Silent Voices Research Articles

Silent voices of the midwives: factors that influence midwives\u2019 achievement of successful neonatal resuscitation in sub-Saharan Africa: a narrative inquiry

BackgroundIn Tanzania, birth asphyxia is a leading cause of neonatal death. The aim of this study was to identify factors that influence successful neonatal resuscitation to inform clinical practice and reduce the incidence of very early neonatal death (death within 24 h of delivery).MethodsThis was a qualitative narrative inquiry study utilizing the 32 consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ). Audio-recorded, semistructured, individual interviews with midwives were conducted. Thematic analysis was applied to identify themes.ResultsThematic analysis of the midwives’ responses revealed three factors that influence successful resuscitation:1. Hands-on training (“HOT”) with clinical support during live emergency neonatal resuscitation events, which decreases fear and enables the transfer of clinical skills;2. Unequivocal commitment to the Golden Minute® and the mindset of the midwife; and.3. Strategies that reduce barriers.Immediately after birth, live resuscitation can commence at the mother’s bedside, with actively guided clinical instruction. Confidence and mastery of resuscitation competencies are reinforced as the physiological changes in neonates are immediately visible with bag and mask ventilation.The proclivity to perform suction initially delays ventilation, and suction is rarely clinically indicated. Keeping skilled midwives in labor wards is important and impacts clinical practice. The midwives interviewed articulated a mindset of unequivocal commitment to the baby for one Golden Minute®. Heavy workload, frequent staff rotation and lack of clean working equipment were other barriers identified that are worthy of future research.ConclusionsTraining in resuscitation skills in a simulated environment alone is not enough to change clinical practice. Active guidance of “HOT” real-life emergency resuscitation events builds confidence, as the visible signs of successful resuscitation impact the midwife’s beliefs and behaviors. Furthermore, a focused commitment by midwives working together to reduce birth asphyxia-related deaths builds hope and collective self-efficacy.

The over-estimation of distance for self-voice versus other-voice

Self-related stimuli are important cues for people to recognize themselves in the external world and hold a special status in our perceptual system. Self-voice plays an important role in daily social communication and is also a frequent input for self-identification. Although many studies have been conducted on the acoustic features of self-voice, no research has ever examined the spatial aspect, although the spatial perception of voice is important for humans. This study proposes a novel perspective for studying self-voice. We investigated people’s distance perception of their own voice when the voice was heard from an external position. Participants heard their own voice from one of four speakers located either 90 or 180 cm from their sitting position, either immediately after uttering a short vowel (i.e., active session) or hearing the replay of their own pronunciation (i.e., replay session). They were then asked to indicate which speaker they heard the voice from. Their voices were either pitch-shifted by ± 4 semitones (i.e., other-voice condition) or unaltered (i.e., self-voice condition). The results of spatial judgment showed that self-voice from the closer speakers was misattributed to that from the speakers further away at a significantly higher proportion than other-voice. This phenomenon was also observed when the participants remained silent and heard prerecorded voices. Additional structural equation modeling using participants’ schizotypal scores showed that the effect of self-voice on distance perception was significantly associated with the score of delusional thoughts (Peters Delusion Inventory) and distorted body image (Perceptual Aberration Scale) in the active speaking session but not in the replay session. The findings of this study provide important insights for understanding how people process self-related stimuli when there is a small distortion and how this may be linked to the risk of psychosis.

Zimbabwean Popular Cultural Expressions of Alternative Sexual Identities

ABSTRACT The dominant narrative within Zimbabwean popular cultural scholarship largely focuses on the Zimbabwean socio-economic and political crisis at the expense of alternative ideologies, identities and practices. I advocate for the urgency of expansive and wide-ranging epistemological attention to alternative sexual identities as part of a cultural studies research agenda. I argue that, although Zimbabwean homophobia has generally silenced alternative voices, popular culture offers channels through which to engage publicly with that which is generally loathed and feared. I discuss three Zimbabwean popular cultural archives to make the argument that it is through every day cultural practices that Zimbabwean alternative sexual identities can meaningfully be debated and conceptualised. I discuss a Zimbabwean dancehall song titled “Kumba Kwedu” (In Our Home) by the artist named Bazooker, the reception of Facebook activist Tatelicious Karigambe-Sandberg, and Tracy Kadungure’s novel Tanaka Chronicles: The Sexual Awakening. Through the selected popular cultural texts, I show how some Zimbabwean popular cultural expressions of alternative sexualities cleverly undermine heteronormative official values by constantly challenging the assumed heterosexual norm.

