Epilogue: Acknowledgement

Drafted by Bureau for Listening, but edited collectively with all contributors.

In what way is listening a cultivation of one’s ability to acknowledge and give thanks to one’s supportive structures and people? How may one’s acknowledgement of support allow one to listen more carefully?

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As an epilogue we would like to offer a collective and expanded acknowledgement of the contributions included and the general work surrounding this anthology. 

We would like to acknowledge how very divergent conditions, structures and privileges have made the included contributions possible. Different circumstances and experiences have made not only the insights and expressions, but also one’s ability of sharing possible. While the contributions are of many changing formats, they were all made possible through the offering of time, resources and attention. The contributions exist out of privileges as well as necessity.

We wish to acknowledge the material, possible contributions and voices, that could not be included in this edition. Both due to limited ability to reach, to know and to invite, but also because of limited resources to be reached, and listened to. We may always wonder how what we do not know affects what we know; how do the voices and contributions absent from this anthology affect what is present?

While we give thanks and acknowledge what supports and enables us, we also acknowledge our own labor for and struggle with this anthology as real. 

Finally, we wish to acknowledge the efforts in exploring and promoting listening that preceded this anthology, and we express our gratitude for all the listening that is yet to come. We acknowledge how we exist within traditions and disciplines that others made possible. 

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This anthology is made by listeners.