This article builds on the other contributions in the round table and proposes the conceptualization of voice as a constellation. In this context, we examine a constellation of objects, images, and sounds (or the absence of sound) from a British Academy-funded project which engaged with a Syrian artist collective and a women-led social enterprise in Istanbul, Turkey. This round table has inspired us to draw on a number of objects and sounds which we have previously documented in our work; we bring these together to listen to them collectively for the first time. We propose here a deep listening to this constellation of a crocheted life jacket, a painting, and a piece of music that cannot be played. We see this constellation as a palimpsest of fragments and endings, but at the same time of new formations and aspirations attuned to affective assemblages of loss and displacement.
Our entry point into this thematic round table therefore emerges from work grounded in a conceptual focus on loss and its relationship to voice, silence, and listening. We have argued elsewhere how an ethnographic fixation with unravelling ‘voices’ in the form of collecting oral narratives that are ultimately not listened to may produce ethical dilemmas and epistemic violence in the context of displacement and loss.Footnote 1 Along similar lines, Kyratsou argues in her own contribution here that rather than being voiceless as usually represented, refugees are usually inaudible.Footnote 2 Kyratsou traces sound and noise in refugee camps as agentive ways of voicing space and ‘speaking out of place’, against exclusionary and oppressive hierarchies of vocality entrenched in asylum regimes.Footnote 3
The ‘fragmentary imperative’ deployed in this article is, however, less about the documentation of narratives as personal articulations of loss and suffering and more about how listening to key moments reveals voice(s) beyond subjectivity and intentionality. Phillips-Hutton proposes in her article in this round table that we need to reconceptualize the voice through multiplicity and intersubjectivity, instead of as a form of personal property and individual agency.Footnote 4 We rather purposefully then move away from ‘voice’ — both in the sonic and in the metaphorical sense — as sound and narrative to voice as a constellation, to bring into sharp relief the site- and time-specificity of the ways in which we can listen to bodies, sound, materialities, silences, and their connections.
In this article, we also align with other scholarly contributions calling for an emphasis on conceptualizing listening as central in the structural hierarchies of voice(-lessness). Drawing inspiration from Nina Sun Eidsheim’s pivotal work, which calls for a critical re-evaluation of our listening practices, we delve into the complexities of voice as a collective and relational entity (in accordance with the general theme of this round table). Eidsheim emphasizes the importance of moving beyond naturalized and essentialist interpretations of vocal timbre that are entangled with racialized and gendered categories of (in)authenticity.Footnote 5 Building on Eidsheim’s effort to promote a denaturalized listening attuned to what the author describes as a ‘timbral politics of difference’, we expand our exploration beyond the realms of deep listening to encompass the multifaceted concept of voice, treating it not as a singular isolated experience but as a rich constellatory continuum.
We use ‘constellation’ here to conceptualize voice as a dynamic assembly of individual and communal vocal expressions, materialities, and listening techniques that intersect with broader cultural, social, and historical narratives. This approach encourages us to engage with the voices of the forcibly displaced not merely as narrators of personal stories, but as located within a complex network of relational voices. By considering voice and listening as a continuum through object, image, and sound, we open deliberate pathways to understanding vocality not just as a means of communication but as a space of collective expression, identity, and agency. This reframing aligns with our colleagues’ contributions to this round table, which highlight the inherent collectivity, intersubjectivity, and relationality of voice and/as agency.Footnote 6
In weaving together these threads, this article therefore aims to contribute a nuanced layer to the ongoing dialogues within both anthropological and ethnomusicological discourses, underscoring the importance of listening — and listening deeply — not just to the spoken words but to the silences, the echoes, and the chorus of voices that constitute the lived experiences of forced displacement and belonging. This is not an endorsement of a liberal version of multivocality which in its market-centred logic appears rhetorically inclusive but in reality does not address entrenched inequalities of voice.Footnote 7 On the contrary, by looking at voice as constellation we aim to shed light on the layers of the unspoken and the unspeakable, the unheard and the unhearable, even in contexts in which one seems to have a voice. This approach invites us to consider agency outside individualist conceptualizations that conflate voice with freedom and locate it within intersubjective relations of vocality.Footnote 8
