Voice, Silence & Power

In this episode Dr. Sally & Dr. Jen explore voice, silence and power. 

Transcript

2:11  Sally describes the episodic journey to date, slowly deepening our understanding of how we can align with the nature of the universe, which is the great Creatrix. The three previous episodes are about developing our creativity. The body itself can be viewed as an instrument for creativity. Episode 11 is focused on one area of the body, the throat. In other words, the voice - as transformation. The Voice, as an enactment of power and creativity, residing at the throat chakra, is much like a hose pipe. When we are born, we scream. And that is the natural energy release of the human body. And slowly, we begin to gurgle, chirp and make sounds. And by about the age of two, we've moved from pre verbal, to verbal. And that is a massive development. Suddenly, we can start communicating - expressing our needs, reaching out to others, and making our private world visible to others, first to the family, and then to the school, our community, and then politically. We start making change personally and collectively through using our voice. So learning how to master that is a lifelong journey. We can also decline to use our voice, and fall into silence. Some of that has to do with trauma, repression and conditioning. Some of that is just a political issue around power, gender and race. So it's intersectional. How we use our voice is a matter of power distribution in the world. Everybody has the power to use their voice, but those in power control others, through silencing their voice. So finding that voice is part of our transformation, especially for marginalized people. Feminism was the first philosophy to recognize how the marginalized are silenced, and that we need to recover the power of our voice to make change. Feminist literature looks at intersecting experiences of different identities. They question are “who's got a voice, and who doesn't?” “Who gets to tell the story, and who doesn’t?” “Who silences other people's stories, and why, and how?” This can be subtle, through exclusion, or a glass ceiling. The whole system is designed to promote some voices, and not others, preventing the creativity of some groups in the world. This leads to marginalization.

11:33  Jen says the relationship between voice and power is really central to the conversation on transformation. Imbalance happens systemically, institutionally and politically. So often we look away. But having that lens of systemic power imbalance is essential to reclaiming our own voice. This Radical Emergence Podcast project was born out of the podcasters discovering, over decades of work, that both have their own unique voices, but by collaboration and exploration, they can use their voices more effectively, to share stories, knowledge, and wisdom. Our voice allows us to be heard – a very important need that is often overlooked. What is this dynamic of voice? How do we lose it? How do we reclaim it? How do we use it, effectively, to heal ourselves, and the collective? Finding not only our outer voice, but also our inner voice. When we are run by our trauma, our inner voice is actually the voice of others, our early caretakers, who may not have been kind to us. So our inner voice can become toxic and self-destructive. Jen describes the suppression of her own voice, and how she’s learned to respect herself and her perspectives. Jen goes back to that younger Jen, who was suppressed and not tolerated, and validates the importance of her voice. Jen gives her the opportunity to use all her suppressed voices of the past to communicate through her now. She cites Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers. She then describes the bravery to go against social pressure, dealing with highly embedded patterns of behavior, probably since childhood. 

19:38  Sally reiterates Jen’s question: What's keeping us from using our voice? As an expressive arts therapist, she asks her clients to sit with that question. They can

track their history, going back to their family of origin. Sally briefly describes being brought up in a British household, a religious family, and during apartheid in South Africa, and how these all impacted her own voice, through gendered beliefs, cultural practices and the politics of power. She describes the political ways cultural creatives are silenced and how this is showing up in the US too at this time. So when we talk about finding our voice, we are playing with power. It takes work and commitment to unblock the voice. Its a lifelong commitment to use our voices.

