02.05. Deep Listening and Democracy: Political Listening to Fellow Citizens and Other Beings

Deep Listening and Democracy: Political Listening to Fellow Citizens and Other Beings - Eva Meijer

In philosophy and politics, there is a strong emphasis on speaking at the cost of listening, and language at the cost of silence. Speaking and language are in the western tradition furthermore seen as human capacities, and denied to other animals, plants and nature, effectively silencing them in our knowledge systems and political realities. Many of the ecological problems all beings are currently facing are connected to anthropocentrism, as a world view that disconnects humans from the rest of the living world, and as a mode of being in which humans use others for their own profit. Challenging anthropocentrism asks for developing a new attitude as humans. We cannot do this alone: we need to learn to engage differently with the other living beings with whom we share the planet, and centre their perspectives in working towards a different future. First and foremost for their sake, but also for ours. Finding out more about their perspectives asks for rethinking language and speaking in a multispecies context, for attending to their silences, and thus for listening. In my talk I will discuss political listening within and between multispecies communities, drawing on insights from ethology, multispecies ethnography and political animal philosophy. I will also explore political listening to new voices, using Pauline Oliveros’ concept deep listening as a starting point.

Eva Meijer is a philosopher, writer, visual artist and musician. She wrote fourteen books, fiction and non-fiction, her work has been translated into over twenty languages. Meijer works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam (NL), on the four-year research project The politics of (not) eating animals, supported by a Veni grant from the Dutch Research Council, and at Wageningen University and Research (NL). She is the chair of the Dutch study group for Animal Philosophy. She also writes columns and essays for Dutch newspaper NRC and is a member of the Multispecies Art Collective. More information can be found on her website: www.evameijer.nl