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“Radio Alice and Italy’s Movement of 1977: polyvocality, sonority and space”

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Authors

Abstract

Radio Alice was a free radio station that broadcast from 1976–1977 in Bologna, Italy, and was an integral part of the left-wing, countercultural Movement of 1977. This article contextualises the emergence of Radio Alice in relation to the Movement of 1977; the avant-garde political magazine A/Traverso, which had been published since 1975 by the collective that founded Radio Alice; and the international history of community radio. I then show how Radio Alice’s approach to broadcasting drew from these three contexts in seeking to unseat the logic of capitalism and replace it with a celebration of desire. The station’s practice emphasised polyvocality through the extensive use of telephone phone-ins, and challenged language itself through surreal speech and non-linguistic vocalisation. I explore how this vocal practice expressed the stations countercultural politics and, drawing on the work of Adriana Cavarero and Doreen Massey, I argue that it was a practice with spatial consequences. These spatial consequences became both explicit and tangible during the 1977 Bologna riots when the station was shut down live on air. Ultimately, and most broadly, I contend that as a central component of human interrelation the voice is always already implicated in the social construction of space.

Description

Keywords

36 Creative Arts and Writing, 4701 Communication and Media Studies, 47 Language, Communication and Culture, 3605 Screen and Digital Media

Journal Title

Sound Studies

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2055-1940
2055-1959

Volume Title

7

Publisher

Informa UK Limited

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
AHRC DTP PhD Studentship (award number AH/L503897/1).