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Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational and European Studies ARTES

Sounds of Democracy and Empire

Long before politics became an arena of mediatized soundbites, representation, power and modern citizenship were ruled by (often ephemeral) sounds. Focusing on the range of audile techniques and sonic expertise required to gain access to modern politics, ‘Sounds of Democracy and Empire’ studies the role of public speech, rhetoric, listening, conversation, and other sounding realities in Western Europe and its colonies from the late 18th century onwards.

It does so at the intersection between processes of democratization and widening representation on the one hand, and the expansion and later defeat of the imperial ambitions of Western Europe’s modern constitutional democracies. Employing historical, musicological, discursive and sound studies methods of eavesdropping and ‘listening in’, the project aims to include a wide variety of politicized sounds, and is particularly interested in political transfer between metropole and colony. It aims to specifically create spaces for engagement with practices of the Empire ‘talking back’, and dysfluent voices engaged in political speech. 

The project builds on research carried out in the context of CALLIOPE: Vocal Articulations of Parliamentary Identity and Empire (ERC 2017, University of Helsinki).  

Project-related podcast: https://soundcloud.com/user-234201680