Relationality Quotes

“We continue to conceive of the universe as consisting of things and forces that act on things.

My son’s ninth grade English class were given an essay question that instructed them to name the “qualities” “in” a certain character in a novel. We say that a person “has” courage, or pride, or arrogance, or “a” temper—as though these were substances like salt. Innumerable students are asked to write about “historical forces” or “movements.” Was Blake or Beethoven “a romantic”? Such is our deeply ingrained linguistic habit of reifying relationships and activities into things that you can “have.”

[...] “It is nonsense to talk about ‘dependency’ or ‘aggressiveness’ or ‘pride,’ and so on. All such words have their roots in what happens between persons, not in some something-or-other inside a person.” (Bateson, 1979)”
― Stephen Nachmanovitch

“[...] I wonder here what would an ethics based on the radically non-relational look like? Insofar as the constant recognition of our existential interdependency cannot substantially challenge the many forms of segregations on the steady rise in our current times, it seems to me that assuming the inevitability of our ontological entanglement may need some re-thinking. In light of what I perceive to be relationality’s inability to maintain its ethical currency when faced with the extended rupture blackness sustains on ethics, Fred Moton’s understanding of relationality is pertinent here. In his famous essay “Blackness and Nothingness,” Moten understands relationality to be “an expression of power, structured by the giveness of a transcendental subjectivity that the black cannot have but by which the black can be had.” It is, indeed, “a structural position that he or she cannot take but by which he or she can be taken.” In other words, relationality is inherently not only a position that the black cannot afford or even claim. The structure of relationality is essentially the condition for the possibility of their enslavement. I wonder, therefore, whether our naïve reliance on a type of inherent co-dependence has recently done more harm than good—that is to say, has instead worked to obstruct the very possibility of a positive transformation of our ethical sensibilities.”
― Axelle Karera

“When I look at a person—at Zane in this case—I think I am seeing Zane. But what I am missing is the fact I am seeing Zane. And since I am the person who is seeing, I'm not seeing a world that is separate from me but am rather seeing my own interaction with the world. So, what I'm seeing is not Zane per se, but rather my relational intersection with him. In fact, relationality goes even further than that. It's not just that I am seeing Zane; it's also that I'm seeing a Zane who is in response to me.”
― Jim Ferrell, You and We: A Relational Rethinking of Work, Life, and Leadership