(Morrison) There's the crux: in defending the work we do as teachers, in defending our students and our classrooms and our labour, we slip so easily into the very gendered language that makes our voices more precarious, more unhearable, to the Ron Srigleys of the world.

If such a voice existed, they might say, it would be a cacophony, an unhearable, uninterpretable mess.

it is the occasion of nearly unbearable grief; but here the same grief is not unbearable--it is literally unhearable" (29).

For most people, just "hearing the unhearable" can create a teachable moment and even a lifetime of interest.

Each of these poets wrote knowing that most of their contemporaries would find them unacceptable, unhearable, in style, in substance.

Resisting the unsettling assertion that trauma is "unspeakable," Detloff strongly suggests it may be more aptly termed "unhearable," as the listener lacks a social, political, or ethical context for understanding suffering (29).