Thursday, April 10, 2014

What are you listening for and have you heard, the call to respect contextualities and their language

Language has the greatest potential to make us aware of context.  As one speaks, their context becomes clear and heaven help the poor soul that misses the God within the sacred witness.
                                                                                                                           


Imperial Leather by Anne McClintock
I struggle, daily, to communicate a language of inclusivity, one not grounded in a plantation culture.  Within this challenging , albeit difficult context, I, like many others,  long to make my points clear, to communicate who I am in a world of people and communities that experience life differently, who experience me through a lens constructed by and for the oppressor.  It is a language of the binary, i.e. female or male, a language of economy promulgated in support of a normative culture, regardless of how they themselves identify.  Particularly as a tall, black transgender woman socialized as male I find language, at times, challenging as those around me refer to me, even by mistake as he, him, etc., and this regardless of my presentation.  Seemingly, the only language known is the language of the plantation owner, a representation of white supremacy.  That said, I find that language, and I include listening in my engagement of language can be, if critically engaged,  a window into the joy, sorrow, pain, anger and grief experienced by the person who longs to be heard.  It is a window into their soul.  Communication must be taken as a fine art. 

Hearing various speakers on the radio, television and at public gatherings I listen intently with an ear, hopefully reformed, and attuned to a postcolonial perspective.  Listening from a postcolonial perspective is about hearing differently than taught at the feet of my sixth grade teacher and a curriculum which taught me what to hear and not to hear, words and phrases approved and not approved, a curriculum which supported the visions of white America.  It is about listening intimately to the context of the speaker as well as the speaker themselves.  It is taking each word, phrase, symbol and their color and hue as they come without preconceived notions or judgment.  The goal is to hear, to listen to the speaker and possibly experience transformation.   Hearing and listening from a postcolonial perspective as it pertains to hearing and listening then is a process of decolonization.

Decolonizing hearing and therefore listening is crucial to a project that seeks to be a ground of a different legitimacy.  Reflecting further on this topic, those of us who embrace a postcolonial perspective of hearing and listening are called to listen for the soul and the heart of the person, to become intimate with the speaker.   This is necessarily opposed to hearing and listening as a structural event where the speaker may be detached as a content of authority from the audience.  I suggest that detachment occurs because hearing and listening, within the normative culture, engages the speaker and the listener through an identity complex which negates the humanity of the person speaking or listening.  What I mean is that when we use constructs of identity as a means to speak, hear and listen we deny the authentic voice seeking to be heard.  This was particularly evident as I listened to an historic black transgender activist tell her story using her own words to describe her experiences of living as a black transgender women engaging a culture of rejection.

Her words, for some, were colorful and enlightening.  For others, her words were inflammatory, derogatory and unsettling.  Through her words she revealed years of engaging a culture of rejection.  A culture of rejection is one that systemically maintains laws, regulations and codes as sacred by elements of Church and society that reject the humanity of the person who doesn't mirror the normative image codified by political, economic, social and religious regimes.  These rules then undergird a particular mindset present within certain communities which then exhibit a narrative of a modern day watch dog of the plantation class.   Particularly as a black transgender woman I have experienced this reality as certain black people I encounter become, at times, the main purveyors of the very rules that have historically dehumanized black people for over 300 years.

This dehumanization, while present in the black community, goes far beyond one race or class or culture.  It goes to the very core of the American citizen.  Regardless of how a person identifies, whether a transgender male or female, race or ethnicity, lesbian, gay, bisexual or queer, wherever you are on the spectrum of human identity, it is there, always lurking in the shadows ready to leap and pounce on the unsuspecting.   This was the case as one person got up and proceeded to criticize her for speaking her truth in her words.  In fact there were a few comments about her language.  As I listened to these comments I heard normative ideas of decency and etiquette, which, for me, became realities of a white subculture. From my perspective then the comments were grounded in a longing for domestication as produced by and for white supremacy reminiscent of a reading of Anne McClintock’s book, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest.[1]    I was somewhat surprised, disappointed and as I look back upon the affair somewhat embarrassed at this occurrence because most or all of us were students, faculty or alumni of the institution.  How, at a supposed progressive seminary, where issues of context and identity are so central to religious leadership, did this occur?  Much more work needs to be done!!!