We thus organize this article as a series of ‘ethnographic snapshots’ bringing together material(-ities) which we have previously documented in other aspects of our collaborative work.Footnote 9 We return to them here, realizing that they are part of a voice continuum instead of separate expressions in our research contexts. We have put them together as an invitation, even a request, to listen openly, differently in fact, away from the dominance of the oral narrative through a constellation of object, image, and sound. What we present here are fragments, however. We write like this in full awareness of the criticism of how cherry-picking selective ‘sound bites’ can diminish experiences of loss and forced displacement.Footnote 10 We nonetheless see our writing in fragments as ‘not so much a form of generation as it is a form of endurance, survival, way-making, movement or passage through the world’.Footnote 11
Our constellation of object, image, and absence of sound thus proposes an attentiveness and a listening to the unspoken relations in the lives of our research participants.Footnote 12 Therein lies a space to cultivate a politics of listening that is both a poetics of ethnographic reclamation and a distinct act of remaking, of new solidarities or generative silences.Footnote 13 Listening in this way is finally, we believe, in line with Didier Fassin’s call for a moral anthropology — a listening that leads scholars, advocates, and activists into a place of ‘telling right from wrong and the necessity of acting in favour of the good and against the evil’ through an attuned ethnography.Footnote 14
In listening for the unsaid in highly charged representations of conflict and displacement through object, image, and sound, we argue (following Lauren Berlant) that what is needed is a democracy of the senses.Footnote 15 This is a listening for the unsaid that embraces all of the senses, a form of what Kathleen Stewart calls ‘atmospheric attunement’ that can lead to an alternative form of ethnographic listening and storytelling, vital in the context of engaging with conflict and forced displacement experiences.Footnote 16 Core to this project of listening is the will to push past limiting structures that prescribe a particular version of ethnographic engagement and listening. In our presentation of object, image, and sound (with no hierarchy of order), we agree with Mwenda Ntarangwi, who argues for a listening as ‘conviviality’, a listening that sees others as unbounded in their possible roles as creators and influencers.Footnote 17 This is a listening deployed to ‘disrupt ethnographic representations’ by being open to uncertainty, silence, and refusal.Footnote 18 It is a way of orienting towards a necessary and urgent ethnographic sensibility that is first and foremost a commitment to interpersonal relationships in this research project.Footnote 19
Listening in the Fieldsite: A Methodological Note
There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard.
Arundhati Roy
This round table discussion is grounded in ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Istanbul from 2017 to 2019. Our overarching project aimed to delve into themes of refugeehood, loss, and labour politics in Turkey, extending to encompass the perspectives of Syrian artists. Embracing what Gökçe Varma and Chika Watanabe term ‘a patchwork ethnography’, we sustain a dynamic long-term engagement with our ever-evolving fieldsite in Turkey, navigating between Belfast, Dublin, and Istanbul.Footnote 20 This approach necessitates a profound attentiveness to how our changing living and working conditions fundamentally transform ethnographic work.Footnote 21
In this article, we adopt a methodological approach centred on ‘listening to images’ — engaging with the intricate interplay of objects, images, and sounds. Inspired by Tina Campt, who advocates for a poetic auditory engagement with images beyond their rhetorical dimensions, we extend her approach to comprehend complex visual records. While Campt’s work predominantly addresses the visual canon concerning Black experiences and colonialism, her call to explore the sonic and haptic layers of the visual resonates with our investigation into how voices manifest through objects, images, and sounds.
As we immerse readers in our constellation, we present voices from refugee social entrepreneurship projects and Syrian artists striving to sustain their livelihoods in Istanbul. This project promotes an ethnographic sensibility that challenges the mere documentation of suffering in its various forms. The imperative to examine why we engage in such work sparks significant tensions. Therefore we propose that anthropological studies of loss and suffering should not aim to resolve dilemmas related to representation, experience, and aesthetics. Instead, they should embrace a ‘methodological dubiety’, acknowledging the intricate ethical, political, and methodological challenges in documenting absence.Footnote 22 Through this listening approach, we aspire to contribute to a distinct form of ethical knowledge production. Our methodological practice highlights that the ‘perils and promises’ of anthropological work must be moderated by recursive listening attentive to the spaces of gaps and silences.Footnote 23 This constellation of listening calls for engaging with the complexities and uncertainties inherent in our ethnographic endeavours.
