Unsettled hearing, responsible listening. Encounters with voice after forced migration

Abstract

In line with increasing forced migrations around the globe, there is also a growing need for ethical encounters between researchers and those forcefully displaced. This article focuses on responsible Listening, defined as the ethically motivated effort of researchers to conduct communication at eye level. However, findings have shown that listeners (e.g., researchers in institution or study settings) may already feel unsettled on the far more basic level of hearing a human voice, if certain implicit (e.g., aesthetic) expectations are not met. This makes encounters particularly vulnerable after forced migration where voices tend to be easily silenced. I will show by means of an empirical example what hearing a voice in its materiality, i.e. intonation, rhythm, accentuation etc., can set off, and how a privileged space of Listening to the Other can emerge.