The Problem of Uptake in Conversational Self-Narration: An Attentional Phenomenon

Regina Fabry (Macquarie University)

Self-narration is an important practice for knowledge- and meaning-making. Most people frequently engage in self-narration in their everyday conversations. In recent years, empirically informed philosophical research on situated cognition and affectivity has made substantial contributions to our understanding of the possibilities and limitations of socio-culturally shaped conversational self-narration. Yet, this research has left an important question unanswered: how can we understand cases in which self-narrators do not receive appropriate uptake for their self-narrative contributions to conversational exchanges? The aim of this talk is to start answering this question. To this end, I will propose that the problem of uptake is, at least to a substantial degree, an attentional phenomenon. Bringing together research on situated self-narration, attention, and epistemic injustice, I will argue that the problem of uptake can be primarily understood as the manifestation of epistemically unjust attention deficits that can perpetuate various forms of structural oppression. I will end this talk with a brief discussion of the implications of this attentional account of the problem of uptake for theoretical and empirical research on conversational self-narration.

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