"Prophetic Voice and Accompaniment in Professional Spaces?"
Jesse Perillo, DePaul University
It is often with great concern for others, for justice, and the state of the world that a call for prophetic is made to critique practices in professional spaces, but it is out of respect for various forms of the prophetic that one must recognize how claims to the prophetic and the prophetic voice can employ power for harm as well. One often praises the prophetic voice for being unyielding, and rightly so, but an unyielding voice also has the potential to silence in many contexts such as when that unyielding voice is a paternalistic one. This concern proves even more serious given powerful tone of the prophetic and the vulnerability patients often face in medical spaces. Drawing on a reading of the literary prophets in the Jewish and Christian traditions, this paper will highlight that prophecy within medicine should pay attention to 1) the social power/status of the prophetic voice; 2) the prophetic voice’s willingness to reassess the correct path; 3) whether the prophetic voice closely aligns with dominant forms of power, order, and success. While in no way wishing to limit the role for the prophetic in general, the paper will then argue that the process and disposition of accompaniment provides a corrective that tempers the potential negative effects of the prophetic as accompaniment addresses some issues of status, recognizes a continual process of reassessment, and questions some metrics of speed, efficiency, and success.
This paper will develop its critique of the prophetic through a reading of the literary prophets, Jesse Perillo's "The Prophetic Without Power and Disruption Without Direction: The Witness of Holy Fools," and Cathleen Kaveny's Prophecy Without Contempt. The description of accompaniment and its ability to temper the potential negative effects of the prophetic will employ Gerard Ryan's Mutual Accompaniment as Faith-Filled Living: Recognition of the Vulnerable Other, Jessica Benjamin's Beyond Doer and Done To, and a reading of Warren Kinghorn and Abraham Nussbaum's Collaborator model, which echoes behaviors of accompaniment, from Prescribing Together: A Relational Guide to Psychopharmacology.
This paper will develop its critique of the prophetic through a reading of the literary prophets, Jesse Perillo's "The Prophetic Without Power and Disruption Without Direction: The Witness of Holy Fools," and Cathleen Kaveny's Prophecy Without Contempt. The description of accompaniment and its ability to temper the potential negative effects of the prophetic will employ Gerard Ryan's Mutual Accompaniment as Faith-Filled Living: Recognition of the Vulnerable Other, Jessica Benjamin's Beyond Doer and Done To, and a reading of Warren Kinghorn and Abraham Nussbaum's Collaborator model, which echoes behaviors of accompaniment, from Prescribing Together: A Relational Guide to Psychopharmacology.