Conference Agenda

The advice not to talk about politics in an attempt to preserve social harmony appears increasingly contradictory given the overlapping and accelerating political, humanitarian, and ecological crises of our present moment. 'Once in a lifetime' catastrophic events, such as pandemics, wars, genocides and natural disasters have become everyday normalities, mirroring the quote attributed to Lenin in reference to the Russian Bolshevik revolution (1917): “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen” (Haass, 2022, p. 25; Simpson, 2025). Mikhail Bakhtin, who lived during the dangerous and uncertain times of the Bolsheviks, Soviet Union, and Stalin's black night, contradicts sentiments of "don't talk" to preserve niceties. In spite of, perhaps because of, challenging times, he contends everyday dialogues between self and other are filled with possibilities that create the nature of existence and the acquisition of knowledge.

Employing Bakhtinian dialogism, this presentation troubles the advice "don't talk about politics" by tracing what is forfeited when political dialogue is silenced. Bakhtin's early philosophical work on answerability and the non alibi in being is brought into conversation with his later ideas of polyphony, to explore the spaces in between the self and other within political dialogue encounters. Rather than seeking resolution, this presentation dwells in the tensions of political dialogues and its pedagogical implications. It contemplates what possibilities emerge when remaining answerable to voices different from our own, beyond attempting to assimilate their world view.

References

Haass, R. (2022, September 6). The Dangerous Decade. Foreign Affairs, 101(5). https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/dangerous-decade-foreign-policy-world-crisis-richard-haass

Simpson, J. (2025, December 29). John Simpson on wars: ‘Why I’ve never seen a year like 2025’. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4qp17e1lqo