Dis-Placed Listening
Lived Time and Ideology in Post-Eternity Syria
Leila Sibai
Current
My research employs binaurally recorded soundwalks as a research method to investigate how exiled Syrians navigate and make sense of their everyday lived experiences of authoritarianism, revolution, conflict, and forced dis-placement. It examines their negotiation of the Syria-then and Syria-now "problem-spaces" in relation to their present reality in exile (here-now) and now, in light of the downfall of the Syrian regime, regained imminent political anticipations, and the possibility for return. Conceptually, the project approaches this listening method as a practice of “walking with” participants and “attuning to” their problem-space.
The research thus explores the relationship between listening, memory, narration, and historisation in the aftermath of political catastrophe, engaging critically with questions of ideological interpellation, forced dis-placement, and lived time. Specifically, it investigates how memory shapes experience, how voicing reframes memory, how recording transforms voice, and how listening reconfigures both memory and experience. While binaural sound is typically employed for environmental or urban soundscapes, this project mobilises its spatial dimensions to reimagine listening as an experiential and intimate method for exploring lived time, memory, and ideology in the aftermath of political catastrophe in relation to narrating a yet-to-be-historicised political past and new imminent political futures. By building on literature that interrogates Syria’s political landscape, the inner workings of violence, ideology and forced dis-placement and their impact on affect and cognition, this doctoral research aims to contribute to theoretical and methodological debates on listening, time, memory, and the politics of state violence and dis-placement.
Chase-AHRC Studentship
The research thus explores the relationship between listening, memory, narration, and historisation in the aftermath of political catastrophe, engaging critically with questions of ideological interpellation, forced dis-placement, and lived time. Specifically, it investigates how memory shapes experience, how voicing reframes memory, how recording transforms voice, and how listening reconfigures both memory and experience. While binaural sound is typically employed for environmental or urban soundscapes, this project mobilises its spatial dimensions to reimagine listening as an experiential and intimate method for exploring lived time, memory, and ideology in the aftermath of political catastrophe in relation to narrating a yet-to-be-historicised political past and new imminent political futures. By building on literature that interrogates Syria’s political landscape, the inner workings of violence, ideology and forced dis-placement and their impact on affect and cognition, this doctoral research aims to contribute to theoretical and methodological debates on listening, time, memory, and the politics of state violence and dis-placement.
Chase-AHRC Studentship