Curriculum Inquiry ISSN: 0362-6784 (Print) 1467-873X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcui20 Active words in dangerous times: Beyond liberal models of dialogue in politics and pedagogy Noah De Lissovoy & Courtney B. Cook To cite this article: Noah De Lissovoy & Courtney B. Cook (2020) Active words in dangerous times: Beyond liberal models of dialogue in politics and pedagogy, Curriculum Inquiry, 50:1, 78-97, DOI: 10.1080/03626784.2020.1735922 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2020.1735922 Published online: 23 Mar 2020. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 80 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rcui20 CURRICULUM INQUIRY 2020, VOL. 50, NO. 1, 78–97 https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2020.1735922 Active words in dangerous times: Beyond liberal models of dialogue in politics and pedagogy Noah De Lissovoy and Courtney B. Cook Cultural Studies in Education, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA ABSTRACT KEYWORDS Dialogue is a category that is central to politics, media, and education, and yet in all of these domains it can be confusing and ambiguous. Starting from a critical framework built on the work of educational philosopher Paulo Freire, we undertake an inquiry into the meaning of dialogical intersubjectivity and its political determinations, with a particular focus on liberal models. We situate this discussion in the context of the rise of radical Right populisms, which have exposed the strength of racial resentment and white supremacy in contemporary politics, and raised questions about the meaning of social cohesion and the relationship between speech and violence. In this context, we show how liberal calls for unity and reflexive defenses of free speech obscure the exclusions and antagonisms that traverse society, while also flattening the meaning of dialogue and betraying its emancipatory vocation. Finally, we suggest that educators should understand their work as continuous with a broader landscape of struggle, and that their interventions should be informed by an awareness of the pedagogical costs of reducing dialogue to a form of talk or method that refuses ethical and political commitment. Dialogue; discourse; emancipation; liberalism; pedagogy; politics Dialogue is a central dimension of discourses and practices of teaching and curriculum, and yet too often it is understood in shallow terms. Educators and education scholars frequently point to the value of dialogue without working through important tensions between differing conceptions, and without engaging with the depth of the concept. Furthermore, the meaning and structure of dialogue is consequential beyond the field of education, variously affecting official politics, social movements, and media. School and non-school sites of dialogue are deeply linked; thus, what we understand as the structure of dialogical engagement in classroom contexts has very much to do with dialogical orientations that are prevalent elsewhere. For these reasons, a deeper inquiry into the meaning of dialogue and its political determinations is important for educators and others. We undertake this theoretical inquiry here, starting from a critical framework built on the contributions of educational philosopher Paulo Freire (1970/2007, 1985, 1998), with a particular focus on how liberal models CONTACT Noah De Lissovoy delissovoy@austin.utexas.edu at Austin, 1900 Speedway, Stop D5700, Austin, TX 78712, USA. ß 2020 the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Cultural Studies in Education, University of Texas ACTIVE WORDS IN DANGEROUS TIMES 79 attenuate and distort both the philosophical depth and the emancipatory potential of dialogue. It is important to point out that in Freire’s work, and in the framework that we outline, dialogue refers to more than moments of speech or conversation; rather, the notion of dialogue names a more basic existential condition of intersubjectivity that sets the conditions for recognition and collaboration. For this reason, our interest here is not limited to moments in liberal politics and pedagogy which explicitly evoke the signifier “dialogue,” but rather extends—in accordance with the theoretical reach of our framework—to the larger set of discursive occasions that structure the basic dialogical intersubjectivity that sets the possibilities for discussion in the first place. Importantly, we situate this investigation in the contemporary context of sharpening political antagonisms and the rise of radical Right populisms, both in the US and globally. These developments have exposed in dramatic fashion the formidable strength of racial resentment and white supremacist discourse in contemporary politics (Blow, 2018). These developments have also raised crucial questions about the meaning of social cohesion, discussion within and across social groups, and the relationship between speech and violence (Healy, 2017). Dialogue is a central problem in this context. We do not aim here at a comprehensive survey of this terrain, but rather at a more focused consideration of a set of liberal constructions of dialogue (including expressions of speech, solidarity, and collaboration) that respond to the challenges of this historical moment. We argue that starting from a critical and philosophical perspective can allow us to see the ways in which these constructions are partly complicit with conservative political projects and how they work to sideline more progressive responses. They also betray, we argue, the theoretical depth, richness, and transformative potential that are present in dialogical intersubjectivity as theory and practice. Understanding this context can make it possible to imagine alternative models of dialogue that are more politically and pedagogically powerful in the present. We begin this study by constructing a theoretical framework—and conceptualization of dialogue—that draws on Freire’s description of the political determination and dialectical unity between word and action. This perspective can be contrasted with the liberal philosophical tradition’s understanding of community and dialogue as grounded in the right to freedom of abstract individuals; we describe this conception in the second section. With reference to this tradition, and on the basis of Freire’s critical framework, we then show how many liberal defenses of free speech and unreflective calls for unity flatten the meaning of dialogue and betray its emancipatory vocation. Our consideration of these contexts and our critique of the distortions in liberal approaches suggest important implications for curriculum and pedagogy— namely, that educators should understand their work as continuous with a broader landscape of emancipatory struggle, and that their classroom interventions should be informed by an awareness of the pedagogical costs of reducing dialogue to a form of talk or method that refuses ethical and political commitment. In this project, we do not aim to collapse the diverse range of liberal orientations into a single expression, but rather to expose several central philosophical and ideological aspects that are shared across many moments of liberal discourse and that condition possibilities for dialogical communication and collaboration in the present. 