Absolute Listening: The Political Ramifications of an Ethic of Interpersonal Transformation

Abstract

This paper addresses the role of listening in dialog with a particular focus on discourse in democratic societies and communities where conflict has recently occurred. I provide a critical assessment of civil dialog by examining the complications that restrictions on content and language create by forcing the speaker to express him or herself inauthentically. Using the French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s notion of ‘absolute hospitality’ as a model, I construct a form of listening I term ‘absolute listening’ which seeks to overcome many of the limitations of rule-guided discourse. Absolute listening removes restrictions on speech and, in the process, allows the listener to recognize the speaker as a unique and uncategorizable individual. This, in turn, creates the necessary intersubjectivity and personal transformation among dialog participants for successful intracommunal reconciliation to occur. The research for this project builds on existing criticisms of civil dialog and relies on contemporary literatures in phenomenology and post-conflict reconciliation. The paper also highlights efforts at implementing absolute listening by a nonprofit organization in Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Keywords:

• ethics of listening
• absolute hospitality
• reconciliation
• Parents Circle Families Forum

Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge Dr Douglas Dow, Dr Edward Harpham, and Mr Michael Seeligson at the University of Texas at Dallas for their encouragement and valuable insights throughout the writing and revision process. The author would also like to thank Dr Larry Chappell at Mississippi Valley State University for his helpful comments. Finally, the author would like to acknowledge his parents, Dr Fred Previc and Dr Nancy Amodei, thanking them for their love and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For the purpose of this paper, the ‘other’ is a fundamentally unrecognizable, unassimilable identity that we construct as a way to typify foreigners and others we do not recognize as ‘familiar’ in society. The ‘other’ prevents us from acknowledging our similarities with strangers as we define who we are based on what the ‘other’ is not.

2. Martha Nussbaum, in her work, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, attacks the distinction between thought and emotions, arguing that emotions, as ‘intelligent responses to the perception of value’, (Nussbaum 2003, 1) are forms of cognition. Any perceived conflict between emotion and reason, she notes, is therefore less a conflict between thought and feeling, as it is a conflict within thought itself (Cates 2003).

3. In ‘Inclusive Political Communication’ Young references the American Welfare Reform Debate of 1992–1996, which largely excluded the lower-income individuals most affected by the reforms. As a result of not being able to effectively participate in the discourse, they became ‘objects’ of the debate instead of equal members of the polity.

4. By intersubjectivity, I mean the process by which my identity is shaped through my interactions and encounters with other persons.

5. As Coles (1992) notes, the French Phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty similarly held that ‘it is precisely in other’s difference that we recognize them as “other” beings who, like us, participate in being human’.

6. In a clinical context, narrative therapy couples evidence-based assessments of psychological well-being with an appreciation for the subjective experience, allowing patients to express their sentiments and recollections with less regard for the objective truth of the message conveyed. As Psychiatrist Glenn Roberts notes, ‘stories give cognitive and emotional significance to experience, they are a means of constructing and negotiating a social identity, and give moral weight and existential significance to actions and events’ (Roberts 2000, 4).

7. The 1932 Jean Renoir film, Boudu Saved from Drowning, for example, depicts a bookstore owner who saves a vagrant’s life and later offers him a place to stay in his home. The vagrant proceeds to eat and drink everything he can find in the home and afterward seduces both the housemaid as well as the bookstore owner’s wife.

8. As Monica Godolozi, a wife of a murdered political activist and participant in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission notes, ‘I can forgive anyone that speaks the truth’ thus highlighting the impact even simple discursive overtures can have in the reconciliation process (Hayner 2010, 2).

9. For more information about PCFF, I encourage the reader to visit the organization’s website at http://www.theparentscircle.org. I also encourage readers to watch the documentary, ‘Another Side of Peace’, which follows Roni Hirshenson and Ghazi Briegieth as they recruit new families to the organization.

10. Priscilla Hayner in Unspeakable Truths notes that while the discussion of certain topics in truth and reconciliation commissions may ‘bring up more pain and further divide’ individuals in a post-conflict society, it is impossible to rebuild a democracy based on denied and forgotten history. The desire for truth, she stresses, is ‘powerful and seemingly universal’ (Hayner 2010, 4–5).

11. The author was granted permission to reference interviews for use in this paper by the Parents Circle Families Forum. Names have been excluded to respect the privacy of the individual PCFF members.

12. The three peace-building initiatives documented in the study included: (1) The Parallel Narrative Experience, which consisted of reconciliatory dialog and visits to sites of collective trauma for both groups; (2) Neighbors—Women in the Parallel Narrative Experience, which promoted reconciliatory dialog with a focus on female participants; and (3) Road to Reconciliation—Dialog Encounters for Youth and Young Adults, which brought more than 1,400 Israeli and Palestinian youth and young adults together for 63 screenings of the PCFF’s documentary film ‘Two-Sided Story’.