Ethics of listening

Es gilt als lobenswert, gut zuhören zu können, und man tadelt es, wenn jemand nicht gut zuhören kann. Daran zeigt sich, dass Zuhören keine Selbstverständlichkeit ist. Es geschieht nicht automatisch; es will offenbar gelernt sein. Dieser Vortrag fragt nach der Fähigkeit des Zuhörens und ihrem Ort in Streitgesprächen. Wo Kontroversen – z.B. politische Debatten – die Form eines rohen rhetorischen Kampfes annehmen, geht das oft damit einher, dass man sich nicht mehr gut zuhört. Die Sachlichkeit der Auseinandersetzung scheint auch damit zu tun zu haben, dass die Beteiligten bereit sind, „sich etwas sagen zu lassen“. Dennoch spielt die Fähigkeit des Zuhörens in der Philosophie oder Argumentationstheorie kaum eine Rolle. Thematisiert werden fast ausschließlich Sprecher, die Gründe geben und Argumente entwickeln können; dass diese Sprecher auch hören und zuhören müssen, wird in der Regel ausgeblendet. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist zu fragen: Was bedeutet es, zuhören zu können? Kann man das Zuhören als argumentative Fähigkeit verstehen? Wie lernt man zuhören? Diskutiert werden diese Fragen in Auseinandersetzung mit der Geschichte der Philosophie, etwa mit Ansätzen der Antike und der Phänomenologie.

Research and policy on media and cultural diversity routinely emphasize speaking or ‘voice’, whether in mainstream, community or diaspora media. An established tradition
also examines representation and critiques examples stereotyping and racialization. This paper extends these discussions to focus on questions of ‘listening’. Attention to
listening provokes important questions about media and multiculturalism: how do media enable or constrain listening across difference? Drawing on recent work in postcolonial
feminism and political theory, this paper explores the productive possibilities of a shift beyond the politics of voice to explore ‘listening across difference’ in media studies and
media advocacy work. To highlight listening shifts some of the focus and responsibility for change from marginalized voices and on to the conventions, institutions and privileges which shape who and what can be heard in the media.

Anarchism is frequently considered to be alternatively a political ideology, a social movement or a form of political culture. Drawing on queer and feminist writings as my own experience both in anarchist politics and in sex education, I suggest that thinking of anarchism as an ethics of relationships is consistent with key elements of the tradition as well as offering fruitful insights for everyday relationships. Anti-state, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian, anarchism and other forms of radical politics are criticised for being anti-everything, begging the question, what is anarchism for? While on one hand offering utopian visions of life after capitalism, the anarchist tradition is also firmly grounded in everyday practices of relationships. In anarchist critiques of speaking for others and in practices of collective organising, I see a radical commitment to listening. In offering challenges to institutionalised competition and in demonstrating the benefits of mutual aid, I see a radical commitment to care. In undermining the 'false futures' of neoliberalism and stories of the 'end of history' and in practices of individual and collective empowerment and transformation, I see a radical commitment to becoming. As an ethics of relationships, anarchism might not only evade criticism as utopian or nihilist, it may provide a profound source of inspiration for the everyday challenges of our relationships with ourselves, each other and the earth.

Expanding on Robert Stam’s idea that sound and image tracks in film can ‘mutually jostle, undercut [and] haunt…each other’ creating what he calls a ‘heterochronic… cinema , this thesis argues that close analysis of a film’s sound design can sometimes reveal a break in the seamlessness of a film’s narrative and formal structure when sound and image are used asynchronously. Synthesising Stam’s formal approach with the theoretical framework of temporal critique put forward by Bliss Cua Lim in her study of the ghost film, this study demonstrates how, like the ghost figure, this use of ‘unruly’ sound can similarly disrupt the concept of time as linear and the nation-state as a stable, homogenous entity. Analysing the use of ‘spectral sound’ in a group of important films produced in cultures of censorship by Bahman Ghobadi, Jia Zhangke and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the thesis argues that film form can itself be political – creating a sense of temporal dislocation that ‘makes the present waver’.  Alert to the ethical possibilities of listening to film, ‘Cinema’s Spectral Sounds’ argues that film sound can also play a crucial restorative role in that it can reposition oppressed memories and experiences centrally within the discourse of the present.