Die Kunst und der Raum bei Heidegger und Merleau-Ponty

Art and Space: Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty Although Heidegger’s and Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the problem of art and space leads in part to comparable results, the differences between the two phenomenological approaches should also be pointed out. As such a difference the relationship between the space of art (and craft) and the space of nature is first brought into view – as described by Heidegger in §§ 22 – 24 of <italic>Being and Time</italic> (1927) and by Merleau-Ponty in §§ 29 – 33 of his second fundamental work <italic>Phenomenology of Perception</italic> (1945). More concrete studies of space and art can be found in later texts by the two philosophers. For this comparison Merleau-Ponty’s essays “Cézanne’s Doubt” (1945), “Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence” (1952) and in particular “Eye and Mind” (1961) as well as Heidegger’s texts “Building Dwelling Thinking” (1951) “Remarks on Art – Sculpture – Space” (1964, published 1996 in German: “Bemerkungen zu Kunst – Plastik – Raum”) and “Art and Space” (1969) are regarded.

The Primal Scenes of Language and the Gesture

This paper seeks to develop the connection in Merleau‑Ponty’s later ontology between the gesture and language. There is a concerted effort in Merleau‑Ponty’s “middle period” to illustrate that a linguistic system of signs is internally constellated by the body and its movement. This effort seems to give way to an ontology of flesh in the later period. On closer consideration, however, this ontology and the linguistic system of signs—both “diacritical”—are mutually imbricated. This highlights the crucial importance of separation, deviation, and difference in Merleau‑Ponty’s ontology. A question remains, however: how can the body, and in particular the gesture, be the very site of separation rather than of an initiation or identification? I argue that, for Merleau‑Ponty, every gesture contains something internally antagonistic to it, something that cannot be grasped or moved. In this sense, the gesture is an “implex,” both internally resistant to and productive of signification. It is, in short, the site of a symbolization. In light of this, in the conclusion I reconsider the final passages from “Cézanne’s Doubt” where Merleau‑Ponty discusses Freud’s “hermeneutical musings” on Leonardo, and the passages from “Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence” and the nature lectures where he discusses the painter’s brushwork.

The Voice of Silence: Patterns of Digital Participation Among Palestinian Women in East Jerusalem

Facebook is one of the world’s largest social networks, with more than 2,7 billion active users globally. It is also one of the most dominant platforms and one of the platforms most commonly used by Arabs. However, connecting via Facebook and sharing content cannot be taken for granted. While many studies have focused on the role played by networked platforms in empowering women in the Arab world in general and on feminist movements in the Arab Spring, few have explored Palestinian women’s use of Facebook. During and after the Arab Spring, social media was used as a tool for freedom of expression in the Arab world. However, Palestinians in East Jerusalem using social media witnessed a decrease in freedom of expression, especially after the Gaza war in 2014. This article focuses on the Facebook usage patterns and political participation of young adult Palestinian women living in the contested space of East Jerusalem. These women live under dynamic power struggles as they belong to a traditionally conservative society, live within a situation of intractable conflict, and are under state control as a minority group. Qualitative thematic analysis of 13 in-depth interviews reveals three patterns of usage, all related to monitoring: state monitoring, kinship monitoring, and self-monitoring. The article conceptualises these online behaviours as “participation avoidance,” a term describing users’ (non-)communicative practices in which the mundane choices of when, why, and how to &lt;em&gt;participate &lt;/em&gt;also mirror users’ choices of when, why, and how to &lt;em&gt;avoid&lt;/em&gt;.

