Omer Oushia is a doctoral candidate in the Research Training Group “Aesthetics of Democracy” at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Technical University of Darmstadt, supervised by Prof. Sophie Loidolt. His research lies at the intersection of continental philosophy and modern literary theory, with a focus on the relation between politics, aesthetics, and language. His PhD project investigates the acoustic dimension of democratic life, taking Hannah Arendt’s reflections on speech, narration, and theatre as a point of departure. It examines how voice, rhythm, and audibility shape political experience and democratic participation, and explores the extent to which democratic public space can be understood as a space structured not only by visibility, but also by practices of listening and being heard.

Sonorous Evolutions: Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Vocal Resonance

This project investigates the acoustic dimension of democratic life, taking Hannah Arendt’s reflections on speech, narration, and theatre as a point of departure. It begins from Arendt’s reading of persona as per-sonare—that through which the voice sounds—foregrounding a shift from voice as an inward call of conscience to voice as an outward, resonant movement within a space of plurality. Against philosophical traditions that locate the voice in interiority, law, or finitude, the project explores how vocal expression constitutes a shared, intersubjective field in which political experience takes shape.

Focusing on the phenomenon of vocal resonance, the project approaches democracy as a sensuous and performative configuration structured not only by visibility and discourse, but also by practices of listening, audibility, and sonic exposure. It examines tensions within Arendt’s account of political speech—between articulation and control, on the one hand, and vulnerability, interruption, and dissonance, on the other—placing her thought in dialogue with figures such as Aristotle, Rousseau, Benjamin, and Blanchot.

Structurally, the project traces the transformation of the voice across three domains central to Arendt’s work: speech, narration, and theatre. In doing so, it develops an account of the political as a field of resonance in which voices do not merely express positions but constitute relations. By foregrounding the acoustic conditions of plurality, the project contributes to the RTG’s focus on the aesthetic dimensions of democratic life, particularly within the domain of action, where political forms emerge through processes of formation, disruption, and renewal.