ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we explore in detail the theoretical underpinning of how we understand ‘voice’. Tracing the history of voice in Western philosophical thought, we highlight the ways in which Global Northern discourses have delimited the concept of voice to what is considered to be ‘rational’, defined as what can be spoken to, and heard by, hegemonic (colonial) forces. By way of challenge to this, we develop a ‘transrational’ understanding of voice that troubles what we mean by concepts such ‘speaking’ and ‘understanding’. Revisiting our previous discussion of critical pedagogy from Chapter 1, we examine how voice can create new forms of social solidarity. At the same time, we discuss the ways in which art can have the potential to surface new spaces of engagement that can help to maximise, and indeed instrumentalise, the value of what is ostensibly ‘unsayable’ within our developing understanding of ‘ecologies of action’.
