Pre-existing differences of power make an Ideal Speech Situation impossible.

Interviewee: Grant Kester

At the same time of course, there are valid criticisms that point to the ways in which an ideal speech situation is made impossible by the persistence of power differentials, and that any claim that one has actually, in practice, managed to create a space in which entirely unconstrained political discourse can occur need to be very carefully scrutinized, since this is precisely the scenario in which the repression of real differences in power is most insidious. So, given this reality, what can be accomplished in the real world, rather than the idealized or normative world? How do we optimize those conditions that can lead to exchanges that are the most open, creative and transformative, and that don’t claim to eliminate all differences of power entirely, but that thematize them in such a way that they can be acknowledged and addressed in the practical, real world contexts in which they are actually reproduced. How do you retain the ability to experience antagonism, vulnerability and disagreement, without devolving into fear or hatefulness? Habermas is primarily concerned with exchange or dialogue as a way to resolve political decision-making, but this ignores the generative potential of the exchange itself. This is why I find Bakhtin’s work so important. We don’t simply enter into dialogue with the intention of defending an a priori belief, but in order to experience an opening out to the other that has the potential to reconfigure our subjectivity in a profound manner. This is also why, in dialogical art practices, you often find a concern with the creative formation of the scene of dialogue itself.