We are delighted to invite you to join our collective stream on the theme of ‘Radical Listening: Collective practices, histories and possible futures’, which will be a part of the upcoming London Conference in Critical Thought being held at Birkbeck College London, 20th-21st June 2025.
The FREEPSY team will be hosting this discussion and we are keen to hear from colleagues from across the world, scholars, clinicians or activists. Please see below the text of the call and a list of invited topics.
Can ‘listening’ foster new forms of relationality in a collapsing world? What forms, formats, rituals and infrastructures of listening to one another have made life liveable, enjoyable or, simply, possible in recent times?
This stream invites colleagues from various fields of research and practice to share stories, archival material, ethnographies, speculations or theories around forms of listening to individual or collective experiences that offer a radical mode of witnessing and togetherness, especially in challenging contexts. We welcome papers, presentations and creative interventions addressing listening as an act of ethics and of care, where more than just recognition is at stake, rather, when a joint construction of a world-in-common can unfold.
Psychoanalysis was first called a ‘talking cure’ by one of its very first woman-patients, Bertha Pappenheim, in the late 19th century Vienna. Since then, practices of talking, dialoguing and expressing oneself have gained space in mainstream clinical settings, grassroots organising as well as hegemonic twists of ‘self-care’ and ‘authenticity’. Less emphasis has been granted to listening, listening to others, listening together, listening to the world, etc. With this in mind – and as a psychosocial research collective – we are interested in ways of listening ‘otherwise’ or radical forms of listening. What might this radical listening entail? How is it different from established spaces of listening which rely on specific frameworks, methods, epistemologies and ontologies (Olufemi, 2021)? How is this listening bound up to political action? There is a rising interest in forms of radical empathy, or in the notion of ‘analysis everywhere’ (Caló and Pereira, 2024) and we would like to open this space to consider listening as a crucial political strategy of care and creativity.
Equally, and resonating LCCT’s emphasis on criticality, we are interested too in the ‘troubles’ of listening – ambivalences, struggles, impasses and how these are elaborated and articulated. What does it take, in relating and in infrastructures, to ‘listen well’, as black feminist Hortense Spillers frames it?
Invited topics include but are not limited to:
– Relationality in the Pluriverse and practice of listening
– Listening in grassroots organising
– Radio, sound and political emancipation
– Community care and listening
– Psychoanalytic listening in the community
– Listening to violence
– Listening to the catastrophe
– Listening to More-than-Human Life
– Listening and mental health
– Listening as witnessing
– Listening, recognition and testimony in contexts of political struggle
– Transgenerational listening
– Listening in/with translation
– Listening to the stranger
– Listening, wounding, overwhelm and repair
– The troubles of listening
– Listening impasses
– Ambivalences in listening
– Listening between life and death
Please browse the attached CFP file, for further information and to have a look at the other streams.
If you would like to participate, please send an abstract for a proposed presentation with the relevant stream title indicated in the subject line to hello@londoncritical.co.uk.
Abstracts should be submitted as Word documents of no more than 250 words and must be received by Friday 4th April 2025.
Please note that LCCT is an in-person conference.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions and we will look forward to hearing from you about your work! Email us: freepsy@essex.ac.uk
Warmest wishes,
FREEPSY team