Music is not just a form of art but mainly an activity in which many are involved. When musicking (listening, playing, singing, dancing, etc.) a specific musical interspace is created among collaborators, that might foster mutual understanding and dialogue. It also has been shown that music can play a crucial role in achieving peace, truce or at least closure.
The paper will be assessing the account on music as an interspace that provides an environment favorable for dialogue, understanding, affection, care, hospitality, and ethical gestures between subjects and their others. It also represents an opportunity to learn how to listen, and at the same time, how to express ourselves in order to be heard. The role and the potentiality of music as a dialogical activity, its power for the creation of a peaceful environment that can also help in conflict resolution, can be examined in different fields of research and proof of its effects can be found everywhere where there is music. More and more philosophers, musicologists, and other scholars understand music as a key social and psychological element in establishing sound relationships among individuals and groups.
The presentation will provide an insight into the role and meaning of music for two religious communities in Turkey, namely, the Alevi and the Mevlevi. Music has had an important role in their struggle for their own acknowledgement, and even today, it plays a crucial role in their rituals and everyday life. With their songs, they do not only speak of mysticism, faith and philosophy, but also about friendship, peace, affection, tolerance, hospitality and, love. Moreover, it reflects their beliefs of a tolerant and understanding world and functions as a universal exercise in ethical gestures, openness and acceptance. Finally, an attempt of understanding the possibilities of apprehending their hospitality towards the stranger and the other through music will be offered.

Keywords: musical activity, mutual acceptance, hospitality, religious music, Alevi and Mevlevi music

En este artículo discuto algunas formas de relación con el sufrimiento humano que han caracterizado los emprendimientos investigativos y la práctica de la defensa de los derechos humanos en Colombia, y que han sido constitutivas de ciertos tipos de narrativas sobre la guerra y la violencia política en el país. Sostengo que estos modos de relación han sido delineados, en parte, por las lógicas y gramáticas de la guerra y la violencia, y han contribuido a desdibujar las tramas intersubjetivas que hacen posible el testimonio, por lo que obligan a reflexionar críticamente acerca de los impactos de la guerra y la violencia desde una ética de la escucha.

In this article I discuss some ways of relating to human suffering that have characterized research undertakings and the practice of defending human rights in Colombia that have constituted certain types of narratives about war and political violence in the country. I argue that these modes of relationship have been partly delineated by the logics and grammars of war and violence, and have contributed to blurring the inter-subjective storylines that make testimony possible, which calls for critical reflection on the impacts of war and violence from an ethics of listening.

This paper explores the possibilities and limits of a politics of ‘listening’ as a strategy for a privileged white woman to contribute to antiracism in the face of dominant discourses of gendered protectionism. Reflecting on my own role as a co-convenor of a series of workshops aimed at intervening in discourses and policies of ‘protection’ directed at Indigenous and Muslim women, I suggest that ‘eavesdropping with permission’ may in some cases contribute to the negotiation of safer speaking spaces. In contrast to ‘dialogue’ aimed at empathy or understanding, ‘eavesdropping with permission’ involves the possibility of shifting risk and redistributing discomfort in order to unsettle the privileges of a centralized speaking position.

To date both research and policy on media and cultural diversity have emphasised questions of speaking, whether in mainstream, community or diaspora media. There is also a vast literature examining questions of representation, including stereotyping, racialisation, hybridisation and self-representations. This paper extends these discussions to focus on questions of listening. Attention to listening provokes
important questions about media and multiculturalism: How do media enable or constrain listening across difference? How can a diversity of voices be heard in the media? Drawing on recent work in ethics and political theory, this paper explores the
productive possibilities of a shift from the politics of representation to a politics of listening in both media studies and media advocacy work concerned with understanding across differences. To highlight listening shifts the focus and responsibility for change from marginalised voices and on to the conventions, institutions and privileges which shape who and what can be heard in media.