Introduction: Invisible Lives, Silent Voices in the British Literature, Arts and Culture of the 20th and 21st Centuries

Ce numéro est issu des travaux du colloque international “Invisibles Lives, Silent Voices in the British Culture, Literature and Arts of the 20th and 21st Centuries”, qui s’est tenu en ligne les 15 et 16 octobre 2020 et a été organisé par Alice Borrego (université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, EMMA) et Héloïse Lecomte (ENS de Lyon, IRHIM). Les articles rassemblés ici explorent les représentations complexes de l’invisibilité et du silence dans les œuvres artistiques et littéraires des xxe et xxie siècles. Du modernisme à la période contemporaine, les formes diverses d’expression (nouvelles, romans, récits autobiographiques et documentaires musicaux) qui font l’objet de ces études interrogent la possibilité de (re)donner une voix aux populations invisibilisées dans la société britannique.

Review of Lesa Melnyczuk and Phil Webster. Holodomor: Silenced Voices of the Starved Children.

Review of Lesa Melnyczuk and Phil Webster. Holodomor: Silenced Voices of the Starved Children.

“Something in the Air”: Reasserting Humanity in a Polluted Neighbourhood

ABSTRACT Within one week in 2019, there were two traffic incidents on the South Circular in Catford, South East London, where one cyclist died and another one was severely injured. At the same time, a new inquest into the death of a nine-year-old resident who had died back in 2013 was being conducted, making the girl the first person in the UK whose cause of death is officially linked to pollution. This article assesses how uneven geographies of toxicity and oppressive infrastructures within cities highlight the entanglements of histories of colonialism and capitalism, as well as race and inequalities. Forms of slow violence are being executed by intentionally building and maintaining cities according to hegemonic visions of progress, marking some lives and landscapes as favourable and others as “disposable.” Hence, in order to work against the silencing of voices, more attention needs to be brought to the experiences of people living in toxic environments. Speaking to fundamental registers of visibility and politics of knowledge, this article asserts how people create meanings by relating to each other and their environments in order to resist the dehumanising consequences of toxic violence.

Covid-19 Escaled Ongoing Injustices: Voices of Women Living With HIV in Nepal

The first HIV case in Nepal was reported in 1988. As of July 2020, the total number of PLHIV was 29,503 PLHIV whereas the numbers for male and females were respectively 17, 587 and 11, 916 (UNAIDS, 2021.). More than 72% of People Living with HIV (PLHIV) are of age group 25 to 49 years (Ministry of Health National Centre for AIDS and STD Control, 2020). There are 80 ART (Anti-Retroviral therapy) centres providing services to PLHIV in seven Provinces and a number of community-based organizations to provide services to PLHI (Ministry of Health National Centre of AIDS and STD Control, 2020). The current knowledge on this area are maninly the reports from HIV Service Agencies that do not capture the silenced voices of PLHIV on intersectional oppression. By acknowledging the need of a evidence-based study, a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project was developed in 2019 to understand the challenges of the Women Living with HIV in Kathmandu, Nepal (Dhungel, 2020; Dhungel &amp; Lama, 2020). This understanding was reached through a variety of means, including photovoice, individual interviews and street dramas. Four major intersectional challenges were identified including discriminations against WLHIV at workplace, violations of privacy in health sectors, excluding from parental's property and discriminations against their children at school. The same study suggested the need for a further study, focusing on intersectional oppressions and public health services and programs available for WLHIV with a focus on Mental Health Services. Therefore, this study was initiated to bridge the gaps in current knowledge with a foucs on COVID-19 policies/programs. Keywords: COVID-19, HIV community, injustice, intersectional oppression

Introduction: “The Unexpected Caribbean” Part II

Introduction: “The Unexpected Caribbean” Part II

Reclamation of the Narrative for the Silenced Voice in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad

