Dialogue and Difference

Dialogue has been a recurrent theme in the history of European ideas,from the Socratic dialogue, often said to be the foundation of the Western philosophical tradition of debate, to high profile political summits. Inherent within this history is the assumption, as the recent British Telecom slogan has it, that it is 'good to talk'. In organising this conference, however, we intend to stress the ambiguity of 'dialogue' and to explore its equivocal character. While religious and political leaders often invoke 'dialogue' as a sign of 'good will', representing a disposition to openness and democracy, it may just as often be but the wrapping upon manipulation or deceit. Dialogue,
importantly, was called upon in precisely such a manner during the spread of Western colonialism, and, even in the light of such knowledge, is uttered as part of a Western body of theory and discourse.

This hegemony of discourse and language immediately raises pressing issues and questions which will be central to the conference: How best can this problem of hegemony itself be addressed? Can post-colonial theorising provide the means by which dialogue may be 'rethought'? How might non-Western languages enter into a dialogue conducted primarily in English? How is dialogue conceptualised in non-Western cultures? Are 'indigenous' forms of dialogue, irreducible to European models, capable of evading existing power structures and opening a path to mutual understanding possible or viable; or, must cross-cultural dialogue necessarily find itself reduced to a Western model of 'movement of the self towards the other'? Can critical theory help us to 'un-say' the 'said' of a monological dialogue? Can theories from outside Europe disrupt such dominance? Is European thought able to deconstruct itself so as to welcome other ways of dialogue without once more imposing a universal model? Is, in other words, an ethical dialogue possible? The conference will focus jointly on specific instances within socio-cultural settings, and also upon the broader nature and roots of dialogue.