Dialogue as the Inscription of 'The West

The international conference on 'Dialogue and Difference' took place in London, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, between 12 and 14 September 2001.Over three intense days, 26 papers were presented and discussed by leading scholars from Japan, the USA, China, Iran, Korea, Germany, France and Great Britain.The conference sought to explore the widely felt and growing concern that, despite an increasingly globalised system of linkages, there is, at every moment, a general feeling that communication is breaking down everywhere, on an unparalleled scale.(Bohm, 1996) It was perhaps an increasing awareness of this breakdown in dialogue, in the very midst of dialogue, that the United Nations, at the proposal of President Khatami of Iran, declared 2001 as the 'Year of Dialogue Between Cultures'.Our forethought while preparing this conference*/that for some (the West) there is dialogue, whereas for the non-Western other, dialogue does not exist*/was confirmed in all its dreadful clarity on the very day before the start of the conference, on September 11.Indeed the fall of the Twin Towers appeared to signify the dual nature of global interconnectedness.Though it seemed even more significant and compelling, following those events, to go ahead with the conference, our initial questions returned, even more pressing and disturbing and certainly less theoretical, to haunt us.Dialogue appeared in all its ambiguity and with contradictions.This 'benign word', seemingly at the foundation of the Western philosophical tradition, needed to be explored and its equivocal character exposed.While religious and political leaders often invoke dialogue as a sign of 'goodwill', keen to manifest a disposition towards openness and democracy, it may just as often be a cover for manipulation or deceit.Dialogue was called upon in precisely such a manner during

Epistemology · Sociology · Anthropology · Cultural, Psychoanalytic, and Sociopolitical Reflections · Education, Leadership, and Health Research · Philosophy · Religious Education and Schools

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