80 N. D. LISSOVOY AND C. B. COOK Specifically, the discursive moments that we consider in this study seek harmony, reconciliation, and tolerance across social and political differences without an investigation of structural antagonisms and systematic oppression. As we describe, this emphasis is fundamentally linked to the liberal philosophical tradition’s understanding of justice in terms of the right to freedom of a transcendental subject, and the complementary impoverishment of this tradition’s conception of community. We argue that the liberal common sense that valorizes an uncritical social reconciliation is particularly central and consequential within and beyond the field of education, which is why we consider it here. As we demonstrate, this orientation is characteristic in particular of discourses taken up and popularized by elites, who are able to give them broad exposure and insert them into public debates, rituals, and institutional processes. It is important to note that we are not focused on the intentions per se of those involved in these contexts, nor do we claim that these contexts are without value. Rather, we are interested in the underlying conceptions of dialogical intersubjectivity that are expressed in the form and function of the instances of liberal discourse that we consider. These conceptions, we argue, open up possibilities for certain kinds of understanding and action at the same time that they crucially foreclose others. Theoretical Framework: Freirean Dialogue as Option for the Oppressed For Paulo Freire (1970/2007, 1985, 1998), dialogue is distinguished from mere talk or debate. Dialogue involves an opening to the Other that is both existential and epistemological. Indeed, Freire describes dialogical problem-posing education in terms of a process of communion; the overtones of spiritual fellowship in this term are not accidental. In pedagogical terms, this means a particular reconstruction of the authority of the teacher. On the one hand, the teacher should not abdicate authority or refuse to make available their knowledge and experience. But on the other hand, this authority is exposed, in dialogue, to an implicit interrogation, and risks a certain vulnerability as the condition of being open to the interpretations of students. This process requires a deep and reciprocal trust, and also a basic “epistemological curiosity” (Freire, 1998). Thus, in dialogue, unlike mere speech, knowledge always remains in a state of becoming, and is always collaborative, in that it depends on the participation of more than one mind to become itself. The decentering of the teacher’s authority, which we can also understand as the decentering of the authority of any interlocutor, does not mean an indifferent discursive fluidity or an inchoate subjectivity. Dialogue takes place, for Freire, under the sign of a clear option for the oppressed. If the authority of a teacher or speaker is interrogated, it is interrogated in the direction of an opening to the voices and understandings of those who have been marginalized and exploited. In contrast to the commonsense understanding of dialogue, the participants in dialogue are not arbitrary. In particular, for Freire, the elite and privileged do not and cannot engage in dialogue—unless they undertake a difficult (and unusual) break with their own class standpoint. As Freire (1970/2007) puts it: Dialogue is the encounter between men [sic], mediated by the world, in order to name the world. Hence, dialogue cannot occur between those who want to name the world and those who do not wish this naming—between those who deny others the right to ACTIVE WORDS IN DANGEROUS TIMES 81 speak their word and those whose right to speak has been denied them. Those who have been denied their primordial right to speak their word must first reclaim this right and prevent the continuation of this dehumanizing aggression. (p. 88) In a dialectical sense, dialogue is for the oppressed: As a crucial modality of the process of humanization, it is their task and vocation, and in the first instance it is their liberation that is at stake in it. This last point also needs to be emphasized against the common tendency to neutralize dialogue and to understand it as communication that should be beyond politics. For Freire, dialogue is deeply political, if by politics we mean a concern with basic structures and processes of power. Furthermore, Freirean dialogue should be understood as a particular moment of revolutionary struggle rather than simply a pedagogical form (McLaren, 2000). For Freire, dialogue is not the name for a sterile juxtaposition of the opposed worldviews of the powerful and the powerless (as our media and political discourse so often suggest). Rather, dialogue is Freire’s name for the process of spiritual organization that brings together intellectuals and militants with the people and fuses them into a revolutionary collective. This process is deeply pedagogical. Freire describes dialogue in struggle as connected to a process of collective learning and transformation that starts from the understandings and desires of those who have been excluded. This political determination of dialogue is connected to another aspect that is often obscured in familiar notions of dialogue. For Freire, dialogue is not just a relationship between people; it is also, as problem-posing education, the form of a relationship to the world (Mayo, 2004). Dialogue has meaning because it places us in relation to the world; it uncovers this world and allows it to be appropriated in consciousness: “The world which brings consciousness into existence becomes the world of that consciousness” (Freire, 1970/2007, p. 82). This conception centers a responsibility to history that is absent from commonsense understandings of dialogue. These latter understandings construct dialogue’s reference to the world in terms of a proof that demands assent from one’s adversary in debate, whereas Freire emphasizes the responsibility to listen, and the need to allow the world to take shape in the context of human communication. To engage in dialogue, therefore, is to speak an active word, a word which works on the world. In this way, dialogue mediates between the subjective and objective, and avoids the twin perils of verbalism (mere talk, unconnected to action) and activism (hasty and unreflective action): “Human beings are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection” (Freire, 1970/2007, p. 88). This conception of dialogue allows us to interrogate the prevailing attempt to cordon off speech from action in the liberal notion of free speech and to ignore the way in which, in fact, speech acts (and on the other hand how action is sometimes a crucial form of speech). Dialogue is connected in its intentionality to the determination of human beings as beings in relationship to the world. In this regard, dialogue can never escape the horizon of ethics, since it has a responsibility toward the world, and since it is inherently related to transformative action (Dussel, 2003). To consider dialogue in the context of the existential and political framework that Freire provides requires a challenge to how we have come to understand relation in the present. Freire understands dialogue in terms of being in the world, being in 82 N. D. LISSOVOY AND C. B. COOK relation with dynamically different others, and being open to negotiations of power. Participation, abiding by a responsibility to listen, and commitment to co-creating worlds dedicated to liberation are essential components of dialogue for Freire. To be in dialogue is to be in relation to the world in an active process of transformation, and to learn from the yearnings (both material and spiritual) of the oppressed, as later critical pedagogy scholars also remind us (Darder, 1991; Hooks, 1989). Emphasizing the political within the ethical stance of dialogical encounter, Freire understands dialogue as inviting the oppressed to speak from the space of their own reality. This project can only be realized when co-participants within dialogue are recognized as dynamic and particular subjects who come to know others through specific historical and cultural locations. Liberalism, Community, and Dialogue In order to understand and interrogate contemporary liberal notions of dialogue, as we aim to do, we need to consider their philosophical and ideological roots. These set the possibilities and limits for consensus positions in the present and stand in clear contrast to the Freirean framework we have just described. The tendencies toward abstract individualism, formalism, and decontextualized ideas of community that characterize contemporary liberal discourse connect to long-standing conceptual commitments in the modern liberal philosophical tradition. The most influential articulation of liberalism’s fundamental tenets is in the work of Kant, for whom ethics depends first of all on a transcendental subject