Participating in this round table has thus fostered generative reflections on our work in Istanbul, enriched significantly by discussions with fellow participants and the generous, thoughtful peer reviews we received. These exchanges have enabled us to push the boundaries of our research, prompting us to reconsider and refine various aspects of our approach to listening and voice. This collaborative dialogue has proved both fruitful and productive, providing invaluable insights that have enhanced the depth and scope of our work. Consequently, this process of engaging in rigorous and reflective discussions became an integral part of our iterative methodology for this article. By incorporating the diverse perspectives and critical feedback from the round table, we have been able to develop a more nuanced and comprehensive analysis — a collective listening, if you will. This iterative process of dialogue and reflection has allowed us to challenge our assumptions, explore new dimensions of our research, and ultimately produce a more robust contribution.
* * *
Turkey hosts the largest population of Syrian refugees, with approximately 4.1 million residing in the country, the majority of whom live in major urban centres. Predominant representations of refugees often focus on images of encampment. However, in recent years, a significant proportion of displaced populations have settled in urban areas. Istanbul exemplifies this trend, as a complex urban landscape that accommodates the largest number of refugees among Turkish cities. Nonetheless, the lives of Syrians in Istanbul are constrained by a broad range of temporary protections and escalating anti-Syrian sentiment.Footnote 24
Since the introduction of the Law on Foreigners and International Protection (LFIP) in 2014, displaced Syrians have been granted ‘temporary protection’ status.Footnote 25 The LFIP was designed to align Turkish law more closely with EU legislation, providing provisions for foreigners in need of international protection, including ‘temporary protection’, when they are forced to leave their country and cannot return.Footnote 26 However, this legislation explicitly states that granting temporary protection does not include providing ‘residency permits’ or any specified duration of stay that could lead to permanent status.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the vulnerabilities faced by Syrian refugees. Lockdowns and economic downturns disproportionately affected those in precarious employment, leading to heightened unemployment and poverty within refugee communities. Access to healthcare and social services became even more restricted, compounding the difficulties in securing basic needs.Footnote 27 During this period, anti-Syrian sentiment intensified, fuelled by economic insecurities and public health fears. Many Syrians have reported experiencing increased discrimination and hostility. On a recent field trip in 2024, numerous respondents conveyed to us that they live in constant fear, citing a marked rise in hate crimes and societal exclusion since the pandemic and economic downturn began. As a result, Syrian refugees, particularly those residing in urban centres rather than camps, encounter substantial challenges in accessing education, employment, and economic support.Footnote 28 This precarious legal status, combined with the socio-economic barriers and rising hostility, significantly hinders their ability to integrate and thrive within Turkish society.
Listening in Solidarity: A Crocheted Life Jacket
On the landing page of the website of Knitstanbul, a small Turkish-based refugee social entrepreneurship, sits the image of a luminous orange-and-black crocheted child’s life jacket (Figure 1). The life jacket, striking in its design, is a beautiful piece of craftwork produced by one of the knitters for World Refugee Day in 2019. Its very visible presence on their website betokens the entanglements of this particular refugee social entrepreneurship with the conditions of refugee status, conflict, and survival.
Figure 1. The Knitstanbul life jacket. Image courtesy of Knitstanbul.
Knitstanbul was founded in 2014 by Malika Browne, a British writer and expat who had lived in Syria and Turkey for a number of years. As Syrians started to arrive in large numbers in Istanbul, she felt the need to reach out and develop some kind of support and assistance in what would become a tale of ethical response and encounter, and so the idea of a crafting business was born. The story of Knitstanbul is also a story of loss and recovery, of rebuilding and reconnecting, in an attempt to establish a sustainable livelihood under the spectre of the Syrian conflict and an absence of rights in Turkey. Primarily, the knitters, all women, produce baby knitwear and sell through Etsy and their webpage.
