I have been fascinated with Buber, Bakhtin, and forms of Dialogism for years.
Thank you Elizabeth for your light on that subject.
Distancing has been an important concept for me in dialogue and refers
to a stance toward the "other" that must occur for true dialogue to take
place. It means I must move myself away and resist apprehending you as
someone I can control or even understand! It is from this point that I can
begin to enter into dialogue or a place where the I becomes an I/Thou.
As Diane said on 1-29
"it has to be about the relationship of self/other, doesn't it? not just
taking over the other by assuming their place?"
Which would be a case of the I becoming an I/it.
The I/Thou is possible because we are more than objects in space, but are the
repositories of a "God Force" (for want of a better term). It is found in
our communities and history. Vygotsky has been helpful for me in
understanding how community is more than the bodies around me, history is
more than my experience, and culture is more than my practices. Our
reverence for each other, and our knowledge, begins with the acknowledgment
that we are larger than ourselves or as Bakhtin might say; we do not coincide
with ourselves.
I'm not sure about this, but, its seems to me that various skills could be
applied to this type of interaction. Skills such as "debate, argumentation,
persuasion, etc." as well as "story telling, example, collaboration,
practical action" (from Don's post on 1-31) are all valuable. How these
skills appear, however, is one of stance. Am I out to win or to understand.
Though violence is easy to fall into and the I/Thou place is hard to find.
Howard
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