The Story of Radio Mind asks us to pay attention to how hearing the Other is contingent on material, historical, and even personal conditions of audibility. By drawing on that method, we might consider how the “Other” is not only the colonized Indigenous figure but also the political opponent of reconciliation. Klassen therefore invites us into murkier political territory where we cannot take the conditions for listening for granted. We would do well to think more carefully about how such conditions come about.
My 2018 book The Story of Radio Mind: A Missionary’s Journey on Indigenous Land was part of The Immanent Frame’s forum discussion entitled Modernity’s Resonances: New Inquiries into the Secular. Miranda Johnson wrote this generous response to my book, entitled ‘In the Spirit of Reconciliation’; find it here.