On being a better listener (the 2009 E.J. Pratt Lecture)

The E.J. Pratt Lecture is the most prestigious literary event of the year at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Past speakers have included Northrup Frye, David Lodge, Terry Eagleton, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Stan Dragland. This year's lecture was given by J. Edward Chamberlin or "Ted", as a small group of grad students came to know him at in an informal question-and-answer period the day after he delivered his lecture entitled "The Snarl Around Our Dory: The Long Line of Island Traditions" (http://today.mun.ca/news.php?news_id=4463).

In sitting through his lecture that ranged from Native North American lore to Australian Aborigines' oral storytelling to constitutions and treaties as narratives of identity to Israeli and Palestinian relations, I realized that Dr. Chamberlin's chief skill was not as an orator, writer or storyteller (though he is quite good at all of these). His chief skill is as a listener.

As an intent and careful listener, Dr. Chamberlin has spent a lifetime inclining his ear to people's stories: to many people's stories, recognizing conflict and seeing the need for common ground but being refreshingly reticent to promote "simple" pluralism. Dr. Chamberlin has worked with aboriginal land claims in the Mackenzie River Valley, Alaska, and Australia, advocating the primacy of people's stories of themselves, whatever disparate forms those stories take. And these stories, according to Dr. Chamberlin, are not just coming from one side of any conflict; the unique and compelling strength of his argument is that distinct (and often violently conflicting) worldviews or stories cannot be taken seriously if they are homegenized into "nice liberal pruralism."

"Pluralism is a danger not because it creates conflicts... but because it masks them" (from If this is your land, where are your stories?).

In listening to Dr. Chamberlin and in having him listen to me and to my colleagues and friends, I felt that even though we may not all share the same worldview or faith-perspective (though he is a fascinating person to speak to about "belief"), he actively listened to us and tried to understand us on our own terms. This could have been aided by the food on the table in the side conference room in the English Department and the Red Stripe Lager we were drinking, or it could be in part that he introduced himself as Ted rather than Dr. Chamberlin and that he remembered my name though I only offered it once.

I came away from that lecture and that informal meeting not only refreshed that someone was as enamoured with stories and belief as I am, but challenged to be a better listener, and by extension (since I am an English student), a better reader. In pursuit of this I'm working my way through Dr. Chamberlin's book If this is your land, where are your stories? which I highly recommend to all but perhaps specifically to Adunare and e.go.