Title:
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From self-development to human solidarity : a critical study on the dialogical theology of 'inter'-cultures
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This study is about the dialogical relation with the Other, and how the relationship is given in the process of Becoming. It is about creating a space for the dialogical process of becoming with/through the Other, as well as for us all in a given dialogical relationality. It is a challenge to the traditional academia and its principle where the Other is only accepted and appreciated in their mode of narcissistic-understanding, and compared in competition with different others within the boundary and the limit that the Western culture built. This study explores the relationship between the West and its dominated cultural 'others' is not just a way of understanding an unequal relationship between unequal interlocutors, but also a point of entry into studying the formation and meaning of Western cultural practices themselves. Moreover, having accepted the historical reality of colonialism in the non-western world, it is significant not to separate but to connect them by articulating cultural dynamics and complexity in such a way, which we can create 'space' for dialogue. Therefore, this study examines human desire with particular attention for the ethical implication through the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, and relates this with Bakhtin's dialogism perceiving human consciousness not as unified whole, but one that always exists in a tensile, conflict-ridden relationship with other consciousness, in a constant alterity between self and other. In this study, dialogism is not simply a textual or even intertextual phenomenon: it reaches beyond the text as such to embrace the social world as a whole. Thus, since the condition of narcissistic self-desire is the confirmation of one's self (culture or ideology) in the lack of one's self, this study radically questions the desire of totalising universalism and particularism, and attempts to re-orient the narcissistic autonomy of self-development into human solidarity.
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