The crocheted life jacket created by the women of Knitstanbul transcends its physical form to embody a profound collective voice. More than mere craftwork, it encapsulates the shared trials, dreams, and agency of these women, extending the traditional bounds of voice well beyond the realm of spoken language. This vibrant artefact symbolizes not just individual stories of displacement but a communal narrative of resilience and hope, challenging us to engage in a deeper form of listening. Our engagement with Knitstanbul’s craftwork calls for ‘thick solidarity’ — a committed empathetic response that recognizes and listens to the intricate tapestry of experiences woven into the fabric of the life jacket.Footnote 29 In this context, it is not merely an object of aesthetic or utilitarian value; it becomes a potent symbol through which the collective voice of a community shaped by the forces of displacement is both seen and heard, urging us to listen more attentively and respond more thoughtfully to the stories it carries.
David Palumbo-Liu’s call to reconceptualize the origins of our voices as ‘legitimate, as real, as vibrant, and most importantly, as politically necessary’ offers a compelling lens through which to view the craftwork of Knitstanbul.Footnote 30 The symbolic crocheted life jacket articulates a powerful form of voice that transcends conventional verbal communication, emanating from a space deeply intertwined with personal histories, communal ties, and the broader context of displacement. The act of knitting, traditionally seen as a private, domestic activity, is transformed by the women of Knitstanbul into a public assertion of identity and survival. Their handcrafted life jacket is not a mere symbolic object; it is a vibrant testimony to survival, hope, and solidarity. It has in fact become a museum piece that has been sold then remade and displayed in many different contexts. Such creations speak from a place of authenticity and necessity, reclaiming and legitimizing the voice of the displaced within public consciousness. They challenge the perception of the ‘voiceless’ refugee by asserting a collective presence that is impossible to ignore, thereby turning a space sometimes deemed ‘bereft of value’ into a platform for political expression and contestation.
This crocheted life jacket was thus made to symbolize the modalities of rescue and survival at play in everyday refugee experiences and also works to evoke the embodied burden of conflict and displacement. It speaks to the tropes of difference, contingency, and loss so embedded in the act of seeking refuge. Indeed, while evocative of rescue and survival, the life jacket also provokes the question of how one can listen to lives that are still moving, still waiting, still yearning for return, still caught in the temporal complexities of seeking refuge, of being a refugee. In listening to the women of Knitstanbul and to the evocations of the work they craft, knit, and weave, we are proposing a listening anchored in thick solidarity.Footnote 31 This listening on research participants’ own terms is one we believe necessary for the cultivation of a thick solidarity which ‘can withstand the tension of critique, the pulling back and forth between that which we owe and that which we share’.Footnote 32 Indeed, in this messy intersubjective listening in thick solidarity, we find spaces of action and advocacy — a listening which yields, we hope, other kinds of listening. In between the stitches, the twists, and the knots, our listening together beckons towards Leah Bassel’s reading of how a politics of listening ‘can disrupt power and privilege and harmful binaries of “Us and Them” with the aim of political equality’.Footnote 33 Being attentive to the Knitstanbul life jacket (in particular) underscores the value of listening in thick solidarity ‘in adversarial, tense, and unequal political moments’.Footnote 34 This is ultimately, then, a listening which strives towards emphasizing our interdependence through unsettling entrenched hierarchies of voice and audibility in the hope of recognition and respect for those seeking refuge. Knitstanbul’s craftwork exemplifies a form of ‘speaking out of place’,Footnote 35 speaking from self-claimed spaces of legitimacy and demonstrating how such voices, when acknowledged and amplified, can reshape our understanding of displacement, community, and the power of collective expression, particularly necessary in times of polycrisis.
