Big mouth: amplified feminism in Guinea

Abstract

ABSTRACT In January 2019, the Guinean journalist and feminist activist, Moussa Yéro Bah, was found guilty in a defamation suit. The suit involved a clip on her radio news program, in which she spoke about an ongoing rape case. While she never named the alleged perpetrator, his identity was well known on the street and in social media. He promptly sued Ms. Bah, and won. In this article, I explore this case and activists’ reactions to it, to consider how voice, sound, and listening shape responses to sexual violence. I examine the role of amplification in feminist struggles for gender justice in Guinea and analyse the sound effects of a series of vocal interventions by activists and journalists. My analysis explores how vocal practices, audio technologies, and ways of hearing shape both legal and extra-legal proceedings. As I show, activists strategically sound out their claims in everyday spaces in order to bypass the failures of formal legal systems and create possibilities for more collective, transformative action.