As a way to remedy this unfortunate affair I suggest that a postcolonial perspective be more embraced by the seminary community, students and faculty.  I suggest here that four important questions are significant in this endeavor, (1) who is speaking? (2) what is being said? (3) what am I hearing? and (4) what am I hearing with?  These questions seek to break open a postcolonial reality of hearing and listening.  When deployed the community and the institution will be functioning from a positive project where all people and their narratives are lifted up.  Of course there are many answers to questions of hearing and listening this is just one such possibility.





[1] Anne McClintock.  Imperial Leather:  Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York, NY:  Routledge Publishing, 1995)

5 comments:

  1. This is an important piece. Thank you for the reminders, Monica. As I consider what I have read, I wonder if there are actually FOUR significant questions to ask: (1) who is speaking, (2) what is being said, (3) what I am hearing, and (4) what am I hearing with? As I separate out the "what am I hearing with" piece, I wonder how my querying my listening is related to my own context. By fine-tuning your words, am I not hearing you? Am I excluding people who do not think abstractly about such things? This is all so very complex, it's a wonder we ever successfully communicate anything!

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  2. Hi Query,

    Communication is definitely an art requiring much thought and contemplation. I continue to strive for such each day. That said, we must take time to actually communicate, or commune with the speaker and the text. I do believe that intimacy and relationship more so than anything play a large part in our hearing and listening. Real change emerges as we hear and listen differently. On another note I did receive your thoughts as a positive sign that you were intimate with the text and as such with my thoughts. At times I believe this loss of intimacy regarding the reader and the text or the listener and the speaker to be a great and tragic loss.

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  3. And yes there should be four questions. Thanks

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  4. Thank you for your writing Monica Joy. And amen.

    Hello Monica Joy, it's Luisely. You, dear one, have stayed in my heart after our minutes gazing into the wonder of who each of us is.
    I am in a Christology class this semester with a group of Roman Catholic priests. We can choose to do anything for our final project and I would like to use this opportunity to create a space where these priests (and myself) can hear and learn of who Jesus is from those voices excluded from the Church. I intend, after reading your post, to explicitly use the four questions throughout my presentation.
    I would like to know if you could help me with this. I will be asking people from different communities whose voices are excluded from the Catholic Church (incarcerated women, women and men experiencing homelessness, members of the LGBTQ community, severely disabled adults, and the home-bound) to answer the question of "Who is Jesus to you?" The answer can be as simple or as complex as the person would like. There are no restrictions, it could be a word or a sound or a poem.
    My hope is to create a powerpoint with a slide for each quote, without the description of who wrote it, and have the following slide add a description of who the quote was coming from.
    I understand that the question is an intimate one. All the responses will be anonymous and the description of the person will be decided by the person. The purpose of the description is to help those reading the powerpoint to notice the voices excluded. For example if someone simply wants their despcription to be "woman in prison, mother of 3, grandmother of 2," that will be the description that comes up following her quote.
    I would like to know if you could help me with this process by asking members of your communities who would identify as LGBTQ (or whose voices have been excluded from the Church) to answer the question. Only if you find it appropriate and if you feel comfortable. If you feel comfortable answering the question with whatever description of yourself you would like them to know, I would love them to hear your voice as well. I will ask the four questions before the slideshow powerpoint and after.
    I ache knowing that we miss out on the wisdom and the gifts of so many because of our exclusion, this is a simple effort to have those that have not had the opportunity to look into your eyes or those of the women in prison or of those living in the streets or confined to their beds to get a glimpse of what they are missing out on.
    I would need the responses by the 8th of May.
    The priests have no idea what project I am doing, so if you don't receive this message on time or if you feel uncomfortable do not worry. If you feel interest in asking this question to others and passing along their responses to me and its past the 8th, I would still love to receive them.

    With the warmest of wishes,
    Luisely
    lmzambrano@jstb.edu

    P.S.: Please excuse the medium of how I am asking you, I do not have your email, feel free to reply via email.

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    Replies
    1. Hi Luisely,

      Pardon my lapse, yes I would love to help out. Let me read your comment and get back to you today.

      Monica

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