[Xmca-l] Re: Collaboration

[Lplarry]

Henry and Annalisa,
This explorations of differing possible *meanings* of interruptions is an interesting turn in the conversation. Generally are interruptions (closing off) or (opening up) the dialogue. This seems to be an example of *modulating* (or marking) the sense of *voice*.

If our relation to unfolding voice is a key aspect of cooperative communication (Tomasella’s  perspective on developing meaning within conspecific human joint attention) then our ways of relating to voice is critical.
This could include needing a room of ones own as a *private* place to develop voice.
It could include the need to *claim* or *grasp* one’s *own* turn in the conversation which is the notion of mutual *recognition* overcoming the master/slave dynamic. A notion of symmetrical voice recognition among *equals*

It could also include a relation where the listener *hears the other into voice*. This is an understanding of an asymmetrical relation to voice Levinas is an exemplar of this approach.

The question *who* is responsible for *voice* entering the world? Is it predominantly a *self* discovery or is it predominantly dependent on mutual *recognition of symmetrical equals giving *voice* and claiming *voice*.
Then there is the way of understanding voice where the listener *hears the other into voice* and this is not dependent on mutual symmetrical recognition among *equals* but focuses more on the motivation of *care and concern*.
I hear differing (modes) of modulating or marking *voice*.


Sent from my Windows 10 phone

From: Annalisa Aguilar
Sent: April 20, 2016 3:10 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Collaboration

Hi Henry,

Hate to ruin things for you, but I must not fit in the general gendered paradigm of interruptions. Or maybe I am not understanding you correctly?

Being a woman who is frequently not allowed to speak to the end of my sentences, which causes a situation where I must repeat myself –which subsequently makes me appear as long-winded compared to if I'd just been able to finish my sentence in the first place– I feel interruptions are most always about power dynamics, as I almost always feel unheard when my speech is interrupted. It is the exception that I feel interruptions make me feel I am heard by my interlocutor(s), where as you say the conversation is being moved along.

There is also the pattern where people might allow me to speak to the end of my sentence and then continue one as if I had said nothing, in that case it is the shape of an interruption whereby I am made out to be the unwelcome interrupter, and thus ignored. 

In both cases these are two sorts of speech censorship, which does not contribute to a sense of psychological safety.  

I was listening to NPR yesterday and learned that in Iran there is an expansion of the secret police monitoring whether or not women are wearing their public hijab properly, and (bless them) Iranian women are coming forward on Twitter having that network moment of not taking it anymore. One woman who is a parliamentary journalist, was not allowed to ask her questions because of criticisms of her hijab presentation. So here is a case of interruption based upon appearance, rather than allowing her speech to be spontaneously given and received. 

I remember thinking after I heard the news story, that women seem to frequently have to resort to a "forced" flexibility, a sort of temporal bricolage, to make their thoughts known, knowing there is constantly the threat of interruption hanging like hijab around their heads. 

If this is the reason women are (considered) multi-taskers so be it, but I don't think it's chromosomal, just a by-product of survival through an imposed steeplechase of (his)tory. 

Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, says what it does because Woolf claims a woman needs to find her true voice in a safe space in her control, a place she where she can be left alone, to speak without the drone of other people's voices being overlaid and imposed upon her.

If such a social dynamic is something that a man also experiences (and so I believe the dynamic need not be isolated to women only), then I would say he would have an equal requirement to a safe space to connect to his own inner speech. I'm sure though, this would occur differently, since the social pressures are likely not the same, though there would be family resemblances, as I imagine that censorship of speech has deep psychological consequences for human beings in general. 

One point Woolf makes in AROOO, is that when a woman speaks from this injury she is not considered legitimate, and this means she is not free to the spontaneous thought required to be imaginative or innovative, because her speech is in reference to constrained reaction rather than unfettered creation.

I would love to hear what women on this list think about that? To add or augment? (Though men are welcome to say what they like also, of course... without interruption).

Kind regards,

Annalisa