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Towards gendered listening : Voices, silences and hesitations

par Raimondo, Anna
Président du jury De Brabanter, Philippe
Promoteur Vanhaesebrouck, Karel ;Blanga-Gubbay, Daniel
Publication Non publié, 2026-10-20

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Abstract: Towards gendered listening: Voices, silences and hesitationsHow do feminisms transform the way I listen, and how can listening, in turn, transform my understanding of feminism? Emerging from my trajectory as a feminist, sound artist, and performer, this research investigates listening as a situated, embodied, and politically charged practice. I propose *gendered listening* as a feminist methodology for examining how gender and intersecting power relations shape the production, perception, and interpretation of voices and silences. Rather than identifying inherently masculine or feminine sonic qualities, gendered listening interrogates the cultural, social, and normative frameworks through which sounds acquire meaning, voices become intelligible, and silences are produced, interpreted, or contested.Grounded in feminist epistemologies and developed through a dialogue between theoretical inquiry, artistic practice, interviews, and collective workshops, gendered listening operates both as a critical tool of analysis and as a sonic practice oriented towards transformation. Drawing on situated knowledge, relational epistemologies, and Sara Ahmed’s concept of the *feminist ear*, this research examines the conditions under which listening can become a mode of knowledge production that acknowledges its own positionality while remaining open to the opacity of the Other. It explores the tensions between situatedness and self-decentration, individual experience and collective responsibility, and the desire to understand others and the limits of perception. The research investigates how listening can foster critical introspection, ethical responsibility, solidarity, and political action.The methodology is further developed through the analysis of my artistic practice, focusing on two interconnected fields: voices and silences. The examination of human and electronic voices investigates how vocal identities are constructed through gendering and racialization, how technologies mediate and reproduce normative expectations, and how artistic interventions can disrupt established modes of listening. Turning to silences, the research distinguishes between imposed silences, internalized forms of self-censorship, and situated and embodied silences that may become strategies of resistance. It thus challenges the opposition between voice and silence, asking how both can participate in the reproduction of power or open up possibilities for feminist intervention.This research argues that the feminist potential of listening lies in the listener’s capacity to question learned habits of perception, recognize the limits of their own understanding, and respond to what—and whom—they encounter. Gendered listening consequently emerges not as a fixed or universally applicable method, but as an open-ended, relational, situated, and continuously negotiated practice. Understood as a critical interpretative framework and, at the same time, as an exercise in awareness, *gendered listening* trains us to recognize sexism not only in what we hear, but also in the way we direct, select, and organize our attention towards what we hear. It thus makes it possible to question the norms and hierarchies that shape what we perceive, how we interpret it, and which voices and silences we consider meaningful. This training can open the way towards a form of listening that becomes feminist: a listening practice that does not merely recognize difference, but welcomes it without reducing it to predetermined categories, allows itself to be unsettled by otherness, and assumes responsibility for what listening makes possible. In this way, gendered listening contributes to articulating a feminist politics of listening in which critical awareness opens up the possibility of transforming listeners, the relationships built through listening, and the social and political contexts in which it takes place.