Listening Without Borders - (Writing Without Borders) by Magdalena Kubanyiova & Parinita Shetty

About the Book

This book asks what it takes for people to encounter one another ethically when practices, worldviews and imaginations clash. It uses 'listening' as an encompassing metaphor for attending to others and engages over 40 contributors across geographies, disciplines, art forms and practices in a conversation which the reader is invited to join.

Book Synopsis

This book asks what it takes for people to encounter one another ethically when practices, worldviews and imaginations clash. It uses 'listening' as an encompassing metaphor for attending to others and engages over 40 contributors across geographies, disciplines, art forms and practices in a conversation which the reader is invited to join.

Review Quotes

Listening Without Borders is an engaging, ambitious and, in many ways, an unusual book that crosses conventions, countries, and perspectives. Part workbook, part qualitative research study, part call to action, [it] reminded me of a fabric quilt (like the one on page 17), patches full of color and textures that might hide a secret message in the threads. Listening without Borders is also a kind of love story-love of humanity, of creativity, of learning from a stranger, and especially, of that in-between space of difference, where the answer is not the goal.

Listening Without Borders is a ground-breaking book which offers a listening space and a space for 'listening in' and leaning in. I found myself gripped by the conversation and dialogue which emerged, by the space for a radical thought in place of a thoroughly referenced theory. I found this to be freeing, to be creating multiple edges, as in permaculture, allowing for a flourishing ecosystem of thought and listening. I found myself thinking hard with the gentle and generous thoughts in the book. I found myself relieved that there was no 'conclusion' and that the authors instead were both 'staying with the trouble' as Haraway puts it, 'listening to the trouble' and also refusing to clean it up or make it all tidy. This eschewing of what is often a violent epistemic move is especially refreshing. The insistence that arts can then be a positive way of enabling fresh ways of listening and learning to these interstices and possibilities for new avenues for thought, rather than closures, was fully congruent with the dialogue in the book.

The book is enticing, it does indeed attempt to listen without borders, to flow like a conversation and to bring conversation with all its excitement and at times alarming thrill, into the kind of academy we need to work within the poly-crises of the day. I'd recommend this book heartily to postgraduates in arts humanities and social sciences and especially those researching with arts and with languages.

Provocative and timely, this set of expansive interdisciplinary conversations engages with the unequal, unsettling, yet creative dimensions of listening in encounters across difference. It will resonate with all those within and outside the academy who seek a more profoundly ethical attunement to others.

This book reveals a diverse group engaged in a multilayered dialogue, upending our understanding as humans and scholars about how and why we interact with others. Their theoretical, practical and ethical interactions offer possibilities, not answers. They offer understandable and moving meditations on encountering others ethically and listening without ego.

Written in community across a broad range of contexts, disciplines and intellectuals, Listening Without Borders provides a rich, meditative tapestry on encounters through language(s) and arts. This book is beautifully curated, empathic and intellectually stimulating while inspiring necessary questions on broader issues of language and plurality.

About the Author

Maggie Kubanyiova is Professor of Language Education at the University of Leeds, UK, where she is Director of the Centre for Language Education Research. Her research interests cut across sociolinguistics, education and arts. She led an Arts and Humanities Research Council project, Ethics and Aesthetics of Encountering the Other (ETHER), one of the outcomes of which is this book.

Parinita Shetty is a postdoctoral researcher, public library assistant and children's book writer. She is interested in exploring online fan communities of popular media, children's literature, critical literacies, fan podcasts, public pedagogy and intersectionality. She is passionate about including diverse voices in academic and cultural spaces, and finding creative ways to make knowledge accessible to diverse audiences.