HSH. Lecture of Stephen Pax Leonard "Doing Things with Voices: Colombian Kidnap Radio and the sound of God"
On the 28th of September (Thursday) at 6.30 p.m. (Moscow time) there would be the new session of scientific seminar of International Centre of Anthropology named "Homo sapiens historicus". Our lecturer would be Stephen Pax Leonard, professor of Moscow State Linguistic University, with the report "Doing Things with Voices: Colombian Kidnap Radio and the sound of God".
Abstract of the report:
Some hostages of the FARC held in the Colombian Amazon spoke of how they believed a certain radio voice could result in an action. For over 20 years, every Saturday night a radio programme broadcast messages from the hostages’ families and loved ones. A small number of these captives recycled the prophetic radio voice in a dialogic interaction with prayer in their inner speech, and this resulted in what they believed to be the voice of God. By assigning them new identities, the hostages were through a process of performative listening ‘doing things’ with voices in the Austinian sense. This paper takes Austin’s work in a new direction by exploring the primary performative function of voice. By analysing localised ideologies of voice through the complex discourse of prisoners’ reflexive self‐analyses, it adds the dimension of vocality to speech act theory. Research with Colombian hostages shows that inner voice can be used to invoke linguistic representations of God in the absence of any tuition.
Our session would be broadcasted with the help of Zoom и YouTube. For receiveng the link of YouTube broadcast please contact the manager of the International Centre of Anthropology M. Aksenova via e-mail maksenova@hse.ru. You will receive the link before the start of the session.
You would see the broadcast if you visit our YouTube channel at appointed time:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCswmh4OELDBt9q3eavsEAug
If you are not a staff or student of HSE you would need a pass to visit our seminar offline. You could receive it if you contact the manager of the International Centre of Anthropology M. Aksenova via e-mail maksenova@hse.ru until 3.00 p.m., 28th of September. You should also indicate your full name in the e-mail.