Listening to Afterlives: A Painting of a Jet Fighter
Vibrant and visceral hues of blues, greys, blacks, and reds swirl in an enigmatic dance, this painting’s secrets hidden at first glance (Figure 2). Flashes of white — could they be nimbus or cirrus? Oceans of mist crash towards a raw keel of blue and red, shrouded in mystery. The artist’s nationality, Syrian, might hint at deeper meanings. The painting pulses with unknowability, a kaleidoscope of colour and emotion; it leaves few clues to decipher its map of intensity. The viewer must shift, move closer, stand back, interpret — this piece blurs the lines between the unspeakable and the knowable.
Figure 2. Abdulatief, The View from Above. Image courtesy of artist.
Aesthetically striking in its chaos of colour and spirit, it is only upon closer examination that the viewer realizes the perspective — that of a jet fighter about to strike and kill those below. In an interview, the artist contrasts the fighter pilot’s pleasure in finding his target with the impending destruction:
The view from the jet fighter, striking and killing, is colourful because he feels pleasure. That was my aim — there is pleasure for such people in killing. If someone looks at the piece, it is colourful, and then they realize what they are seeing.Footnote 36
As an abstract artist who resists categorical confines, Abdulatief gathers the shards of conflict and displacement, reshaping them within an ethical and humanistic project. His image of the jet fighter anchors aesthetic surprise in deep emotion, forcefully demanding an ethical response. This work presents a complex emotional landscape, where viewers transition from enjoying the colourful chaos to realizing the depicted horror, often being provoked to guilt for having momentarily shared the fighter pilot’s pleasure.
In Donna Haraway’s terms, Abdulatief translates his personal experience of conflict and displacement into speculative art, opening a way of ‘redoing dying and living’.Footnote 37 This series marks a personal ending as the artist moves to Turkey, synthesizing experiences of conflict, loss, and displacement into political commentary. His art produces a very particular mode of attention and listening to conflict, thereby crafting an afterlife from ruination and loss. For Abdulatief, this afterlife is both resurgent and assertive, living within and against worlds shaped by ongoing ruin.
Abdulatief’s air maps, named after Syrian cities, complicate the emotionality of conflict by shifting perspectives and interpretations. The mottling of colour and clarity both obscures and enlightens, silences yet strives to speak of the contradictions of conflict and displacement, of living with endings and framing new beginnings. In listening to Abdulatief’s creative expressions, one finds political and ethical potentiality. His work, revealing his insights into Syria’s conflict as a form of ‘poisonous knowledge’, turns his act of listening in the context of conflict and displacement into a form of affective embattlement.Footnote 38
Through his art, Abdulatief’s individual voice is intricately interwoven with the collective narratives of conflict and displacement, constructing a perspective that shifts between personal introspection and communal resonance. His meticulous brushstrokes, imbued so heavily with personal experiences, unfurl a defiant narrative — a singular voice that finds its echo in the collective memory and shared experience of surviving the Syrian conflict and forced displacement. Katherine Meizel, in her poetic examination of multivocality, elucidates this complex interplay between individual and collective voice, asserting that multivocality ‘constitutes […] border crossings […]. Multivocal singers are often those who must continuously identify and cross borders in their everyday lives — singers of color, singers who are immigrants, or singers navigating gender, ethnic, even religious boundaries.’Footnote 39 Through Meizel’s analytical framework of ‘multivocality as border crossing’, Abdulatief’s artwork can be reconceptualized not simply as a visual artefact but as an amalgamation of voices, wherein the artist’s unique expression integrates with the broader communal experience of conflict and forced displacement. Meizel’s discourse on multivocality invites a scholarly reinterpretation of the artwork as a nexus of individual and collective narratives, where the personal journey through conflict intertwines with the communal ethos of loss, endurance, and survival.
Inherent in Abdulatief’s listening as art is an act of overcoming. In many ways this is not unlike how the women of Knitstanbul craft new subjectivities and new frames for speech in their own crafting as listening. Abdulatief’s politics of listening through his artwork and our listening to his visual politics set in motion a challenge to different forms of violence. His listening as artwork and our listening as researchers hold a resonance that straddles a concern with how to respond to these violences in all of their multi-dimensionality. This too is a form of listening as thick solidarity, anchored in Abdulatief’s creative visions, which act as a guiding force to think about how we can address questions of loss in the context of conflict and displacement.
