The Space Between: Listening and Story-ing as Foundations for Projects in Humanization (PiH)

• In Event: Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Research With Youth and Communities

Abstract

In her Lecture and speech of acceptance, Morrison (1993) describes how the power of language “lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, and writers. Although its power is sometimes in displacing experience, it is not a substitute for it. It arcs toward the place where meaning may lie” (p.20). The utility of language provides opportunities for the emergence of multiple related/shared and/or conflicting/different experiences through use of various channels and spaces of communication. These channels and spaces can include technology, face-to-face speech interactions, linguistic and cultural diversities, geographical distances, and the spaces between thought and action. However, as Morrison reminds us, language—even in its power to displace—“is not a substitute for” experience. Therefore, we do not limit ourselves to the vitality of oral language to fully communicate our streams of consciousness around listening, story-ing, and authoring. We rely on a) written texts, especially the ones we create, exchange, and metacognitively reflect upon; b) body language, or nonverbal cues, such as facial gestures and our random up-and-down or left-to-right head nods, and c) untimed verbal cues, or interjections, including “That’s deep,” “You right,” “Mm-hmm,” and “Exactly.”

In relying on (and theorizing) these actions and moves, we take up Morrison’s claims around language to expand our understandings of, and experiences with, language as listening by turning the gaze on how we position ourselves (our self/selfed identities), and get positioned by one another (our other/othered identities), through the stories we exchange. We do this work by recognizing the act of and embodied performances around listening as a literacy-rich practice that can foster what we refer to as Projects in Humanization (PiH). Such projects, as we will argue and demonstrate in this paper, are grounded in a theoretical consideration of listening (Bakhtin, 1981; Bartolome, 1994; Schultz, 2010) as a framework to tell, re-tell, and re-present stories in non-linear ways—from left to right, right to left, from conversations on the telephone, via email, over Skype, and through journaling as an essential communicative form. One goal inherent in this work is to raise questions about expansive forms of literacy engagements, ethics and trust in relationship building, and shifting roles of researcher as learner, listener, and participant. Some of the inquiry questions we pose, and interrogate through vignettes of our work with Indigenous American youth in the Southwest and African American youth in the Northeast, include: What does it mean to listen and to engage listening as a framework in literacy research? In what ways do practices in listening converge with acts of story-ing/storytelling/authoring? How might these acts/actions foster innovative processes for conducting critical research and Projects in Humanization (PiH)?

References:
Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans). Austin: University of Texas Press.

Bartolome, L. (1994). Beyond the methods fetish: Toward a humanizing pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 62(2), 173-194.

Morrison, T. (1993). Lecture and speech of acceptance, upon the award of the Nobel Prize for literature. New York: A.A. Knopf.

Authors

• Valerie F. Kinloch, The Ohio State University

• Timothy Jose San Pedro, Arizona State University