Beliefs, so conceived, constitute our identity. That means suspending those beliefs that constitute our personal identity. There may be good reasons for some people not to listen some of the time. First, the rewards of listening are that others different from ourselves may have a vocabulary or grammar that would allow us to retell the story of our lives, and thereby, grow. Second, persons, for Dewey, are a collection of voices anyway and these voices do not ever fully harmonize.
Individuals are themselves a dialogue across difference.
I conclude that when should learn to know when to listen and when we do we should listen well because we want to grow, and because we have no choice. Youth were positioned as colonized others, naturally separated by the gulf of reason and civilization from adults, a border marked by age. This critique closes with implications for revisioning adolescence. This paper relates my herstory as a feminist reader, recounting my search for an aesthetic of reading which incorporates both pleasure and ethical responsibility. The paper concludes with a discussion of what this personal phenomenology might offer other feminists and women's studies educators.