whose autonomy is uncontaminated by utilitarian claims. For Kant and the tradition that has followed from him, a concern with right—as expressed in original principles of justice—must precede considerations of the good. More recent philosophers in the liberal tradition have likewise grounded the idea of justice not in calculations of the good, but rather in formal schemas for rules-making such as John Rawls’ (1971) notion of an imaginary “original position” from which individuals freely elaborate together the basic principles of justice and society. From the perspective of this liberal philosophical tradition, dialogue is the instrument and effect of the inviolability of individual right rather than a fundamental end in itself. This difference between the right and the good, or between justice and happiness, is especially stark in the strict liberalism of F. A. Hayek (1960/2011). For Hayek, whose work later came to serve as a foundation for neoliberal theorists, right is tied to individual freedom from coercion, and is sharply differentiated from any claim on social resources. Competition and inequality in economic and social life are not so much unfortunate side effects as salutary signs of an absence of intrusion by the state. In this philosophy, dialogue is reduced to the reified form of legislation. The rule, as law or custom, sets the basic terms for the exercise of individual autonomy, and beyond it there “cannot be any collective responsibility of members of a group as such” (p. 146). Of course, this classical liberal view is in explicit contrast to the Keynesian liberalism associated with the welfare state, which seeks to make some collective provision for the least advantaged. And yet, the logic of Keynesian economics arguably sees this provision and the demand that it generates as above all the key to maintaining the health of capitalism itself. Indeed, as Rawls’ (1971) theory of justice shows, even the ACTIVE WORDS IN DANGEROUS TIMES 83 “socially liberal” conception of solidarity ultimately depends on a freedom to enter into agreements that is exercised by individuals. Neither classical nor social liberalism contemplates a deeper sense of dialogue as a process that transgresses the boundaries of the individual and remakes identity and society. Furthermore, as Michael Sandel (1998) points out, the formalism of the liberal tradition results in an impoverished notion of community; it is simply imagined as the social sphere that is left over, as an effect, beyond the autonomy of the individual. In the context of Rawls’ work, Sandel describes this as a “sentimental” notion of community. There is little space in the liberal philosophical tradition for deliberation and construction of rich collective identities, even if contemporary theorists have sought to complexify liberalism to allow for attention to the possibility of intersubjectivity, and to deepen the notion of justice by allowing for an evaluation of the ends and effects of decisions. Thus, Will Kymlicka (2001) argues for a conception of minority rights that presses beyond the simple abstract individualism of familiar ideas of justice. Dialogue in liberal societies, from this perspective, has to reckon with the reality and value of collective commitments and identities; in addition, it has to move beyond a form of solitary and detached reasoning as the privileged form of deliberation. However, even these correctives to classical liberalism tend to consider questions of community, dialogue, and justice apart from the central reckoning with power and oppression that characterizes Freire’s approach. Contemporary liberal perspectives seek to adjust the rules for decision making but they do not adequately interrogate the material force and organization of power. It is perhaps those thinkers who have been most concerned with the political possibilities of dialogue per se who have come closest to Freire’s emphasis on its emancipatory function and on the historicity of social relationships. Seyla Benhabib (2002) argues for a principle of “egalitarian reciprocity” in democratic dialogue that would make possible the production of complex differentiated communities rather than abstract and universal ones. Richer and more deliberative approaches to democracy seek to reckon with the asymmetrical and embedded subjects that confront each other in real dialogue. Philosophers have described how traditional liberal understandings of majority-minority relations tend to constrain the possibilities for robust dialogue across difference (Parekh, 2002). For Freire (1970/2007), however, dialogue is not only complex and tied to differing positionalities; in addition, the flat universalism and neutrality of liberalism is itself a crucial instrument of oppression. Hence the centrality of education to his project, since the experience of education shows the fundamental political work accomplished by liberalism’s false generosity. When we consider dialogue apart from this determining political and historical context, we misapprehend it as mere speech and overlook its historical action and material effect. While Kant’s ethics of abstract right has been interrogated by later thinkers, the adjustments they have made to the tradition have nevertheless tended to reinforce ideological notions of dialogue. For instance, Sandel (1998) appeals to notions of “shared selfunderstanding” and “commonality,” but these formulations can easily fall prey to the same sentimentalism for which he indicts Rawls. Detached from the concrete context of struggle, they reproduce liberalism’s formalism in relation to political subjectivity. The commitments of liberalism as a broad philosophical tradition are not always the same as the concrete cultural formations referred to colloquially as “liberal,” even 84 N. D. LISSOVOY AND C. B. COOK if there is important overlap. The latter usage refers, rather, to a simple location on the spectrum of party politics that dominates North American political culture. However, there is a powerful link between the philosophical understandings we have described and the ideological positions that underlie contemporary debates among elites and intellectuals, and which set the terms for prevailing understandings of the meanings of civil discourse and dialogue (De Lissovoy, 2008). For instance, contemporary notions of solidarity and free speech that depend upon principles of abstract individualism and a formalistic conception of right cohere with liberalism as a philosophical tradition, even as they sometimes work across party labels and divisions. It is in reference to this philosophical and ideological system that we use the term liberal in this essay, and it is this deep structure of liberalism that we mean to critique. The kinds of dialogue that are possible within liberalism are already deeply constrained, even before it is a question of political debate in the conventional sense. In this context, often the loudest “political” arguments conceal the strongest moments of ideological consensus (Apple, 2004). Indeed, what we usually understand to be beyond disagreement—those commitments which appear to be self-evidently right and good— are after all the most important moments of ideology (Althusser, 1971). Liberalism, as a philosophical and ideological system (rather than a narrow party politics), has occupied a hegemonic position in the modern period, setting the terms for dialogue even for those who have dissented from it. This is not least the case in education, as Freire (1970/2007) reveals. For this reason, it is important to explore the way that the ideology of liberalism organizes permissible senses of dialogical intersubjectivity in the present, if we wish to push beyond its foreclosures in politics, pedagogy, and curriculum. Interrogating Liberal Expressions of Dialogue In this section, we analyze a set of contemporary liberal framings of dialogue from the perspective of the philosophical framework that we have outlined. In particular, we start from conceptual pillars in Freire that support a notion of dialogue as a revolutionary political, spiritual, and epistemological engagement. We