Voices from the outside: The instrumentality of radio messages in Colombian kidnappings

Abstract

Abstract What was the impact of one-way radio messages aimed at hostages kidnapped by the FARC and held captive in the Colombian jungle? Messages were read out every Saturday night (reception in the Colombian jungle is best between 01:00am and 04:00am) for 22 years. Here, radio animated emotional registers of lived experience as one-way radio messages intensified novel forms of imagination for both speaker, hearer and the ‘community’ of other hearers, in this case thousands of hostages dotted around the jungle. This article examines the linguistic instrumentality of the radio voice. By analysing the Voces del Secuestro messages, it is shown how a phenomenological listening of the radio voice gave hope in times of anguish.