Document Type
Article
Abstract
I draw on Maurice Blanchot's distinction between dialogue and conversation in order to argue for reconsidering conversation as a distinct resource for encountering and attending to otherness rather than sameness. Using Blanchot's concepts as a guide, I compare the figures that emerge in a platonic dialogue with those that emerge in a conversation constructed from the work of two contemporary philosophers: Adriana Cavarero and Jacques Rancière. Allowing these philosophers to do most of the talking, I highlight the emergence in conversation of abolitionist figures with symbolic freedom, in contrast to the emergence in dialogue of substantive and symbolically ordered figures.
Repository Citation
Ryther, Cathrine. "Who Emerges in Conversation? An Abolitionist Interruption that Teaches." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 14, no. 2, 2014, pp. 1–25. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol14/iss2/8