analyze key forms and effects of the liberal understandings of dialogue that we are concerned with here, and that we have outlined above, as these are expressed in debates around free speech and in contemporary appeals to unity in political discourse. We also show how these framings are at the same time a distortion of a more empowering and enlivening conception of dialogue. Importantly, as we indicated earlier, while we recognize that there are diverse expressions of liberalism in this context, we are specifically concerned here with orientations to dialogical intersubjectivity that seek harmony across social and political differences without investigating structural antagonisms and oppression. Whether or not the reference is explicit, in all of these cases the structure of dialogue as an existential and political problematic, as outlined by Freire, is at stake. “Free Speech,” Violence, and Dialogue If appeals to unity in politics and social life produce a warm glow of imagined reconciliation, as we will describe in the next section, liberal arguments in relation to ACTIVE WORDS IN DANGEROUS TIMES 85 dialogue as free speech often evoke by contrast the austere virtue of blind impartiality, even as their effects are anything but neutral. Underlying both of these projects, however, we can identify the Kantian liberal logic of the freedom of the transcendental subject as the ground of justice. Within this horizon, social antagonisms are illusory or at least inessential, and all that prevents collective peace and security is an absence of individual will. Likewise, to the extent that it is ideologically identified with the disembodied liberal subject and its absolute right, speech tends to escape scrutiny with regard to its interests, purposes, and material effects. The idea of free speech is directly tied to the possibility of dialogue by many commentators, since free speech is supposed to make possible the confrontation of perspectives that is the indispensable condition of intellectual exchange (New York Times Editorial Board, 2017). Recently, the radical Right has attempted to lay claim to the mantle of free speech protection against what is claimed to be a cabal of politically correct thought police holding sway over higher education and the media. Thus, in September of 2017, conservatives at UC Berkeley organized a “free speech week” (subsequently cancelled) in which radical Right-populist and racist speakers were set to talk on campus. At events such as these, when protesters show up to challenge speakers, conservatives argue that they are threatening the free exchange of ideas and that they want to enforce a politically correct consensus (e.g., Timpf, 2017). Ignored in this narrative is the fact that it is largely the Left on campuses and in public discourse more broadly that is the target of censorship and harassment, as recent attacks on student organizations, professors, and journalists indicate (Beauchamp, 2018). In contrast, Right-wing pundits and activists frame themselves as the victims of a concerted assault from the Left, and as the standard-bearers for the liberal institution of public deliberation. Thus, Ferguson (2019) protests an “illiberal” attack against the Right from “a red army of mediocrities”; Coulter (2018) indicts a sinister alliance between Leftists and immigrants (who supposedly lack an attachment to Constitutional rights) for shutting down conservative voices. Remarkably, Turning Point USA even presents its Professor Watchlist, which targets academics concerned with social justice, as part of the fight for free speech. In these representations, the actual distribution of material and symbolic power is inverted, so that the dominant pole (nation, whiteness, masculinity) in each social relation of oppression instead becomes the persecuted and oppressed—with the crucial effect of making a coherent apprehension of political relationships impossible. Here, however, we are less interested in the Right’s justifications and more in the witting or unwitting collaboration of liberal discourse itself with these justifications, and with the notions of speech and dialogue that are assumed in them. It is important to point out that the efforts of white supremacists to represent themselves as marginalized and persecuted has been aided by the eagerness of university administrators, political pundits, and others to defend and provide material support for this movement’s efforts to insinuate itself into the mainstream. For instance, universities have recently spent millions to protect white supremacist speakers on campuses (Downs, 2018). At the same time, influential media outlets have been unstinting in their criticism of protesters who have attempted to disrupt events promulgating racist hate speech (e.g., New York Times, “Smothering Speech at Middlebury,” 2017). We do not 86 N. D. LISSOVOY AND C. B. COOK suggest that these institutions support the goals and views of the radical Right; however, their determination to provide a platform to racist speech, at almost any cost, is arguably objectively a form of collaboration. While there has been much discussion of these issues, we believe that the critical conception of dialogue that we have outlined above can serve as a useful lens through which to view this debate and can expose dimensions of it that have not been fully considered. Indeed, the liberal defense of the investment of the radical Right in their own “deep story” is often framed in terms of an appeal to the need for dialogue (e.g., Hochschild & Klein, 2016), even when the speech that is thereby given space is fundamentally anti-dialogical. This fact points to a crucial distinction: As we have described, starting from Freire, dialogue depends upon a relationship of encounter and solidarity. Dialogue is not indifferent discussion, or the mere juxtaposition of perspectives, but rather the enactment of relationship, within the “ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human” (Freire, 1970/2007, p. 48). Dialogue engages participants beyond themselves in a basic opening to the humanity of the Other. The listening that is crucial to dialogue is not simply a waiting to speak but rather an entrance into a reciprocal relation. Certainly, this means an opening to difference; however, it does not mean an affirmation of hate, injury and erasure. Just as the notion of free speech as dialogue abstracts from the context of the relationship between interlocutors, it also abstracts from the contexts of politics and history. As Sandel (1998) describes, in their understanding of free speech rights, liberal philosophy and jurisprudence rely upon the idea of the “unencumbered self” (as in the protagonists of Rawls’ imaginary “original position”), detached from social roles and communities, which cannot ultimately be hurt by any insults to these communities. Likewise, with regard to speech itself, the liberal conception is an idealistic one (in a formal sense), in which statements are understood as mere constellations of sense, divorced from the world. It is this conception which serves as the basis for the granting of an unlimited and abstract free speech right. But as Freire (1970/2007) points out, “Within the word we find two dimensions, reflection and action” (87). The reflective moment of discourse is in immanent relationship to an active moment, a relationship that becomes conscious and emancipatory in Freirean dialogue. In the first place, then, the liberal construction of communication ignores this active moment—that is, the way that speech acts at once on participants and on the world, and the ways in which we are implicated as historical subjects by and in communication and placed differentially at risk by this communication (Butler, 2004). Second, this abstract and idealistic conception then invites the ruse in which what are often essentially acts of hate are smuggled into the space of public life under cover of the rubric of unencumbered speech. White supremacist language is not the same as physical assault against people of color, but it is nonetheless an assault; furthermore, it is a crucial moment