Theodore Zeldin (shamelessly lifted from The Obvious — it's just too good and I want to remember it):
Conversation is different from talk
Talk in the past was about rising up the social scale. Etiquette - not what you thought. You had your place in society and that was it.
Conversation is a new thing. Conversation means who you keep company with. Not just the exchange of words - a social activity. When society was hierarchical we had one kind of conversation - now we need to invent a new kind of conversation. An exploration and self revelation. You each reveal things about what are important to you in your lives. You have admitted each other into private worlds and created links - you create shared experiences.
Women in the public sphere represent the biggest revolution since agriculture. They have introduced the complete human being into conversation and not just the trappings of power. Things can never be the same again.
I am trying to put together some thoughts about teaching and how it has changed over the last 20 years (the length of time I've been teaching). Zeldin's words (the above being Euan Semple's rough notes of what he heard Zeldin say) resonate very much with what I've been thinking about, particularly that last paragraph: the complete human being, in conversation.
Zeldin's website is The Oxford Muse, A foundation to stimulate courage and invention in personal, professional and cultural life. There's a biography of Zeldin on the website.
