Conference Agenda

Within the ongoing process of the inheritance and development of academic knowledge, individual scholars construct their own thought by drawing on the ideas of predecessors and engaging in “dialogue” with them through texts. This activity is commonly understood as a process in which a monolithic self reads and interprets external literature and thinks about it. From the author’s experience, however, this understanding does not fully capture what actually occurs.

When engaging deeply with particular works, one may respond not only to what scholars explicitly wrote, but also to what they did not write, as if their “voices” were present and actively participating in one’s thinking. In such moments, beyond mere interpretation, scholars’ ideas and standpoints appear to be alive and operative within the self. This paper argues that such experiences can be re-described using the conceptual framework of Dialogical Self Theory.

Scholars encountered through literature come to be formed within the self as distinct scholar I-positions, each carrying specific perspectives and ways of thinking. One’s thought is constituted through ongoing internal dialogue among these I-positions. For example, in the author’s case, repeated close reading of the works of Christopher Alexander, Niklas Luhmann, and Edmund Husserl has led to the internalization of their perspectives as central I-positions supporting the author’s thinking, alongside many other influential scholars The unique configuration and dialogical relations among these scholarly positions—assembled in this particular way only within an individual self—contribute to the distinctive character of a scholar’s thought.

From this perspective, the paper suggests that in educating the next generation of scholars, it is not sufficient merely to understand the content of texts; rather, literature must be engaged with deeply enough for scholarly perspectives to be internalized as I-positions, and present how to read in ways that enable such internalization.