in the overall project of racist imposition and injury. The anodyne framework of “minority rights,” which subsumes race and racism within a rightsbased formulation of justice, and which is central to the analysis of race in Kymlicka (2001) and other liberal theorists, cannot adequately confront the history of these injuries or provide a firm enough platform for critical dialogue that would interrupt them. The construction of free speech that we have described here is important beyond debates around First Amendment rights; in fact, the conception of political discourse ACTIVE WORDS IN DANGEROUS TIMES 87 that underpins these debates also works through liberal understandings of dialogue proper. Just as the proliferation of views that free speech guarantees are supposed to promote is imagined as the content of politics, liberals often understand dialogue itself as resulting from the mere proximity of speakers with different perspectives. But even when this juxtaposition is imagined in terms of interchange rather than simple debate, this technical conception ignores the material and symbolic violence that structures occasions of deliberation. Since “people often disagree about what should be done,” as one much-lauded research center that investigates possibilities for democratic deliberation has long argued, it is crucial to explore “through learning exchanges … how citizens might accept their responsibility, make sound decisions about what is in the public’s interest, and join forces to act on those decisions” (Kettering Foundation). This unobjectionable framing of democratic deliberation nevertheless occludes the basic antagonisms that structure politics and discursive “exchange.” Likewise, more recent liberal interventions that respond to contemporary political polarization often start from a notion of dialogue as the parallel presentation of perspectives within an institutional safe space. Thus, one project designed to engage millennials and thought leaders in public dialogues regarding LGBTQ issues frames the problem this way: “We have three choices: we can continue to avoid [each other] and remain in our echo-chambers; we can shout each other down, convinced we’re right; or we can approach each other with a spirit of humility, believing that we can grow together toward a better future” (Tolerance Means Dialogues). The emphasis on recognizing difference within a spirit of humility is an important element in any meaningful conception of dialogue. What is absent here, however, is a political-conceptual framework that can contextualize such interchanges. The production of conversation is assumed to lead to “grow[ing] together toward a better future,” and yet the structural violence that conditions exchanges between powerful and oppressed groups is obscured. The point is not that the work of such initiatives is without value. It is rather that when we mistake tolerance for dialogue, we limit the possibilities for the transformative work toward which this rhetoric gestures. The framings of dialogue as tolerance and interchange just described represent one (richer) version of a free-speech-oriented notion of dialogue. A weaker version supposes meaningful communication to occur from mere juxtaposition. The New York Times expresses this perspective when it decries campus protests against Right-wing speakers as resulting in “a missed opportunity for ideas to peaceably collide,” a collision that will allow beliefs to be tested, “lest they become mere prejudices and thoughtless slogans” (New York Times Editorial Board, 2017). The problem here is not only the easy assumption that the mere “collision” of perspectives leads to the truth; in addition, this perspective assumes that hateful speech, unmarred by protest, is “peaceable.” This assumption refuses the interpenetration of word and action—the continuity between discursive and material violations—that Freire demonstrates, and ignores the distortions that result when a flattened conception of free speech is taken as the central criterion of meaningful dialogue. Liberalism tends to reduce the problem of political discourse to the question of legal right, and to conflate freedom from regulation with democratic deliberation. This position ignores the asymmetry between 88 N. D. LISSOVOY AND C. B. COOK “speech” that defends the right of the rulers to injure and oppress, on the one hand, and protests against that oppression on the other. The vehemence of even many “social liberals” in their reflexive decontextualization of diverse instances of speech points to the underlying ideological structure of liberalism’s conception of dialogue. In this regard, they are not far from the strict prescriptions of Hayek (1960/2011), who insists on individual freedom from coercion as the criterion par excellence of a just society, regardless of its social and material effects. The understanding of dialogue and free speech as an occasion of exchange of perspectives, rather than as the starting point for the formation of a critical and collective intersubjectivity, is ubiquitous and deeply influential in U.S. society. This understanding frames approaches to teaching controversial subjects in schools, presenting competing views within the media, and arbitrating legal disputes related to freedom of expression (Hyde & Bineham, 2000; Sandel, 1998). While surveying the full extent of this terrain is beyond the scope of this study, the examples we have described open a window onto its broad ideological organization. What is important for our purposes is to expose the way in which this framing of speech relies on and refers back to a liberal philosophical conception of justice. In this frame, right is identified with an effective individual agency—within communicative contexts and beyond—rather than with the forging of complex collective identities that expose and challenge histories of oppression. Finally, we have already pointed out that for those who are the targets of these histories of oppression, dialogue in the strict sense with the agents of that violence is impossible. However, this response by itself is not fully satisfactory. After all, the process of liberation contemplated by Freire ultimately sweeps up even the oppressors in its tide—so aren’t they too eventually addressed by it in some way? And in the present, isn’t there room for some kind of dialogical response to contemporary discourses of racism and hatred? We argue that if we hold to a notion of dialogue tied to struggle and oriented toward humanization, then this question is not quite the conundrum that it seems at first. Can we not see the militant protests that are indicted for shutting down speech as in fact, in their own way, moments of dialogue?1 More than simple “counter-speech” (Healy, 2017), these protests interrupt the justification of hate and insist on the horizon of humanization, against the latter’s violation. They recognize the voice of an interlocutor—and refuse its violence. Such interruptions are a longstanding tactic within liberation movements, such as the South African anti-apartheid struggle; they are a necessary part of a struggle in which militants are “merely responding to provocation in the most realistic possible way” (Biko, 2002, p. 97). Dialogue here can be recognized in the form of a crucial moment of risk and confrontation. By contrast, the anti-dialogical move is rather the liberal refusal to take white supremacist speakers at their word with regard to the violence that they promulgate, to not listen to the seriousness of their commitment to hate and injury, and instead to retreat into an illusory image of such speech as a harmless and fading gesture. If it seems odd to point to such protests as examples of dialogue, this has to do with the frequent misunderstanding of Freire in North American contexts. Freire is very often misinterpreted as arguing for a reconciliation of the oppressor and oppressed classes in the context of dialogue. In fact, while Freire (1970/2007) imagines ACTIVE WORDS IN DANGEROUS TIMES 89 revolution as leading to the ultimate liberation even of the oppressors from their violent and necrophilic