SOAS Research Online

Abstract

What does it mean to insert and describe actual spaces of dialogue and debate within discussions regarding power, privilege, disparate geographies, and the ‘Possibilities and Limits to Dialogue’? Is there a critical potential to the argument that we recognize the near-impossibility of the conditions of dialogue under certain actually existing conditions of life? Through providing a concrete example from India, this commentary suggests that recognition of the impossibility of dialogue provides an understanding of the state of global and local asymmetries and the specificity of the quotidian. And that to strive toward such an understanding is a key objective of critical social science practice.