Listening in Common

In this article, I explore how we can understand migration and gender when our listening turns to the sounds of translation. The research for this article is based on a series of music and sound workshops organised by ERC CoG MUTE in collaboration with the migrant women’s network Melissa in Athens. During the workshops, we listened and discussed with migrant women narratives, music and sound about their trajectories. Our recordings were pervaded by a buzzing that could be easily dismissed as non sensical: the sound of simultaneous translations in the different languages of the workshop participants. Attentive listening, however. made it possible to reflect on the limits of audibility. The paper highlights how a politics of translation enables forms of listening and witnessing that bring to the forefront migrant women’s sonic agency. It also discusses how heterolingual translation becomes an everyday practice that makes possible resistances to gendered and racialised hierarchies and inequalities. Finally, it considers how making heard and listening to the buzzing of translation may enhance the sonic agency of migrant women, which is not limited to the project of 'giving voice' in public spaces but expands and opens pathways to think of political activism and resistances beyond the logic of gendered, racial and ethnic homogeneity.