ways of being, he follows Guevara and Fanon in understanding this as an ordeal which the privileged will resist at all costs. Dialogue between the rulers and the ruled, if there can be such a thing, will necessarily appear to the former as a brutal infringement of their accustomed rights. By contrast, for Freire dialogue proper occurs on the side of the oppressed, as a mode of collective learning and action. While generally unheralded, such dialogue is crucially alive today even in North America in the work of radical teachers, movements of undocumented university students, struggles to transform the criminal justice system, and other sites. In these contexts, participants work through differences in perspective and positionality to construct new understandings and new kinds of transformative agency. Here, diverse moments of speech and action challenge and inform each other within a shared commitment to confront power. This is not to say that all such efforts are successful or exemplary, nor that discussions occurring within the framework of liberal constructions of dialogue are without value. Rather, it is to argue against an easy conflation of perspectives and to underline the consequential political, philosophical, and existential differences between critical and liberal understandings of speech and dialogue. Rethinking Calls for Unity Bearing witness to moments of mass violence in public spaces has become an increasingly common feature of American democracy. The frequency of public tragedy has led to patterned responses mobilized to compel people towards liberal notions of unity and inclusion organized against a perceived threat. However, if dialogue is reconceptualized through the lens of active words, intersubjective relationality, and transformative justice as we are aiming to do here, then we must examine the context and function of the rhetoric in these calls for unity and the threats they construct. Even in times of crisis, it is important to critically engage with abstract calls that fail to account for structures of violence and their histories. Here, we deconstruct the logic of unity embedded in slogans attached to specific tragedies, as examples of liberal dialogue. We do so in order to examine the conception of intersubjectivity that is at work in these appeals, one which we argue is oriented more to constructing fleeting moments of solidarity rather than movements towards transformation. We believe that the liberal framework for dialogue, as a basic structure of intersubjectivity, is expressed precisely in such flattened appeals, which gesture at connection even as they seek to constrain it. Even more extended contexts of liberal exchange reproduce the abstraction and universalization that can be seen in an especially vivid way in these slogans, and as such, they are important windows into the ideological structure of liberal notions of dialogue. As we have described, our focus is not on evaluating the intentions per se behind these slogans, but rather on their form and function as discourse. In addition, we do not argue that they have not been valuable in their own way or that they have attempted to manipulate the grief of affected communities, but rather that the possibilities for engagement and transformation that they have opened up have been specifically and systematically limited.2 90 N. D. LISSOVOY AND C. B. COOK While public trauma signifies a time marked by rupture that holds the potential to be deeply dialogical, post-tragedy resilience discourses like Boston Strong and Charleston Strong indicate the way that uncritical solidarity is encouraged within a broader effort to present a united front in the face of threat. While the tragedies in Boston and Charleston that these slogans are connected to were distinct in terms of both context and impact, each occasioned the same style of response—a nationalisttinged slogan inspired by the US Army’s recruitment campaign “Army Strong” (Norris, 2006). The character of this collectively imagined “strength” requires deeper analysis since the claims of unity and progress that such expressions invoke risk obscuring histories and systems of oppression. At issue here is precisely the distinction between the undifferentiated and sentimental notion of community that the logic of liberalism proposes versus more determined and substantive conceptions. Hours following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, the “Boston Strong” campaign was kicked off by two Emerson college students who printed T-shirts bearing this slogan (Zimmer, 2013). According to one of the originators of the campaign, they “developed Boston Strong off of Livestrong and Army Strong, because it was something simple people could get behind” (Zimmer, 2013). This comforting phrase, turned branding campaign, offered a semantic container for what solidarity and collaboration in the wake of tragedy might look like. “Boston Strong” certainly may have channeled the collective desire to do something; however, it also situated consumerism (to buy a shirt, hat, bumper sticker) as the principal expression of grief (and response) in the wake of homegrown terror and, arguably, reduced solidarity to an aesthetic experience (Crouch, 2013). With regard to the notion of dialogue at work in this context, the essence of “Boston Strong” as an affective orientation people could “get behind” contrasts with the active and collaborative character of movements oriented towards systemic and long-term change. Commodifying unity through marketing campaigns like “Boston Strong” erodes the possibility for deeper solidarities that might otherwise appear. Such solidarities might interrogate, in fact, the uncritical assumptions of “strength” and “unity” themselves, and their relation to the conditions and contexts of public violence. “Charleston Strong” emerged after the 2015 massacre carried out by self-proclaimed white supremacist, Dylan Roof, at Mother Emanuel AME—a historically Black church with a past rooted in activism. Specifically, “Charleston Strong” was a visible (and audible) rallying cry during the “Bridge to Peace” event which took place just days after the shooting and brought thousands of Lowcountry residents together in a unifying moment (Boughton, 2015), to prove to the world that “when it comes to race, the city is moving forward” (Brown & Phillip, 2015). In this singular event, “Charleston Strong” as sentiment and slogan conjured momentary solidarity; however, the tenuousness of this moment was highlighted by a separate event taking place in Charleston that night called “Burying White Supremacy.” A leader of the local Black Lives Matter chapter, Muhiyidin d’Baha, organized this event as a more radical option, explaining that the “Bridge to Peace” march was curated and controlled by the city’s political elites (Woods, 2015). The highly publicized and politically lauded “Bridge to Peace” event offered the spectacle of solidarity under sanctioned practices of mourning organized by city officials, where unity was foregrounded as a victory in the wake of loss, and “the expression of grief serve[d] to solidify the very power structure that preserves the ACTIVE WORDS IN DANGEROUS TIMES 91 city’s legacy of white supremacy” (Woods, 2015). The problem here is not that solidarity is impossible, even in difficult contexts such as this, but rather that the easy and uncritical conception offered in this case evades the critical engagement and “complex cultural dialogue” (Benhabib, 2002, p. 39) that must be the basis for any coming together across difference. In this regard, it might be said that liberalism is characterized by a too hasty announcement of connection and collectivity; slogans such as “Charleston Strong” rush toward an image of unity without contemplating the difficulty of dialogue that can alone produce stable and potent forms of solidarity. The particular spirit of unity that #CharlestonStrong proposes is also at issue in more recent political debates. On June 19, 2018 (the anniversary of Juneteenth), Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg read a newly passed resolution apologizing for