The Performative Power of Vocality

Addressed to qualitative researchers, artist-scholars, and activists committed to decolonization, cultural revitalization, and social justice, The Performative Power of Vocality (Routledge 2020) explores the non-verbal, non-semantic, non-discursive material and affective efficacy of vocality, with a particular focus on orally transmitted vocal traditions.

In response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action addressed to researchers and educators, I seek to open a dialogical space inclusive and respectful of Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies. Drawing from my research collaboration with the Indigenous Advisory Committee formed for this project, and building upon the work of Vine Deloria Jr., Gregory Cajete, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Shawn Wilson, Margaret Kovach, Manulani Aluli-Meyer, Jill Carter, Dylan Robinson, and Dolleen Manning, among other Indigenous scholars, I consider vocality from the multiplicity of perspectives offered by Indigenous and Western philosophy, sound and voice studies, musicology, ethnomusicology, performance studies, anthropology, sociology, phenomenology, cognitive science, physics, ecology, and biomedicine.

From an Indigenous perspective, singing traditional songs requires being in relation with the voices of ancestors and the natural world, as cultural knowledge is shared within and across communities inclusive of other/more-than-human agents. The Performative Power of Vocality offers an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach to vocality beyond notions of voice as a conceptual abstraction or a metaphor, and beyond its association with speech and language, making vocality exclusively human, hence problematically anthropocentric. I discuss my embodied research on vocality that entails (re-)learning the songs of my Occitan ancestors, and ask how experiencing resonance as relationality and reciprocity might strengthen relationship to our community and our natural environment, enhance health and well-being, reconnect us to our cultural heritage, and foster intercultural understanding and social justice.

This book is based on research funded by an Insight Grant ($94,090) and a Connection Grant ($24,745) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as well as by a UBC Hampton Grant ($3,000).