We are incentivised to pretend we have the full answer, she says. We encourage and centivise people to fight anwea bein a battle over whose who speaks the truth. But what we should actually do is bring these perspectives together. She argues that public discourse can only enter through some form of understanding for your limitedness.
Language is expressive, a way of opening doors or a tool for creating new dialogue. But a tool so powerful can also take us to unforeseen or unintended places. It can create narratives that become fixed, unhelpful, or exclusionary. Kübra Gümüsay is a writer and activist focusing on social justice and public discourse. Her new book is Speaking and Being, which looks at the power of words, asking whether language creates freeing new spaces or plays a part in walling them off. Our host for the discussion is Danielle Sands, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Culture at Royal Holloway University in London, where she works across disciplines bridging philosophy, literary studies and critical theory.
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