Charleston’s role in the slave trade and acknowledging that “fundamental to the economy of colonial and antebellum Charleston was slave labor” (Charleston City Council, 2018) to a crowd gathered in collective remembrance of the Emanuel Nine. Marking three years since the tragedy at Mother Emanuel, this was an important step toward acknowledging responsibility for a legacy of structural racism. Nevertheless, the resolution barely passed in a 7-5 vote. Harry Griffin, a white male City Council member, opposed the resolution, stating that his constituents were “not willing to apologize for something they did not take a part in” (Alani & Darlington, 2018). This instance points to the weakness of Charleston’s ostensibly unified front in the face of racial violence. While Charleston Strong served to present the illusion of a city unified in the aftermath of violence, and no doubt allowed for moments of healing and togetherness for individuals impacted by the tragedy, the unity conjured in this slogan has to be appraised in light of the reality of the vote and the inability of nearly half of the city council members to critically interrogate the legacy of white supremacy that laid the foundation for Roof’s violence, or in Freire’s (1972) words, to strip “[reality] down so as to get to know it and the myths that deceive and perpetuate the dominating structure” (p. 6). Juxtaposing the contentiousness around the resolution with the willingness of thousands to gather under the sign of Charleston Strong requires us to consider whether such emotionally satiating responses invite an uncritical imagination of community. Dialogue should allow wounded communities to examine relationships to violence, vulnerability, and loss collectively and in their own terms. It requires community members to take responsibility for their historical subject-positions while interrogating the parameters of community itself. The detached and autonomous subject of right that the liberal philosophical tradition has proposed, from Kant to Rawls, reappears here in the concrete form of white elites’ disavowal of political and historical responsibility. Instead of an acknowledgment of responsibility, in the cases we have described a rhetorical salve was offered to a vulnerable community, and a public claim was made based on an uncritical conception of collectivity. Embedded in such calls for unity is an imagined “we” that is organized around the exclusion of the Other that simultaneously exists within and outside of the collective imagination (Butler, 2015; Kramer, 2013). We do not mean to suggest that within a grief-stricken community momentary and symbolic solidarity have no place. Nevertheless, it is important to draw attention to the discursive and practical limits of these catch-phrases, to the extent that they spin around axes of liberal values (strength and choice) and conjure a sense of 92 N. D. LISSOVOY AND C. B. COOK collectivity built on flattened senses of intersubjectivity (Ahmed, 2012). From a Freirean perspective, calls for unity that do not interrogate historical and political systems of oppression cannot present truly dialogical opportunities for moving in the direction of solidarity (Freire, 1970/2007). Freirean dialogue requires critical thinking in which individuals and communities investigate the constitutive parameters of “community” itself, and work to transform those boundaries (Rothrock, 2017). The calls for unity in response to social trauma that we have described have an affinity with liberal political slogans more broadly. The structure of these latter calls is often similar (consider Stronger Together or Yes We Can3), evoking an imaginary unity predicated on an abstract need for change. These appeals, often connected to the platforms of political elites, do not require an interrogation of the complexity of the collectivities that they conjure. Beyond the texture of these calls—whether we find them encoded in liberal discourses of resilience or in political gestures toward an abstract solidarity—they all resist an engagement with the social antagonisms that cleave the collective subjects that they evoke. Dialogue, in the sense that Freire conceptualizes it, becomes distorted in this space in which community becomes diffuse and decontextualized. A crucial problem in the circulation of these phrases is the ambiguity of the collectives they evoke: While ostensibly aiming to counter the disempowerment experienced by historically marginalized communities, they nevertheless presume the unproblematic inclusion of the agents of this disempowerment in the solidarity that they proffer. The Right, liberals argue, seeks to divide; by contrast, slogans like Stronger Together argue for unity—but this begs the question of the kind of unity that can be imagined between the powerful and those they have systematically injured. Implications: Reframing Dialogue in Classrooms Our critique of liberal models of dialogue in the broader public and educational spheres can serve as the basis for a closer consideration of the context of teaching. Our purpose in this study has been to consider the basic meaning of dialogue in a larger philosophical and political frame in order to create a more powerful theoretical foundation for dialogical practice, rather than to suggest technical modifications to pedagogy. Nevertheless, it is important to consider educational applications of the arguments we have put forward; thus, we outline some implications of our investigation for the classroom. In thinking about dialogue, scholarship in critical pedagogy generally starts from a consideration of teaching and then makes extrapolations outward to describe how social movements can learn from ideas in education, or how politics must be pedagogical in its orientation (e.g., Giroux, 1992). By contrast, we have started from an account of dialogue as a larger public process. We can then understand teaching as one moment or instance of this larger process. This approach restores political effectiveness and philosophical depth to the notion of dialogue and asks educators to think of their work as participating in a project that operates as much outside of schools as within them. This does not mean overlooking the specificity of teaching; rather, it means reconnecting teaching to its historical context and understanding teachers’ collaboration with other actors in the project of social transformation. ACTIVE WORDS IN DANGEROUS TIMES 93 Furthermore, building more specifically from our critique of liberal approaches, we argue that educators should be careful about invoking easy notions of community and unity in the classroom. Critics have pointed to the way that dominant pedagogies can silence and marginalize even in the name of “caring” (Thompson, 1998); in addition, it is important for critical educators to avoid announcing even ostensibly radical solidarities that do not work through differences of positionality and perspective among students. This is also to remember the profound difficulty that is involved in the process of dialogue, as understood by Freire. Just as we must pursue more broadly a “politics without guarantees” (Hall, 1986) in social movements, we should not necessarily expect a resolution to the antagonisms that work across classroom spaces—and which dialogue aims to expose and investigate. If there is a common identity that dialogue seeks to construct, it is nevertheless an identity riven by difference. This is why Freire referred to his approach as problem-posing education: It is precisely in its difficulty that dialogue is productive. More specifically, just as unreflective calls for unity in the political sphere ignore profound differences in experience while concealing structural violence, in schools the pervasive discourse of reconciliation glosses over constitutive antagonisms that structure relationships between different students and between students and teachers. Liberal anti-bias initiatives such as “No Place for Hate,” which depend on individual pledges like “I promise to do my best to treat everyone fairly” (Anti-Defamation League, 2018, p. 6), seek to wipe the school