Art as a Detour to Responsibility
The Shibboleth Concept
Shibboleth is based on a different understanding of how human beings change. It is not primarily through new knowledge, theories or skills training that human beings change, but through a changed way of experiencing the world — one that shapes how we see, feel and act. Sometimes experience must precede understanding.
Shibboleth was first developed in the context of leadership, as a counterpoint to traditional leadership development, but it turns to the human being behind the professional role — to their capacity to see, to remain and to respond. It is not the role that bears responsibility. The human being does.
When Art Makes Reality Present
Shibboleth approaches the great human questions through art.
In Shibboleth, a deliberately composed space is created in which literature, music and human testimony take us beyond what is already known — towards what is concealed, contradictory and painful.
Art is not used as an instrument to instruct, cultivate desirable qualities or deliver ready-made truths. On the contrary, it brings in what is foreign, disturbing and unpredictable — experiences and voices that cannot be absorbed into what is already given or smoothed into consensus.
What is otherwise held at a distance is allowed to emerge, not merely as thought but as sensory and emotional experience — and once we have seen it, we can no longer avoid responding.
In the Shibboleth space, the taken-for-granted order of everyday life is unsettled. Time shifts. A poetic and literary language breaks with everyday speech and the familiar jargon of organisations. Attention sharpens.
Here, to borrow an image from Selma Lagerlöf's novel Körkarlen, the soul may come to maturity.
The detour does not lead away from reality. It leads more deeply into it.
Aestemethics
Julia Romanowska uses the term aestemethics for the interplay between the aesthetic, emotional and ethical dimensions of artistic experience — an interplay that sets the imagination in motion, moves the emotions and raises questions of responsibility.
The aesthetic alters perception. The emotional gives the experience body and gravity. The ethical turn occurs when what is revealed can no longer be contemplated without making a claim on us — when reality and the Other emerge and call for our response.
When human suffering is no longer merely thought about but felt, responsibility ceases to be an abstraction. It becomes an inner obligation, grounded in reverence for life and the dignity of the Other.
A Given Form — An Open Meaning
The form is carefully constructed, but its meaning remains open.
The structure is given. The response is not. No one explains what should be perceived or what conclusion should be drawn. Interpretation cannot be delegated.
The artistic experience is followed by writing, reflection and conversation. What touches us or provokes resistance returns, is tested anew and seeks its language — not as repetition, but as displacement: something new may reveal itself each time. The form is not left to chance, but what each person ultimately sees and responds to can never be predetermined — any more than, in life, we can be prepared for what awaits us.
Learning takes place indirectly — in the movement towards a threshold where habitual assumptions and defences no longer suffice and a personal stance becomes necessary.
Shibboleth does not lead towards a predetermined message, nor does it prescribe how one should live or what values one should hold. Instead, it creates an aestemethical space in which it becomes harder to look away.
It is in this sense that Shibboleth embodies an aestemethical anti-pedagogy. It does not shape the human being according to a prescribed image, but interrupts the habitual process of learning and unsettles self-absorption.
The Theatrical Core
The theatrical form is a composition of literary fragments, music and human testimony, carried by two voices without roles, gestures or props.
Words, music and silence alternate and break against one another. Voices and countervoices are allowed to remain in tension.
The words stand exposed before the listener. The form takes shape in the act of listening.
Shibboleth has developed through a sustained encounter between artistic practice, ethical reflection and scientific inquiry. The concept has been tested in an interdisciplinary, randomised study at Karolinska Institutet.
The concept that Romanowska developed over the years was challenging and thought-provoking, at times even unsettling: text steeped in suffering and pain, followed by piercing, almost infernally chosen musical fragments that drove the words straight into the unconscious and awakened dormant feelings and foreboding shadows. This was reflected in the conversations and in the notes everyone kept.
Anders Hallengren
Associate professor, author and discussion leader of the Shibboleth Experiment.
Advisor at Harvard Alumni Career Network.
A selection of recorded lectures
See & hear
TEDx talk
"Can poetry and music make leaders change behavior?"
Unga Klara
"The Shibboleth Effect and How Cultural Experiences Make Managers More Appreciated Leaders"