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Paper short abstract:

The capacity for an inner voice is a primary means through which people understand and engage with the world. Based on a collaboration with artists with MND, we explore how different life events are mediated by complex layers of inner expression and imagination.

Paper long abstract:

The capacity for an inner voice—that includes streams of internally represented speech, emotional reverie, moral observation and imagination—is a primary means through which people interpret, understand and engage with the world, including in relation to illness and misfortune or when negotiating significant social, religious and moral conflicts and periods of existential disruption and uncertainty. Without inner expression there would be no self-understanding or social existence in any recognisable form. Nevertheless, the social-sciences lack a generally accepted epistemological framework for understanding people’s inner voice and associated modes of internalised expression, including how these inform or relate to people’s public and externally observable actions. People’s inner expressions are often seen as intangible or irrelevant, rather than empirical phenomena directly constitutive of experience, action and understanding.

In response, the proposed contribution to the roundtable, explores the role of inner voice in relation to Motor Neurone Disease (MND) and other life changing experiences and diagnosis. MND is a degenerative condition (the same that Stephen Hawking lived with) that encompasses the loss of the capacities of speech, facial expression and bodily movement, opening up a unique window onto the centrality of inner voice to both experience and expression. Drawing on a collaboration with London based artist with MND Sarah Ezekiel, we explore creative methods and modes of research to better understand the concept of voice and the lifeworlds of illness, including how different life events are mediated by complex modes of inner expression and imagination.