Dialogue Toward Agenocide: Encountering the Other in the Context of Genocide

Abstract

What modes of interaction exist between historically heinous human behavior, one’s relationship to such history, one’s identity and one’s responses to counter such behavior and its effects? Of many paths to take and levers to use to engender peace and healing, a vital element constitutes reciprocally respectful efforts at societal bridging. Intensive dialogue group projects and their coordination are described. Participants are personally related to the trauma’s “sides,” such as sons and daughters of Holocaust survivors meeting with those of Nazi perpetrators, or Northern Irish Catholic Republicans meeting with Protestant Unionists (and with Britishers). Founded in part on emotional responsibility, the eventual goal is a multiplicative effect toward a culture and consciousness of peace, eliciting tangible responses. The approaches are generally nonreligious, not deliberately therapeutic per se, cost free, and apolitical. The Austrian Encounter is discussed in depth; however, other groups are also introduced. The essence of the work reflects Emmanuel Levinas’s views of the Other, of responsibility, and of dialogue as philosophical truth as process