2 - Deparochializing Political Theory and Beyond

Summary

In this chapter, James Tully takes us deep into the phenomenology of the kind of dialogue across traditions that is capable of disrupting the unjust power structures that currently connect diverse traditions in the modern global order. He contrasts “genuine dialogue,” in which traditions have equal status as forms of human understanding, with the many kinds of “false dialogue” that are likely to emerge under circumstances of unequal power and power-knowledge. As beings that make sense of the world through our received traditions, we tend to project onto others the terms that make the world meaningful to us. Deparochializing our political thought must begin by “reparochializing” it, recognizing that the truths we hold to be self-evident have arisen within a sociohistorically specific context. The “deep listening” required for genuine dialogue requires practices of the self that must be cultivated over time before dialogue can generate reciprocal elucidation and transformation. When we succeed, participants in this dialogue can achieve not only mutual understanding but also the possibility of bringing to light ways of “thinking, judging, deliberating, and acting together in response to the situation they share that were unimaginable and unthinkable prior to the dialogue.”