Before and beyond dialogicality: Transformative trialectics of human dialogues

New Ideas in Psychology 32 (2014) 88–98

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Before and beyond dialogicality: Transformative trialectics of human dialogues Aydan Gülerce aziçi University, Istanbul 34342, Turkey Institute of Social Sciences, Bog

a b s t r a c t Keywords: Relational psychology Dialogical ontology Transformative epistemology Pluralistic metaphysics Dialogue Transformational trialectics

I first revisit Bakhtin’s discourse-driven account of dialogue to situate the concept in its broad sociohistorical, political, and philosophical (i.e., epistemology-ontology-ethicsaesthetics-praxis) meaning context. Not only is the concept of dialogicality highly relevant for the psychology of difference but it also poses many strong meta/theoretical challenges. Second, therefore, I rapidly evaluate psychology’s disciplinary developmental status and transformative potentials of Bakhtinian dialogicalism in/for psychological discourses. I pay particular attention to the (im)possibilities of a potential dialogue between psycho-logic/-logy and dia-logic/-logue in reference to our biosociocultural (real-symbolicimaginary) human be(com)ings. Thus, while triangulating, reframing and refracting with/in my seemingly more radically pluralist and dynamic perspective, using some core notions from its conceptual matrix for(potentially) self-reflective transformative-transformations, such as triopus and transformational trialectics, it is hoped that the fascination with pragmatics of dialogicality would not overshadow the concept’s hermeneutically transformative utility which asks for serious dialogical confrontations, insights, bold philosophical commitments and consistent knowledge-practices in/towards all areas of our human(e) worlds. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. In the beginning/towards an “end”? Rhetorics of dialogic are no longer original nor interesting nowadays as they are everywhere. Pressed by the globally spread open/loud or disguised/silent acts of violence/conflict of all sorts and in all degrees, frequent calls are made for dialogue in many areas of knowledgepractice from philosophy to international politics. These assertions for broad dialogicality at almost all levels continually emphasize its ethical/moral implications and libratory significance in praxis. However, let me openly state a general claim, or rather an authentically distanciated (insider–outsider) reflection, right at the outset, that serves as the point of departure for this paper: Despite the increasing fascination with Bakhtin

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and his conception of dialogue, acknowledgement of dialogicality being sine qua non of the human condition, and the growing critique of monological traditions, most critical reactions to the conventional (non/scientific) habits fall short of capturing the essentials/indispensible aspects of the concept to prevent the word from becoming an “empty signifier”(in-and-out of psychology). Dialogicality revitalizes, for instance, the earlier Neitzschean idea that the human mind ontologically is based on the struggle and negotiation of a multiplicity of subjects, and hence, is not (cannot be?) a singularity. As in Bakhtin’s words, a single consciousness is a “contradiction in terms”. One is conscious of one’s self and become one’s self “only revealing it for another, through another, and with the help of another.” This by itself, however, has strong suggestions particularly for modern psychology’s self/subject constructions with social/developmental/cultural aspirations and ambitions in