Listening to the Ellipsis: A Piece of Music that We Cannot Play for You
An ellipsis is a sentence that I don’t end because […] I don’t know how to. An ellipsis is a sentence I don’t end because […] you know what I mean. An ellipsis is a figure of return that isn’t symmetrical.
Lauren Berlant
Jamal’s music ebbs and flows like a heartbeat externalized, weaving together tradition and intricate form. Its rhythmic sequences are alluring, revealing a rich tapestry of cultural and personal history shaped by diverse musical training. A Syrian pianist and practising lawyer, Jamal has been profoundly affected by the arrest, detention, and execution of his brother by the Syrian government. Reflecting on this tragedy, he shared with us, ‘That was the trigger for me to make my album. I felt compelled to tell his story, especially the horror he endured in detention.’Footnote 40 Despite his compositions and public performances, Jamal has chosen not to release the album, wishing to honour his brother’s memory and protect his own grief from appropriation and commodification until he can do so with the necessary sensitivity and resources. He succinctly states, ‘If I do release it, it will be for all detainees.’
Jamal has never played this music for us. Even after moving to London and reinventing his life, he remains unable to share his brother’s tribute publicly. As we cannot describe the music, we ask instead that the reader focuses on its absence — to listen in to its silence. In conversation with Knitstanbul’s life jacket and Abdulatief’s artwork, Jamal’s potent effort to create an album dedicated to his brother’s memory, yet his inability to make it public, illustrates how loss can compel one to live a life in ellipsis, as articulated by Lauren Berlant.Footnote 41 This is an existence that resists definitive endings, leaving the space to rethink through the power of possibility.
Though Jamal has openly shared his personal trauma and political views, the album for his deceased brother remains a private sanctuary. Our conversations have always been woven through his dual roles as artist and lawyer. His multifaceted professional life allows him to offer profound insights into the role of artistic production for Syrians and the legal complexities of refugee status in Turkey, central to our broader project. For Jamal, he feels that releasing this album should only occur in a generative, hopeful space, only after he has personally navigated his brother’s death. He also tells us that he will strive to ensure that the work will not be misappropriated or reduced to a mere artefact of Syrian conflict.
There is ultimately (as with both Knitstanbul and Abdulatief) a politics to Jamal’s decision on how to situate the losses he has endured. Unlike the certainty of Abdulatief and Knitstanbul, this momentary ellipsis is for Jamal one which ultimately points to what Berlant calls a ‘dissociative poetics’, the generation of an artform that recentres the self in its anchoring in a lifeworld of conflict, displacement, and loss.Footnote 42 Our encounters with Jamal were defined by listening in to different kinds of silences. His decision not to share what we could listen to together fuelled our sense that what Jamal was encouraging us to do was to attune and attend to the gaps and silences that now form his everyday experiences. Laura Kunreuther’s insights in Voicing Subjects: Public Intimacy and Mediation in Kathmandu shed light on the intricate interplay between the political and the intimate dimensions of voice, highlighting how these aspects are not only mutually constitutive, but also deeply entwined with modern subjectivities.Footnote 43 Kunreuther posits that ‘the contours of these subjectivities are shaped by broad material and ideological projects […] Both the political voice and the intimate voice depend upon and are intermingled with a vast media complex.’Footnote 44 This perspective is particularly relevant to Jamal’s poignant musical tribute to his brother, which resides at the intersection of personal loss and the broader societal impact of conflict. His decision to withhold the album from public release until it can be done in a manner that honours his brother’s memory and avoids commodification reflects a deep understanding of the complexities surrounding voice in the context of forced displacement. It illustrates the tension between the desire to articulate personal grief and the need to navigate the broader political and social implications of such expressions.
