Why voice matters? Take a look at the authoritarian regimes

Much of the work of authoritarian regimes is on deploying the power of totality to silence voice(s).

The capacity of voice to disrupt the power and control of the regime perhaps is one of the most fundamental fears that drive regimes.

Regimes, obsessed with power, operate on the perpetual fear of the loss of power.

Inherent in the workings of the regime is a deep-seated anxiety about the threat to the exercise of power and control that constitutes its everyday legitimacy.

Regimes therefore invent a variety of techniques, from forced disappearance and murder, to arrests for threatening national security, to police investigations for scandalizing the legitimacy of existing power structures, to criminal defamation suits.

Although the degree of violence and force differs across the techniques, what is common to them is the deployment of state structures to silence voice.

The state, rather than being a resource embedded in democratic norms, is mobilized to silence difference, dissent, and opposing views. State resources are deployed toward serving the political party in power (often a singular party that exercises hegemonic control).

It is the capacity of voice to disrupt that draws the full force of repression carried out by regimes.

Essential then to the various techniques of control is the objective of silencing the voices of opposition. In the monolithic opinion climate, the regime then can spin its own story, its own set of claims as truth, and manufacture consent through propaganda.

Because voice is the very site of oppression carried out by authoritarian regimes, it is also through voice that the power and control of authoritarian regimes is disrupted. Voice offers an anchor for imagining other possibilities, disrupting the structures that work to continually silence.

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Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

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