voCAL articuLations Of Parliamentary Identity and Empire

Project Information

CALLIOPE

Grant agreement ID: 757291

DOI

10.3030/757291

Project closed

EC signature date 23 October 2017

Start date 1 March 2018

End date 28 February 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 499 905,00

EU contribution

€ 1 499 905,00

Coordinated by

HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
Finland

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - CALLIOPE (voCAL articuLations Of Parliamentary Identity and Empire)

Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2023-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

CALLIOPE addresses the issue of ‘voice’ in politics. It focuses on the role sound has played in making and breaking political careers, in the process of decision making in politics, and in the exchange of knowledge and information between the colony and the metropole in the 19th century. This is a period of important changes and great modernization (including the rise of the printed press), but also one in which ‘live speech’ was very central to political practice. As voices could not yet be amplified, nor acoustically recorded, debates, election speeches, statements of monarchs etc were always unique events, which resulted in a vast number of transcriptions, descriptions and critiques: not only politicians cared about the ‘sound’ of a political debate. Reporters as well as their readers payed close attention to them as well.

CALLIOPE came to two major conclusions

1. Vocal characteristics (such as pitch, timbre, accent) could both help or hinder speakers to influence political decisions. Becoming a convincing speaker, and putting forward one's ideologies effectively, was a result of intensive training and education (in elite schools or debating societies, for example), but also depended on one's access to places for political speech like parliament. Particularly for 'newcomers', like South Asian student debaters in Cambridge and Oxford, for example, or former slaves adapt to the French Assemblée Nationale, articulate speech played an important role in the process of becoming politically audible in the nineteenth century (see attached image: a depiction of the first freed slave to sit in the French Assembly, Louisy Mathieu, published in Auguste Lireux, Assemblée nationale comique, Michel Lévy Frères, Paris, 1850.)

2. Colonial contact and exchange through debate and conversation helped to change cultural practices. This exchange was a two-way street: not only did Indian and Algerian speakers learn the language and style of the British and French parliament. The skills that both colonial subjects and travelling colonizers learned in places like Kolkata and Algiers, contributed to a global vocal culture. Sophisticated practices of discussion and debating culture had developed in Bengali and Muslim communities long before they were colonized, and these cultures continued to develop throughout the 19th century.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The research team consisted of:
Mr. L. Marionneau, who researches the oratorical performances and practices of representatives in the French assembly.
Dr E. Sil, who studies the interaction and political transfer between Westminster and the Bengali political and oral culture of Kolkata.
Dr K. Lauwers, who will study the links and tensions between the French metropole and its Algerian colony.
Dr. L. Yamaguchi, associate researcher, who examines the role of synesthesia in nineteenth century script and literature.
Ms. N. Odnosum, who included examples of vocal practice in Russian imperial literature in the project
Dr J. Hoegaerts, who is coordinating the project and focusing on the interaction between the two empires.

These team members each carried out individual research, but also took part in bilateral collaborations, and in collaborations with scholars outside the team. We have published extensively on

- how different debating ‘styles’ travelled between colony and metropole. In publications on French parliamentary debates, British debating clubs, Berber leadership, and Indian rhetoric, we have delved into how the idea of 'speaking well' changed throughout the nineteenth century, and specifically how colonized subjects could become politically audible in the metropole. This relied on their ability to acquire Western rhetorical skills, but also in the strategic mobilization of oral modes to spread news or debate governance that remained largely hidden to colonial overseeers.
- unspoken rules and regulations of political debate, and how they were upheld through the policing of the ‘sound’ and spoken word, especially when newcomers to the political arena were speaking. The case of Victor Mazuline, e.g. reveals some explicitly ‘acoustic’ understandings of the role of the representative in the 1840’s
- what it meant to count as French or English, and to be given access to political decision-making. The limits of who was a citizen, who could take part in or weigh on policy, or who could be 'heard' in the democratic processes of nations that were also imperial were not always strictly drawn, and various practices of political or politized speech could undermine or contradict the legally defined categories of citizenship and the rights attached to it.
- how oracy, literacy and fluency intersected and changed throughout the nineteenth century, and how varying abilities to write and speak well were connected to each other particularly in the West - which sometimes led to an inability to fully understand oral cultures elsewhere. This was the case in reports within the Bureaux Arabes, written by French administrators who struggled to distinguish rumour from news.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project contributes to a new understanding of the daily ‘practice’ of representative democracy by

- demonstrating the impact of non-European vocal/oratorical practices such as adda, majili and Kabyl orality on the organization and cultural development of representative democracy in Europe. This history has, by and large, been written as one of changing ideologies and ideas driven by European thinkers and political actors, but we find that even the chambers of high politics were influenced by daily practices in both the metropole and the ‘colonies’, particularly on the practical level of ‘speech’
- providing a more inclusive understanding of the histories of representation of democracy, not only by drawing attention to groups of political actors that have largely been neglected so far, but also by paying attention to the almost invisible, day-to-day practices of assimilation, tension and exclusion in which political representation has taken place.

Audiovisual media have changed the way we see and hear politicians, but speech is still central to most practices of democracy. Understanding how these practices have developed over time, gives us a unique insight into how modern democracies ‘work’ (or how they seem to collapse). What CALLIOPE has done most concretely and usefully, is provide a context and history to the political ‘soundbite’. This may seem like a very new phenomenon, but as our research shows, the current ‘soundbite’ is very much part of a long history of learning to speak well, convincingly and with ‘charisma’. The development of acoustic technology is only a small part of the history of the soundbite, and one that crucially only arose after the practices of debating, electioneering and orating had been cultivated into forms they largely still have today. Current democracies have not invented a mediatized culture of quick soundbites, in other words, but inherited it from a long cultural practice of political speaking. Secondly, our research also places the idea of ‘global’ politics in its historical context, showing that colonial legacies play an important part in the way we think, and above all speak, about intercultural communication and international politics.

Performance of 'guts of the Atlas' by Sergio Castrillon

Mr Ludovic Marionneau presenting his preliminary conclusions at ISCH 2019

Depiction of Louisy Mathieu (the first freed slave to sit in the French Assembly) by 'Cham'. 1850

Illustration of CALLIOPE's Noisy Parliament, by Laura Pakkarinen

Dr Esha Sil presenting her research at MSA 2019