June 2006

Over the last year I have been tacking back and forth between our research dialogue 'data' and various other texts written by philosophers, practitioners, and researchers. By the end of the summer I will have written responsively to each journal entry my colleagues have contributed to this project.

For me, to write in this way is to listen... to position my voice tentatively yet so closely alongside the voice of another... to write responsively is, for me, to begin an entering into... it is a way of getting "in touch..."

With appreciation and concern I recently listened to a project colleague voice her disappointment at the response I wrote to her reflecting. She regretted that my written voice changed her contribution... and understandably, she wished to offer her reflecting as it was, prior to my response.

I deeply value her perspective, I always will - and although I had not heard this feedback from others, I wanted to learn more. Our spoken conversation continued as my inner dialogue, and also now as an 'open dialogue' here at this blog.

I began first to retrace my steps... certainly I did not change any of my colleagues' words, nor punctuation... I aimed to write sensitively, appreciatively, and care-fully, only as a way of listening to the writing of my project peers.

I asked myself a series of questions... Was I too presuming? Would it have been better somehow to 'listen' from a greater distance - like an interviewer or a journalist who aims to 'stay out of the way' of the story... or like a tourist who must remain in designated areas only... or a practitioner, silent behind a one way mirror? Would it then be possible for me to listen innocently, without leaving any trace?

Is it possible to listen with the same quality we offer our clients, without the messiness of engagement - without grappling, without 'false starts,' without all the inefficiencies that allow us to 'get a feel for,' or 'get a sense of'...

Is it possible to listen without somehow changing a speaker's voice by the sheer force of our attentiveness?

And is not my own written voice in this project also deeply influenced by the voices of my fellow project colleages winding all around and through it... Do these voices not impose certain constraints and invite a range of possibility that to some extent, determines what I can write? Am I not also denied the opportunity of a solo of my own making in this project?

Bakhtin reminds us that in a living dialogue, our words are only 'half our own.'

In her book ('97) Harlene Anderson suggests provocatively, and truthfully, I believe, that therapy rooms are not safe places for postmodern collaborative therapists. Perhaps this can be said of any dialogue, including the dialogue that forms this present shared inquiry. One voice, over and beyond any intention - can move another, and that voice is likewise not invulnerable...

"The move to a participatory world is, then, a move toward a much more dynamic, relational world, a world in which "things" do not have a separate existence, but owe their character to their relations to their surroundings, both at any one moment spatially, as well as over or through time. It is the move into a world in continual motion within which we are all, along with everything else within it, also participant parts within it." (John Shotter, describing Participatory Action Research, 2006)

Tentatively,

Janice