Refusing Into-Nation: An Inquiry about Voice, Politics and Resistance

This paper is an exercise to understand the correlation between subjects’ political inclinations and their aesthetic judgments concerning the voice of a political leader. In this vein, the paper aims to expand on the dynamics behind the negative comments about the aesthetic value of the voice of Turkey’s current President. Taking a particular speech of the President from 2014 where his voice cracked as a case study, the paper claims that the choice of listening to his voice or not, or finding it unpleasant can be read as forms of resistance that are in fact related to the issue of belongingness to a particular representation of the nation. The paper also aims to reflect upon the risks and limits of this form of sensory political behavio