24:53  Jen says it's an insult to the soul, to the spirit, to have one’s voice taken away. There's something instinctive in humans that wants to have a voice. And also, the cyclical nature of oppressing the voice, and how that happens over generations, even how the dominant paradigm of white supremacy and patriarchy is particularly interested in maintaining, having the only voice in the room. Jen says the younger generation, especially Gen Z, seem to own their voice. That's hopeful, that young folks seem to have an access to their voice that boomers didn't have, when they were younger. Jen talks about developing intimacy in our inner world. Because by becoming more aware of our inner world, we become aware of our limitations. The more aware I am of the circumstances that have formed me and shaped me, the more the pain, trauma and adversity come into the light. And when I identify those patterns, I start to disrupt that and free the voice inside of me to speak. The throat chakra starts to loosen up and we are free to speak. But in the absence of that awareness, without any intimacy with my inner world, I'm likely to continue to censor myself in a variety of ways, mostly because I'm just not aware of those patterns. Self-awareness is really the most subversive thing we can do in a world that is saturated in these power imbalances. Because once we have that intimacy, reclaim our voice, we've restored the power within ourselves, and that power can never be taken away. You can literally imprison someone, but their mind can be free. Jen quotes Gloria E. Anzaldua, activist American scholar of Chicana feminism, cultural and queer theory. 

30:40  Sally suggests this topic of voice is complex, as the inner voice and the outer voice are in complex relationship. One can have a really noisy mind but remain silent. There are a lot of voices in the head, but they never emerge. That's a difficult place to be, healthwise. Through Meditation we learn to silence the inner voices. And the more you do that, the more your external voice becomes really clear, focused and present. Is the voice just noise being ejaculated? That can be a product of a really busy mind that might be seeking attention. Learning mastery of this chakra can also include learning how to be silent. So it's complex. Jen and Sally are definitely not saying noise is good, silence is bad. Mastery is always the ‘pair of ducks’ - the paradox. Maturity means knowing when to apply which, and to also notice the silence and speech on the inside, and the silence and speech on the outside. Sally then discusses “art-iculation”, which is about expressing your inner world. Voicing as an act of resistance to being invisible. To articulate that inner world is part of relational connecting and intimacy. This is not just about self indulgence. It's not even about shifting power, although that's critical. It's also about actually relating to people, which is the cornerstone of mental health. We need to track the silence from trauma, shame, self doubt, fear, conditioning. This is different from silence as an act of maturity, wisdom, or to keep oneself safe in an unsafe situation? Speaking out in certain circumstances can be suicidal, for example, our sisters in Afghanistan. So judicious use of the voice and silence is good. There's a somatic impulse that arises in a body, that wants to be expressed, out through the throat or the hands, or wherever we're using to express - the body is an instrument. And that impulse translates into symbols, sound, art-iculated metaphor. So the somatics become semantics. We translate an impulse, reach out, and produce something audible or visible. The body is an instrument. Sally then quotes Audre Lorde. She also refers listeners to the Ted talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, that has 33 million views, on ‘the danger of the single story’. If we don't use our voice, there will be only one story told, and our silence will not save us. We have an obligation to tell our stories. There is a fight for dominance of narratives. And whoever speaks will own the dominant narrative. Once women got the vote, only a hundred years ago, we started entering discourse. We have been building platforms like this one, podcasts, books and art. And we are literally telling our own stories now. And the present dominance of narratives will become more democratized, the more everybody tells their story. Netflix etc has helped telling marginalized and unique stories. We change society through the democratization of storytelling.  

38:37  Jen says Kimberly Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality , and she speaks about power imbalances. Some folks are saturated in white supremacy and privilege. Jen came to an awareness of these power imbalances later in life, yet black women have long been in the trenches doing this transformative work. And so the democratization of marginalized voices, means there’s an increase in the awareness of the importance of storytelling, the telling of unique stories, that wouldn't normally have been told. Jen then talks about the proliferation of memoir as a genre, and visual artistry, for reclaiming voice and situated knowledge. A renaissance of creativity is happening right now, where people who have been traditionally marginalized are using their voices at the table. Humans in general have been saturated in privilege as a species. We don't even realize that we are dominating the voices of animals, and of our earth home. We see their experiences as having less value than our experiences. We can recognize that every sentient being alive is pregnant with its own value and significance. And we need all those voices lifted up if we are going to make our way out of this entanglement of challenges that we're up against. To respect the voice of the earth is central to our survival on this planet. Jen then describes a few ways to encourage our voice. We are social creatures that are constantly learning from each other in what's called social construction, and this is especially true when it comes to voice. Jen then says goodbye and notifies listeners that both podcasters will be taking a couple of weeks off for the summer, as transformation happens in their own lives too.