The Dialogic Turn: Dialogue or Violence?

Abstract

Individuals and social groups are increasingly using dialogue to take decisions, perform actions and solve conflicts in diverse social relationships, from international policies or globalization processes to personal friendships, labor relations or the intimacy of bedroom. When they do not use dialogue, they use violence or imposition: there are only two ways to proceed. The increase of dialogue does not imply that there is no violence in human and social relationships, obviously there is; but this phenomenon confirms that there exist many dialogic interactions and procedures in society which shed light to the process of radicalization of democracy, and thus need to be further analyzed from the social sciences. This article does so; it discusses the “dialogic turn” in the social sciences and illustrates it with the case of feminist theory and practice. Whereas in the past feminism had been a movement for few academic women often speaking for “others”, current dialogic feminism brings into egalitarian dialogue the voices of very diverse women who reach agreements regarding vision and action.