MA Anthropology programme

Dr Iza Kavedžija (Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Cambridge)

Tuesday, February 14th (17.00-19.00)

CACSSS Seminar Room (O'Rahilly Building), UCC Campus

Giving voice can be an empowering metaphor for opening up a space for a perspective of another, allowing for their experience to be noted and attended to. At the same time, it is a metaphor that relies, at least in part, on a particular form of articulation. Voice and narrative share some of the same strengths and limitations: they are powerful tools of sense making and communication, but they not only elude some persons more than others, but also fail to capture less orderly inchoate aspects of lived life in general. Departing from Strawson’s distinction between ‘episodics’ and ‘diachronics’, I suggest that tendencies to inhabit the moment and narrativize could be considered modalities that people sometimes move between. In other words, certain aspects of lived experience push the discursive to the limit, and hence elude voice and narrative alike.