Dialectical dialogue: the struggle for speech, repressive silence, and theshift to multiplicity

In the present essay I intend to explore 'dialectical dialogue' in three di stinct moments: the battle for recognition, the ethics of giving recognitio n, and the multiplicity of conversation. The essay begins with Hegel's figu res of Master and Slave portraying the struggle of speech for recognition. This struggle culminates in a duel for mastery, which implies the repressio n and silencing of the other's speech. Ethical dialogue comes as a response to repressive silence, calling the other into egalitarian exchange. Ethica l dialogue as such, however, remains within the dialectical framework of ag onistic relations. To shift from dialectics to multiplicity, the essay turn s from the politics of recognition to the poetics of conversation, to polyp hony and to passage. I will follow the three moments both separately, throu gh particular dialogic instances and theoretical perspectives, and as they develop, respond to, and shift from one to the other. Together they will po rtray an idea of the 'social' as a critical dialogic stance with its inhere nt dialectical betweenness and potential opening and expanding multiplicity .