From voice to response: Ethical responsiveness and the politics of difference

Abstract

Dreher and Mondal provide an original theorisation of responsiveness and an overview of key themes in the book. Scholarship and practice around multiculturalism, antiracism, marginalisation, and difference have long mobilised a politics of speaking or representation, yet attention to listening, reading, and witnessing is underdeveloped. By paying close attention to practices and politics of responsiveness, vital new possibilities for ethics and justice are identified in the contexts of settler colonialism, global Islamophobia, securitised border regimes, and polarising free speech debates. The book analyses the conditions of possibility; listening as ethical praxis; unsettling colonial relationships; and ways of listening that highlight non-Western traditions and move beyond the liberal frame. Turning attention to the politics of reception redistributes responsibility for negotiating difference by decentring privilege.