Radical Listening: Collective Practices, Histories and Possible Futures

Can ‘listening’ foster new forms of relationality in a collapsing world? What forms, formats, rituals and infrastructures of listening to one another have made life liveable, enjoyable or, simply, possible in recent times?

This online event brings together colleagues from various fields of research and practice to share stories, archival material, ethnographies, speculations or theories around forms of listening to individual or collective experiences that offer a radical mode of witnessing and togetherness, especially in challenging contexts. The event features papers, presentations and creative interventions addressing listening as an act of ethics and of care, where more than just recognition is at stake, rather, when a joint construction of a world-in-common can unfold.

Psychoanalysis was first called a ‘talking cure’ by one of its very first woman-patients, Bertha Pappenheim, in the late 19th century Vienna. Since then, practices of talking, dialoguing and expressing oneself have gained space in mainstream clinical settings, grassroots organising as well as hegemonic twists of ‘self-care’ and ‘authenticity’. Less emphasis has been granted to listening, listening to others, listening together, listening to the world, etc. With this in mind - and as a psychosocial research collective - we are interested in ways of listening ‘otherwise’ or radical forms of listening. What might this radical listening entail? How is it different from established spaces of listening which rely on specific frameworks, methods, epistemologies and ontologies (Olufemi, 2021)? How is this listening bound up to political action? There is a rising interest in forms of radical empathy, or in the notion of ‘analysis everywhere’ (Caló and Pereira, 2024) and we would like to open this space to consider listening as a crucial political strategy of care and creativity. Equally, we are interested too in the 'troubles' of listening – ambivalences, struggles, impasses and how these are elaborated and articulated. What does it take, in relating and in infrastructures, to 'listen well', as black feminist Hortense Spillers frames it?

These two days will bring together colleagues from around the world engaging the radicality of listening in creative, critical and political ways.

Registration for participating is open to all and free of charge.

The event will take place via ZOOM and the link will circulate ahead of each day.

Monday July 14th

Panel 1 - 10:00-11:30
Beyond the Patient-Analyst Dyad:
Listening to the Parents, Listening to the (Class)room

Chair: Ana Tomcic

Katherine Porter

Listening to the Learner(s)

Deborah Wright

Listening for Signs of Home

Martyna Chrzescijanska

Listening to Parental Voices in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy:

Mothers’ Experiences of their Children’s Therapeutic Journey

Panel 2 - 11:15-13:00

Listening to Art Differently

Chair: Julianna Pusztai

Kelly O’Brien

Toilet Talk: Serendipitous Encounters, Care in Listening and the Politics of Visibility

Emeri Curd

Heart of Glass

Panel 3 - 14:00-15:30

Listening to Exclusion, Listening as Emancipation

Chair: Raluca Soreanu

Alex Bruno

Radical Listening as Fat Liberationist Praxis: Peer-to-Peer Support in Reproductive Justice

Ismael Leonardi Salaberry, Andréa Máris Campos Guerra

Brazilian Whiteness and Psychoanalysis: the Limits of Listening Based on the History of Racial Metapsychology of the “White” in Brazilian Social Thought

Ana Claudia Fattori

The Singular is the Condition of the Political: The Construction of a Collective Case

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Saturday July 19th

Panel 4 - 14:00-15:30

Embodied Listening, Silencing and Political Oppression

Chairs: Raluca Soreanu & Ivan Ward

G Lori Millon

I Was Screaming but No One Could Hear Me

Rebecca Tognazzi

Can My Hips Become My Ears?

Alida van der Walt

Bearing Witness to Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in South Africa Through Opera: Resonant Feminist Listening in and through Cape Town’s Opera Rigoletto (2017)

Panel 5 - 16:00-17:30

Territory, Public Listening and Collective Care in Brazil

Chair: Ana Minozzo

Augusto Coaracy, Adriana Marino, Miriam Debieux Rosa

Formative Interstices of the Psicanálise na Praça Roosevelt collective in São Paulo

Linnikar Glória de Castro Lima, Andréa Máris Campos Guerra

Territory, Transference and Treatment: Psychoanalysis in Public Clinics

Caroline Fernandes

Public Listening and Collective Care: Rethinking Psychosocial Listening in a Community Setting in Southern Brazil
(This last paper is authored by Gustavo da Silva Machado, Caroline Fernandes Iokilevitc,
Adriane Andrea Fernandes, Edson Mendonça de Oliveira and Oraide Oliveira)

Image credits:

Ana Čvorović. Dry Feel (2013). MDF, perspex, child's mattress, compact powder mirror cases. 86 x 130 x 250 cm