space clean of negativity while reframing systematic oppression in terms of exceptional upsurges of prejudice. This is a “naively conceived humanism,” as Freire (1970/2007) puts it, that “overlooks the concrete, existential, present situation of real people” (p. 74). By contrast, an approach to teaching rooted in the dialogical framework that we have outlined would invite students not to turn away from difference and injury but rather to delve into an investigation of the disparate experiences of school among privileged and marginalized students. Rather than seeking to smooth out the rough edges of bias, a dialogical pedagogy would invite and affirm counterstorytelling that would disrupt the classroom’s familiar consensus. The basis for dialogue here is the exposure of a fundamental social asymmetry—of experience, standpoint, and vulnerability to violation. In practical terms, this means, in particular, systematically centering the voices of students of color (Leonardo & Porter, 2010). And with regard to white teachers, it means interrupting their own fantasies of identification with marginalized students. This interruption is the foundation for any real solidarity, since dialogical solidarity does not work past difference but rather on the basis of and within difference (De Lissovoy & Brown, 2013). Likewise, our investigation of the theme of free speech has important implications for educators. While the distinction between critical dialogue and mere talk is a common one in critical pedagogy (e.g., Greene, 1995), our investigation exposes more clearly the costs of an uncritical approach to dialogue. The problem is not simply that an indifferent airing of student points of view does not move analysis forward. In addition, the construction of spaces of safe or “neutral” conversation conceals its own collaboration with imposition and violation to the extent that dominant truths are secured against critique. Furthermore, this protection comes at a steep cost, both affectively and discursively, to classroom communication, which is stunted and 94 N. D. LISSOVOY AND C. B. COOK demoralized as a result. For instance, the common tendency among teachers to organize discussion of issues in the form of debate—even when this means an effort to elicit “all sides” of a question rather than simply juxtaposing two opposing views— works covertly to cancel the effects of difference and to separate perspectives from the contexts of history and experience. The relativism that underlies everyday practices of classroom conversation is in ethical terms an abstention that betrays not only those who are injured but also the process of dialogue itself—it is a capitulation to an orientation that fragments subjects and understandings. If critical dialogue as a framework for teaching is risky, dynamic, and committed, a practice of dialogue based on the liberal construction of speech that we have analyzed here is inert, fractured, and ultimately despairing. In the latter model, true testimonio cannot emerge—that is, an extended narration and witness, grounded in personal experience, of a transformative truth that can be interrogated but not controverted (Perez Huber, 2009). By contrast, dialogical pedagogy depends precisely on the emergence of such moments of witness, which even as they are painful and unsettling also shift discussion from a sterile exchange of opinions to a fundamentally enlivening confrontation with reality and possibility. Our analysis suggests that a dialogical approach to teaching means disrupting familiar liberal constructions and practices of caring and conversation, in order to open space for more unsettling encounters with others and with the structure of social oppression. This is even more urgent in the context of the contemporary normalization of racist violence that we have described. Moving away from a debatebased framing of discussion of the pros and cons of “controversial” policies, educators ought to engage students in exploring and testifying to the real effects on their bodies and souls of state-sanctioned hostility and aggression. This does not mean discounting disagreements, but rather connecting them to the facts of social positionality (Alcoff, 2006). For teachers, a commitment to dialogue means principled investigation of deep and consequential differences in experience and standpoint, replacing performative “project-based” instruction that leads to conclusions decided in advance with collective inquiry that uncovers unforeseen and unruly truths. This means prioritizing in the classroom the understandings and voices of students of color, who, in the name of harmony and expediency, continue to be injured and ignored by prevailing liberal discourses of “community.” Conclusion From the perspective that we have elaborated here, dialogue is not simply a technique, a mode of speech, or even a value. Rather, it is the indispensable enactment of intersubjectivity within the context of the project of social emancipation. The stakes of dialogue are the very possibility of liberation. For this reason, it is necessary to understand dialogue in its depth and complexity and to challenge models of it, including liberal ones, that betray these essential determinations. Furthermore, we have argued that dialogue is an existential and political category as much as a pedagogical one, and that the connection between these aspects is crucial for educators to recognize. Understanding dialogue politically means understanding the presencing of self and ACTIVE WORDS IN DANGEROUS TIMES 95 the opening to the Other that dialogue demands as immediately a challenge to historical processes of oppression. As we have demonstrated, true dialogical intersubjectivity is not a hollow gesture in the direction of community, nor is it simply a proliferation of voices. Rather, it is an insistence on the possibility of mutual recognition, and it is a crucial interruption of the violence in words and actions that refuse relation and emancipation. Sometimes this violence is explicit; sometimes it is veiled in a liberal rhetoric of rights and freedoms. In any case, against these distortions of dialogue we need an assertive response in classrooms and in public life. This investigation has aimed to lay the foundations for such a response, and to invite educators to engage in it. In our interventions in teaching and curriculum, we do not simply mirror society or reproduce its conditions in miniature; rather, we intervene immediately in it, since schools are continuous with other sites of social production and struggle. In education and beyond, it is essential to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental purposes and possibilities of dialogue if we hope to move this struggle forward. Notes 1. A much discussed instance of such protest was the mobilization that shut down the speech of Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California, Berkeley, in February, 2017. 2. It might be objected that such slogans are an unfair target, to the extent that in their compactness they have a certain discursive flatness to begin with. However, in keeping with our definition of dialogue as a structure of intersubjectivity rather than mere speech, we are primarily concerned here with the deployment and circulation of these slogans rather than their rhetorical structure taken in isolation. Furthermore, the ubiquitous promotion and investment in such slogans is itself important and symptomatic of liberalism’s impulse toward a foreshortened and one-dimensional model of communication and collectivity. Finally, as we have noted, these slogans encapsulate the abstract understanding of solidarity, evident in liberal discourse more broadly, in a particularly evocative way. 3. Stronger Together was a slogan used by the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. Yes We Can was a slogan used by the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama, borrowed from the United Farm Workers (familiar in Spanish as sı se puede). Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). References Ahmed, S. 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