Voicelessness

Voicelessness is an intriguing concept for critical psychology. In both mainstream and critical psychology, there has been a tendency to assume that having a voice is an unequivocal psychological and social good. By extension, voicelessness has been associated with psychological disorder (e.g., mutism, lack of affect) or, in more critical parlance, as a marker of subjugation, where voice is denied. Subsequently there are few traditional debates in relation to this topic, it is rarely even mentioned. However, there has been a shift in critical psychology in recent years, to address voicelessness in more complex and nuanced ways, not least in granting it a more ambivalent role in the socially contingent production of subjectivity. This has opened up space for critical discussion, and the intention here is to convey a sense of those debates.