“What Does Ethics Look Like?” Series: What Can You Hear?, by Samara Mayer

The work that I have produced attempts to reflect the difficulty and conflicting narratives that inform us, and the challenge of deciding what, who, how and to whom we should listen to. The layering of the clippings with some hidden, some exposed, and some more legible than others, attempts to speak to this characteristic of the stories and information that we have been and continue to be provided with everyday.

The clippings in my work are rumpled and old, which reflects the historical building of stories and narratives that occurs throughout our lives. They are layered, mismatched and confusing, some narratives are lost under the weight of others, and some are more clearly legible, while others words are clouded and construed. The clippings most obviously are composed of words and have few visual images in an attempt to draw a connection to the work of Paulo Friere. Friere in his novel entitled the Pedagogy of the Oppressed speaks of the importance of the word, critical thought, and dialogue. The word is more than simply an instrument that makes dialogue possible it is made of the constitutive elements of reflection and action (Friere 2007:87). Human beings, he notes, are not built in silence but in word, in work, in action and reflection. These words in the background of my piece present the capacity for both reflection and action, they shape individuals, and some are more powerful than others. These words possess a capacity to reflect and act, but these actions are reliant on the ability to be heard. He, like the individuals mentioned earlier speaks also of those who have been denied their primordial right to speak, they have been in affect dehumanized, although the word is the right of everyone, some individuals are spoken for and do not engage in dialectal equality. Dialogue imposes itself as the way by which to achieve significance as human beings, while he emphasizes the importance of a dialogue that involves the united reflection and action of people, in reality this is not always the case. Individuals do exist in positions of less power to present their words and participate in dialogue.
This layering of stories, made up of words, and the negation of which words, and whose stories are evident affects how each individual hears the world and imagines it. The ear that I have put in the center of the piece as a place of dominance and importance reflects both the power and the consequences of what we listen to. I would argue that it is what we hear, and what we are exposed throughout life, that assists in defining our thoughts and participation in dialogue. Friere notes that dialogue is essential in the creation of critical thought, but how can this dialogue that he speaks of truly exist? How can we facilitate the creation of arena for critical thinking? For the creation of domain where the dominant narrative is relegated to favor the critical evaluation of all narratives? I do not think what is needed is a wide spread push to sort the truth from fiction but rather to consider each narration as a valid expression of its own understanding with its own value in the world, without undermining the validity and importance of others.

In terms of international and local service we are frequently working from established knowledge and garnered “truths” that are presented and complexly layered on top of one another. It is this obscurity in presentation that I feel proves to be a hurdle that must be overcome in order to implement critical, informed and effective aid for others. Perhaps a step forward is the recognition of the multiplicity of narration of words, ideas and stories, and the validity of their presentation. I feel that we cannot enter service aid without listening to the narratives and stories of others and collaborating with individuals we intend to serve, however how we act on and how we interpret what we hear, and how we uncover these alternative narratives and stories and how they are valued, is another matter entirely.