The Repetition of Violence: Dialogue, the Exchange of Memory, and the Question of Convivial Socialities

Abstract

This paper addresses the theoretical issues underlying the repetition of violence in situations where antagonisms between communities have become endemic. It examines the extent to which concepts of narrative identity, translation and the exchange of memories provide analysis with a language for understanding the obstacles to dialogue in these situations. It seeks to establish some of the linkages connecting the mechanisms of formation of identity and subjectivity and the effectivity of history in this process in the form of memories of belonging and community, and of trauma; it highlights the philosophical issues that arise when one considers the ontological and ethical grounds for dialogical exchange and a politics that imagines alternative forms of sociality.