In essence, Jamal’s narrative embodies the themes Kunreuther explores, demonstrating how individual expressions of voice are invariably connected to larger communal and societal frameworks. Through Jamal’s decision to keep his music — a heartfelt tribute to his brother — private, the interplay between silence and voice emerges as a compelling focal point. This deliberate choice to withhold sound embodies a powerful form of communication, where silence transcends its absence of noise to become a resonant expression of collective voice. This juxtaposition between silence and voice encapsulates the nuanced dynamics of personal loss intertwined with the broader impacts of conflict on individuals and communities.
Silence, in this instance, is not merely a void or absence; it becomes a canvas upon which the complexities of collective voice are illuminated. It signifies a profound respect for the depth of loss and the sanctity of personal and collective grief. This act of withholding, of choosing silence over vocal expression, underscores the multilayered nature of voice as not only a tool for audible expression, but also a medium for conveying the unspeakable. Meizel’s insights into multivocality shed light on this phenomenon, illustrating how ‘the conscious choice not to use one’s material voice […] can be an agentive act — and just as important a part of identity as making it sonically heard’.Footnote 45
Furthermore, engaging with the concept of ‘listening to silence’ invites a deeper exploration into the transformative potential of attentive listening in contexts of displacement and loss. It challenges listeners to attune themselves to the subtleties of silence, to hear the stories, emotions, and histories embedded within it, and to recognize silence as an integral component of the collective voice. In doing so, silence and voice converge in a dynamic dialogue, revealing the intricate tapestry of human experience, resilience, and the quest for meaning in the face of profound loss. Of course, the question of whether such silence(s) should always be documented and analysed by the ethnographers is an important one.Footnote 46 However, we see it as vital to listen in to Jamal’s silences in accompaniment. This is a listening to silence which requires a deeper, more profound act of listening in our turbulent and loud world. In many ways, this act of deep listening, as Oliveros shows us in her wonderful essay ‘Quantum Listening’, activates an imaginary anchored in the possibility of radical transformation and healing.Footnote 47 Jamal will share his music publicly when he is ready. Until then, however, it will be he who decides on who can listen to this piece that holds so much of his deep grief and trauma.
Conclusion
Broadly then, and to conclude, this anthropological mode of listening has opened the space for us in our research engagements to think about conflict, displacement, and loss as a form of thick solidarity. The question lingers within these conceptualizations, however, both within our work here and throughout this round table, whether a shift to voice as intersubjective and tightly connected to audibility resolves anxieties around ethnographic representation and political accountability. Our anthropological approach to listening delves into the rich interplay between voice and silence, positioning them within a constellation of collective expression that transcends the mere audibility of voice. This mode of listening not only illuminates the multifaceted narratives of conflict, displacement, and loss, but also disentangles agency from liberal notions of individual empowerment. It aims instead to foster a deep solidarity that is both empathetic and critically engaged. As we navigate these complex terrains, the intersubjective and relational nature of voice emerges as a pivotal element, challenging us to reconsider conventional paradigms of ethnographic representation and political accountability.
The role of empathy within this framework warrants careful scrutiny. While empathy can serve as a bridge to understanding, its unilateral application in ethnographic encounters risks perpetuating existing power imbalances and potentially violating the sanctity of the silences chosen by our participants. This delicate balance between empathy and respect for silence underscores the need for a deep listening that is not just receptive but actively disruptive of entrenched narratives and power dynamics, as highlighted by Ntarangwi.
Furthermore, our position on deep listening as a form of thick solidarity is an invitation to embrace the complexities of voice and silence, recognizing them as integral components of the collective listening experience. This perspective enriches our understanding of the constellation of voice, emphasizing the dynamic interplay between what is spoken and what is left unsaid. In conclusion, our deep listening extends beyond mere auditory engagement to encompass a more holistic, empathetic, and critically reflective practice. This approach is a challenge to transcend essentialized categories of loss, voice, and silence, advocating for a nuanced understanding that respects the diversity of experiences and expressions within displaced communities. Through this lens, we aspire to contribute to a more inclusive and equitable discourse on displacement, where the voices and silences of those affected are heard and represented in their full complexity. Our deep listening in this piece is thus an act of listening to disrupt, a listening that strives to be in thick solidarity.
Open access
