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Paper short abstract

By reflecting on listening as labour, as error, and listening out, access is enabled to unspoken, intimate, or traumatic narratives, fostering recognition, dialogue, and reciprocal understanding. In this paper, listening is questioned as the final destination of narratives in different settings.

Paper long abstract

The main theme of this paper is listening in different settings. Listening is not a passive reception, but an active, relational, and affectively charged practice. It can also be understood through the concept of listening as labour, which involves effort, exposure, and the capacity to recognize meaning even where language fails. At the same time, listening becomes a site of error, where meanings are not mechanically reproduced but shift, break, and reassemble, opening space for new understanding. Awareness of listening as error encourages dialogue, reflection, and a deeper understanding of the other. Acknowledging this imperfection makes listening an ontological act – a way of being with others and a key element of open, living dialogue.

In this context, listening out or listening beyond the expected – active, attentive, and anticipatory listening, often oriented toward what remains unspoken or what might be unexpectedly heard – indicates sensitivity to what is marginal, fragmentary, difficult, traumatic, intimate, unspoken, or hard to articulate. Power in this framework does not primarily reside with the speaker, but with the listener, whose listening enables the recognition and articulation of another’s suffering. In this sense, listening becomes an absorption of the voice, an act that is not passive but builds relationships and creates the possibility for political and emotional reciprocity. Listening can thus take the form of recovery, repair, reproduction, or even consumption.