Dialogue as Generative Form of Positioning

Abstract

For the development of a democratic self, dialogical relationships between different people and between different positions in the self are paramount. After a review of studies on self-talk, the main part of this chapter is devoted to a comparison of the works of two classic thinkers on dialogue, Mikhail Bakhtin and David Bohm. A third theoretical perspective is depicted in which central elements of the two theorists are combined. This perspective centers around the concept of “generative dialogue” that, as a learning process, has the potential of innovation in the form of new and common meanings without total unification of the different positions. Elaborating on central features of generative dialogue, a distinction is made between consonant and dissonant dialogue, the latter of which is inevitable in a time of globalization and localization in which people are increasingly interdependent and, at the same time, faced with their apparent differences.