Justice in dialogic education : the hegemonic use of “truth” in dialogue and its educational limits

Abstract

In the opening lines of his Specters of Marx, Jacques Derrida presents the following questions: “Who would learn? From whom? To teach to live, but to whom? Will we ever know how to live and first of all what ‘to learn to live’ means? And why ‘finally’?” (1994, p. xvii). These questions besides giving us an idea about the dialogic nature of the teaching and learning processes, also reveal the complex issue of whether “truth” can be used as a criterion that determines the direction of the exchange of information in a final way. This thematic introduces the main currents of this chapter, which deal with a critique on how excessive authoritative positions of “truth” in dialogue/ dialectics can control what others say, where at times such a situation can end up in the worst-case scenario in which others are silenced.