining voice will lead to empowerment,
healing, and inclusion for marginalized subjects. Marlene Schäfers’s *Voices
That Matter *reveals where such assumptions fall short, demonstrating that
“raising one’s voice” is no straightforward path to emancipation but
fraught with anxieties, dilemmas, and contradictions. In its attention to
the voice as form, this book examines not only what voices say but also how
they do so, focusing on Kurdish contexts where oral genres have a long,
rich legacy. Examining the social labor that voices carry out as they
sound, speak, and resonate, Schäfers shows that where new vocal practices
arise, they produce new selves and practices of social relations. In
Turkey, recent decades have seen Kurdish voices gain increasing moral and
political value as metaphors of representation and resistance. Women’s
voices, in particular, are understood as potent means to withstand
patriarchal restrictions and political oppression. By ethnographically
tracing the transformations in how Kurdish women relate to and employ their
voices as a result of these shifts, Schäfers illustrates how contemporary
politics foster not only new hopes and desires but also create novel
vulnerabilities as they valorize, elicit, and discipline voice in the name
of empowerment and liberation.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/linganth/attachments/20230717/e5753a4f/attachment.htm>