This article analyzes Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, a rewriting of Homeric epic, The Odyssey. Atwood rewrites the story — the saga of gallantry and triumphalism of Odysseus, with narrative shift that brings postmodern irony and parody, self-reflexivity and metafiction, and intertextuality and paratextuality into play. The article tries explore if Atwood’s shifting of narrative orientation of the Homeric epic yields any different and substantial reception and interpretation of the epic in the recent context.Moreover, I demonstrate how Atwood’s reconstruction and subsequently the empowerment of the minor characters unfolds the incompatibilities and discrepancies the official version of Homer’s epic, and brings the marginal voice to the front by granting a variety of narrative access.I argue, giving subject positions to silent agents and using various genres of expression, for instance, history and myth, Atwood, through the deployment of an autodiegetic narrative, brings together gender, genre and language in such a way that results in a decisive shift in conceptualizing the narrative structure for the marginal voice and agency female characters. The article concludes that why rereading of classical and canonical text is crucial to bring the marginals’ claim to a subject position, and produce a different language and literature that allows space for expression subjectivity of characters on the margins

Dance, voice, speech, sound

This text is part of a research collection of examples that we selected for the workshop On Voice and Dance for the European Dancehouse Network at the international contemporary dance festival CoFestival 2020 together with Irena Z. Tomažin, a dancer, experimental musician and choreo-vocalist, who has given the contemporary dance community in Ljubljana some excellent performances in this field, in which the body and the voice posed a series of puzzling problems for us. The text is a selective outline of the topics at hand, it goes into the history of contemporary dance, cites some fundamental reference articles and books, to which many others could certainly be added. It focuses on selected aspects of choreo-vocalistics, the sound of the body and choreographies, and aims to use this material to inform further research with the help of considerably more ambitious thinkers. Last but not least, it is a product of last year’s CoFestival curatorial topic, The Amplifiers of Voices, with which we wanted to give some attention to the silenced voice of contemporary dance in a pandemic situation with empty stages. This article has no illusions that it could capture and address the topic in its immense complexity and comprehensiveness, and we apologize to the dancers we have unintentionally omitted in our treatment.

The voice of diversity: Picture brides and masked individuality in Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic

ABSTRACT Julie Otsuka’s 2011 novel The Buddha in the Attic politicizes the first-person plural “we” narration to recuperate the silenced voices of Japanese American picture brides. The novel’s unconventional narrative style, however, has been criticized for reducing picture brides to “lists” and reproducing stories that deprive Japanese Americans of individuality. This article examines how Otsuka’s use of the “we” narration and self-mimicry locates Japanese American femininity and agency at the historical confluence of imperialist and assimilationist dynamics. It contends that the novel’s stylistics make visible not only a collective minority consciousness, but also the complex subjectivity of picture brides in a transnational space of diasporic negotiation, social masking, and situational coalition. In doing so, the novel questions not only a lack of individuality, but individuality itself. That is, it demonstrates how ethnic and diasporic literature can ethically comment on a universal notion of political individuality and revise it with multiple and contingent perspectives.

Researching violent contexts: A call for political reflexivity

Violent contexts are not “normal” research settings; they involve abuses, power disparities, and collective histories of violence that researchers should be alert to. Researchers unreflexive about these risk causing harm in the form of objectifying people and context, normalizing violence, or silencing voices. Political reflexivity can equip researchers to better identify, understand and mitigate these harms, and where possible, challenge structures that do the marginalizing. We articulate political reflexivity through feminist standpoint theory, which asks researchers to critically examine their positionality and privilege in relation to the geopolitics of the research setting, epistemic privilege of marginalized participants, and political implications of their work. Practicing political reflexivity can help researchers situate their work along a “decoloniality continuum,” which includes complicity with the maintenance of violence, a hybridity approach that aims to understand and challenge the (colonial) underpinnings of violence by centering marginalized knowledge, and reparation or liberation, meaning redress and radical equality for marginalized peoples, ideas and histories. We conclude with a call for researchers to identify methods and paths to strengthen our understanding of political reflexivity, and to support efforts to decolonize knowledge.

