Mattering Voices advances mutually enriching relationships in-between the transdisciplinary fields of voice studies and new materialisms.
This is the first edited volume to explore how the theoretical, methodological, and analytical possibilities of both voice scholarship and new materialisms gain further depth and directions through their co-constitutive—intra-active—relationality. In this book, voice researchers from performance studies and philosophy, artistic research, musicology, ethnomusicology, sound studies, feminist and gender research, and educational studies develop new materialisms-influenced approaches to voice and voice studies-inspired adaptations of new materialisms in the empirical study of various kinds of voicing. The topics covered range from voice in artistic practices and contemporary academia to new notions of musicality and vocal atmospheres, as well as the significance of singing in gendered senses of self and interspecies relations. By experimenting with intra-actions of voice studies and new materialisms, the book proposes fresh ways of researching and grasping how voices matter: how they materialize as events and practices and acquire meanings.
As a polyphony of voices, this volume invites readers into entangled conversations about how voice emerges— creating modes of being, knowing, and co-existing—and what it might still become.
Mattering Voices explores the intersection of voice studies and new materialisms, examining how voices materialize as meaningful events. This pioneering volume features diverse researchers investigating vocal practices across disciplines, revealing how voices create modes of being and knowing through their material significance.
List of contributors
Series Foreword
Foreword: Mattering Voices
Jon Ivan Gill
Introduction: How to let a crossroads emerge between (the study of) voices
and new materialisms?
Milla Tiainen, Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano & Anne Tarvainen
Part I: Voicing ontologies
Chapter 1: Voice: An imaginary figure of any thing
Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano & Mark D. Price
Chapter 2: The Onto-ethico-aesthetic force of musicality
Jannie Pranger
Part II: Voicing intra-active human agencies
Chapter 3: Trans-corpo-vocality: Voice, gender, and environment in Demian
Seesjärvis transmasculine senses of self
Milla Tiainen
Chapter 4: The Body vibrates with the power of singing: Material,
somaesthetic, and transactional features in the vocal experiences of singers
with acid reflux
Anne Tarvainen
Chapter 5: Caring, touching, voicing. On how voice comes to voice in
academia
Monika Rogowska-Stangret & Malou Juelskjær
Part III: Voicing the more-than-human
Chapter 6: Motor-mouthing
Julieanna Preston
Chapter 7: The Non-standard performance with the singing theremin
Tero Nauha
Chapter 8: Cow choirs: Singing-with more-than-human herds
Jennie Tiderman-Österberg
Chapter 9: Speaking of atmospheres: more-than voice and voice of the
more-than
Norie Neumark
Afterword
Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca
Index
Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano is a voice artist, performance philosopher, existential counsellor, and priest in the Church of Sweden.
Anne Tarvainen is an ethnomusicologist (PhD) specializing in the embodied, experiential, and cultural meanings of voice. She is currently a senior research fellow at the University of Eastern Finland.
Milla Tiainen is a Senior Lecturer in Musicology at the University of Turku and Associate Professor of Musicology (Title of Docent) at the University of Helsinki.
