Celebrating argument within psychology: Dialogue, negation, and feminist critique

Abstract

This article explores the celebratory aspect of psychological theories. In particular, it examines the celebration of dialogue, argumentation, and negativity, which is contained within recent critical theories of psychology. This psychological approach is compared with cognitive psychology's celebration of monologue. The relations between dialogical/rhetorical psychology and feminist critiques are examined. Following Habermas, it is suggested that it is necessary to point to instances of unconstrained argumentation in order to show that the utopian elements in the celebration of argument are based upon a realized psychology. It is suggested that one can look to the voices of women for such instances, in order to avoid incorporating patriarchal structures into the celebration. One such instance reveals the self-reflexivity of argumentation, and that the celebration of argument also involves preserving argumentation's ‘other’. Thus, the resulting argumentative psychology should not only be self-reflexive but should itself express and preserve its own sense of otherness.