Normative Women and Patriarchal Hegemony in Ariyoshi Sawako’s Hanaoka Seishu no Tsuma (1966)

This research examines the depiction of normative women in the Edo period (1603-1868) in the novel entitled Hanaoka Seishu no Tsuma (1966) by Ariyoshi Sawako, a Japanese female writer in the post World War II Showa era. Reflecting on the novel’s normative female characters, it analyzes the silenced voices of women. It will contribute to the discussion on how the normative female figures criticizing the patriarchal hegemony that has not been revealed in the literary canon of the Edo period. This research shows how normative women characters are presented in the text as a feminine strategy to criticize this hegemony. The researchers use feminist criticism theory from Butler’s gender performativity (1990). The study concludes that although normative women characters are commonly represented as men dominating women, those can also be used to criticize the patriarchal hegemony.

Heteronormativity and Gender Issues in Education: Representing Silent Voices through Radical Re-Imagination in Empirical Research

Drawing from gender and queer studies, this article argues for reimagining empirical research as inclusive of the experiences of transgender and gender-minoritized communities hitherto silenced in prevailing dominant discourses of heteronormativity and the construction of gender in education. Specifically, I interrogate the influence of positivism in reinforcing a heteronormative belief system in educational research, which exacerbates challenges with data collection, analysis, and reporting for gender nonbinary populations. I also explore alternative practices within empirically based studies and offer possibilities for inclusive methodological practice with implications for how we produce knowledge about and understand gender issues in education. The following implications for practice are discussed: (a) using mixed-methodological approaches in gender identity research; (b) capturing experiences of gender using non-normative indicators; (c) exploring nonparametric statistical techniques; (d) repositioning trustworthiness in scope and generalizability through study limitations and transparency; and (e) advocating empirical research, including narrative-inquiry supported by quantitative measures.

Sensorimotor conflicts induce somatic passivity and louden quiet voices in healthy listeners

Sensorimotor conflicts are known to alter the perception of accompanying sensory signals, and deficits in sensory attenuation have been observed in schizophrenia. In the auditory domain, self-generated tones or voices (compared to tones or voices presented passively or with temporal delays) have been associated with changes in loudness perception and attenuated neural responses. It has been argued that for sensory signals to be attenuated, predicted and sensory consequences must have a consistent spatiotemporal relationship, between button presses and reafferent signals, via predictive sensory signaling, a process altered in schizophrenia. Here, we investigated auditory sensory attenuation for a series of morphed voices while healthy participants applied sensorimotor stimulations that had no spatiotemporal relationship to the voice stimuli and that have been shown to induce mild psychosis-like phenomena. In two independent groups of participants, we report a loudening of silent voices and found this effect only during maximal sensorimotor conflicts (versus several control conditions). Importantly, conflicting sensorimotor stimulation also induced a mild psychosis-like state in the form of somatic passivity and participants who experienced stronger passivity lacked the sensorimotor loudening effect. We argue that this conflict-related sensorimotor loudness amplification may represent a reduction of auditory self-attenuation that is lacking in participants experiencing a concomitant mild psychosis-like state. We interpret our results within the framework of the comparator model of sensorimotor control, and discuss the implications of our findings regarding passivity experiences and hallucinations in schizophrenia.

Amplifying Silenced Voices Through Micro- and Small-Press Publishing

This research uses exploratory, mixed-method case studies to explore the relationship between Australian micro- and small presses (MSPs), their publishing and promotion of writers of difference (WODs), and the relationship to Couldry’s (2010) concept of voice. Through structured interviews with two publishing houses and their WODs, I (a) identified MSPs’ strategies for publishing and promoting silenced and neglected writers, thus facilitating the expression of voice; and (b) learned how MSPs’ authors respond to their publishers’ efforts to promote voice, and what publishing strategies they suggest for the industry. This research offers a novel contribution to publishing studies and communication for social change.

The silenced voices of desire in the novel Eating Wasps

The present paper analyses the women characters Urvashi, Sreelakhmi, Brinda and Najma in the novel Eating Wasps. The protagonist is the ghost of Sreelakshmi and she takes the readers through the lives of other women in the novel. Anita Nair portrays the confined lives of women even in the modern society. She portrays a society that considers women’s desires as a sin. Gender roles are deeply engrained in the minds of both men and women in a patriarchal society. The family and society consider women’s desires as unnatural. They are silenced and are forced to live a life they despise. The paper discusses the shame and guilt faced by the women in the novel and the gender discrepancies in the society.