In:Dialogic Ethics
Edited by Ronald C. Arnett and François Cooren
[Dialogue Studies 30] 2018
► pp. 199–213
Agents of awakening
Ventriloquism, nature, and the cultural practice of dialogue
Published online: 14 June 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.30.08ozu
https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.30.08ozu
Abstract
This chapter explores dialogic practices that integrate culture and nature, human and non-human agents, pointing to a form of participation in the world that engages various communicative practices such as listening, gazing, and drawing as much as speaking. Based on Cooren’s (2012) ventriloquial framework that is attentive to the ways in which interactants invite, mobilize, and stage various figures /entities in conversation, this study explores the dialogic interplay of multiple forms of agency including human and non-human actors that facilitate our understanding of human experience in the world. Specifically, I examine “nature’s agents” such as rivers and trees as they are ventriloquized in Zen dialogues, Hesse’s novel Siddhartha, and in a poetic autoethnography by Speedy (2016), Staring at the Park.
Keywords: ventriloquism, agency, dialogue, non-human agents, awakening
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The cultural practice of dialogue
- 3.Ventriloquism and the question of agency
- 4.Nature’s agents of awakening in Zen and beyond
- 4.1Streams and rivers
- 4.2Trees
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