Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies SYMPOSIUM WRITING VOICE AND SPEAKING TEXT An Interdisciplinary Enquiry into Diachronic and Synchronic Aspects of Speech (preceded by a post-graduate workshop on spoken language) 6-8 June 2018 University of Helsinki, Finland Organizers: Josephine Hoegaerts, Ann Phoenix, Ilya Sverdlov and Mari Wiklund, in collaboration with Langnet ABSTRACTS Molly Andrews Hearing, representing and performing the pain of others: Tensions of ethical scholarship This paper explores some of the inherent tensions between scholarship and ethics for researchers trying to understand stories of persons living in conditions of adversity. As someone who has long been interested in how people construct the historical moments in which they live, and how this contributes to the ways in which they participate in these upheavals, I have encountered numerous situations where I am listening to stories of acute pain and loss. We are often told that the most important skill an interviewer can have is that of listening, but little is said about the challenges that lie in such an endeavour. As academics, our ears are trained for critical analysis, highly sensitized towards ferreting out the inconsistencies in the stories offered us. Yet, as Veena Das (1997) remarks, “Even the most articulate among us face difficulties when we try to put ambiguous and jumbled thought and images into words. This is even more true of someone who has suffered traumatic loss”. Rather than attending to the variability of human emotion, staying with our speakers as they weave in and out of the experiences of their lives, we are trained to keep focused on our research agenda. Far from becoming better listeners over time, the journey for successful academics is often in the opposite direction, as we reveal the inconsistencies and vulnerabilities of others, all the while becoming ever more confident in our own ways of making sense of the world. How can we do our work responsibly, making ourselves vulnerable to hearing that which confronts our deepest sensibilities, and represent that to an outside world, all the while keeping in our hearts and minds those who have entrusted us with their stories? Das, Veena (1997). “Language and the Body: Transactions in the Construction of Pain”, in Kleinman, A., V. Das, and M. Lock, eds. Social Suffering. London: University of California Press.