File spoon-archives/habermas.archive/habermas_2001/habermas.0109, message 25


Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 15:12:31 +0100
Subject: Re: HAB: Re: Re: Re: samizdat 
From: "Stefan Szczelkun" <stefan-AT-szczelkun.greatxscape.net>


Antti M Kauppinen wrote on the 14th:
"Why is physical presence and hearing the other's voice (rather than
reading what she writes) so important - can Habermas's framework
accommodate that? "

In London I've been getting the Hab list samizdat mailings
interleaved with mailings from members of Re-evaluation
co-counselling members in New York. These lifeworld co-counsellors
caught up in the WTC drama are reporting how they are using their
'listening skills' both to deal with their own trauma around the
events and to also,  experimentally, go out in the street and listen
to others. These mailings revealed to me another dimension of
communications in response to a real crisis to the hard arguments
coming through the Hab discussion list.

The oral is important because it is integral with a somatic / sensory
understanding. Habermasian theory and academicism as a discursive
whole does not allow us to think much (yet?) about the quality of
listening and what that entails. Nor on the other hand how trauma
intefers with clear thinking. This is of course part of 'therapeutic
discourse' but this does seem sidelined to the much more forefronted
literary discourses of critical theory.

How do we conceive of the therapeutic as integral to the argument?
How do we conceive of this process from within academia which is
historically so framed by the traditional detachements of science and
good taste? How do we understand 'listening' outside of the
sytemically tied professional forms of counselling, therapy and
psychoanalysis?

It seems like most of the really key things that humans have to come
to understandings about are surrounded by a dense and confusing cloud
of painful emotions, whether these are a need to avenge the wrongs of
American imperialist military arrogance or the need to revenge the
outrage done to American pride and security (the families of those
who have lost members do not seem the most vocal in calling for WAR
with its implication of death and destruction to many more innocents)
or even the ubiquitous hurts of all our early years.

Any liberatory theory of communication needs to prioritise an
understanding of what process we need to undertake to see through
this cloud. And in a way that can be participated in by all humans on
a global scale.

Stefan
London

----------
>From: Antti M Kauppinen <amkauppi-AT-cc.helsinki.fi>
>To: habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: Re: HAB: Re: Re: Re: samizdat
>Date: Fri, Sep 14, 2001, 1:19 am
>


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