Dialogic Moments

The vision of communication as authentic dialogue, as the mutual communion of souls, has animated many twentieth-century discussions of language and communication. In its diverse manifestations, both in scholarly writings and in various forms of vernacular culture, this communicative utopia has identified dialogue, or conversation, as a locus of authenticity of both individuals and groups. This study traces the ways utopian visions of communication have played themselves out in particular contexts of Israeli society through the twentieth century, encapsulating central trends in the evolving Israeli cultural conversation over the years.... In one sense, this book is a historically situated study of the cultural fluctuations of a given society in all its particularity. In another sense, however, it seeks to offer a more general statement about the culturally constructed nature of the quest for authenticity as a project of modernity by focusing on conceptions of communication and language as its quintessential loci. - From the introduction of Dialogic Moments by Tamar Katriel