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our current historical time-global meaning space that dichotomizes and totalizes difference as the self and other/ Other. Therefore, dealing with the (un)deliberated moral, political, philosophical, (meta)theoretical, methodological and discursive challenges which the appropriation of basic premises of dialogicality in psychology pose on human experience, thinking, language, inquiry and praxis all at once would gain priority. That would require intentionally dialogical and collaborative efforts, substantial revisions and commitments to its fundamental principles in practice. Taking seriously interdisciplinary location, historicity, and global dissemination of both modern psychology and the concept of dialogicality as its recent object of jouissance (e.g., Gülerce, 2006, 2012a, 2012b), therefore, I invite to (re)think conjointly on the issue, and to walk dialogically beyond the local dialogicality talks. I hermeneutically engage in this “dialogue” on/in the making of dialogical psychology/ making psychology dialogical inevitably from within a post-/ trans-(sub)disciplinary (e.g., Gülerce, 2009a) and postmetaphysical/secular perspectival stance (e.g., Gülerce, 2010) in the background. While I foreground few of its potentially transformative notions towards dialogical walks and talks about our dialogical human transformations, I also emphasize some requirements, if you will, as their minimum contingent conditions of (im)possibility for enabling transformative dialogues in that direction. For this purpose, and in conjunction with the extremely brusque contextualization of Bakhtinian dialogicalism, which I provided in the introduction to this issue, let us first focus our attention to the heavily embodied and embedded terms in the composite title separately. I suggest to follow a reverse order to think together why, who, what, how and when dialogue is/is not in relation to psychology’s objectsubject-self constructions in discourse about their constitutions in reality. 2. Dialogue(s)? 2.1. Tracing Bakhtin and dialogue Some Bakhtin specialists, “have long since struggled to appropriate him for their own agendas”, says Eagleton (2007, p. 13): “Is he a Marxist, neo-Kantian, religious humanist, discourse theorist, literary critic, cultural sociologist, ethical thinker, philosophical anthropologist, or all these things together?” Viewed from within Bakhtin’s own hermeneutic perspective of dialogicality, this says also, perhaps more, about the reader’s own forestructures (Gadamer), interdiscourse (Péchheux), overdetermination (Freud) and simply monological and reductionistic reading style (Marleu-Ponty), than the author. But, could a reader who tries to “deduce” the author’s “subject position” and “hunts” for his “traces” merely on his texts to “stick” a “familiar label” be his/Bakhtin’s preferred reader (Wright)? Bakhtin (as a kind of Russian Wittgenstein) is not always to be “found” or “placed” literally on his (polysemic) texts, although, his poetic meaning is deeply embodied and point at the context, pretext, subtext, and even its suggested reading style. His (poetic) meaning paradoxically is present (as absence) in entirety of his expressions. Thus, in a sense, “his place is placeless, his trace is traceless” just as in the

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renowned ode from Rumi. Dialogue is experienced contingent on the simultaneous coming together of all signifiers and signifieds of/by dialogical partners in historical time-virtual space. 2.2. Psychology’s compatibility/commensurability with dialogicality Modern psychology has deep seated metaphysical commitments to its predetermined, knowable, and static Universe, and to the principles of foundationalism, essentialism, representationalism, rationalism, cognitivism, positivism, reductionism, atomism, empiricism, objectivism, and so on, which describes abeardlylocal/partial worldview. The infant(ile) discipline is traditionally individualistic(JudeoChristian) and culturally pragmatist(Americanized) despite its philosophical upbringings and earlier parental (European) aspirations. At the present time, and overall, the disciplinary subject/discourse (affective/cognitive/social/ moral/aesthetic) developmentally still is “anxious of strangers”, “split”, “Ego/cogito/self-centric”, etc. and rather recently is fascinated with mechanistically moving “objects” around which are “representations” of “static” “structures” of (language/discourse/society) “outside” that are mysteriously/mechanistically transported to the “inside”. Therefore, from a micro-meso-macro and critical perspective, the concept of dialogism is fundamentally an oxymoron to psychology. While the concept has been thriving rapidly in multiple ways and directions, however, its resilience is questionable. Dialogism seemingly is trying hard to survive the monological disciplinary resistance, or to contaminate psychology’s epistemic mind and institutional body with strong immunity to accurate/profound/ authentic/foreign knowledge goods. Ironically, most accounts that refer to Bakhtin have been no exception. Overall, dialogue frequently is appropriated at best in terms of inner speech/thought, immediacy, I-positions, arena of identity positions, internal positioning, position exchange, dyadic conversation, semiotic/text analysis, turn-taking, subjectivity, mediation, reciprocity, conflict resolution, and so on, at an interpersonal level of face-to-face exchange, or intrapersonal decision-making in various accounts. Although, a view of self as a multiplicity of Ipositions and its implicit conceptualizations of dialogic movement as exchange between positions understandably might seem a “challenge” to mainstream psychology (of the singular, integrated, stable, and continuous I) from a “normalized” and “naturalized” psychological stance. Even in the so-called dialogical psychological approaches to dialogue, however, the self and the other still are problematic on various grounds. First of all, they are deeply soaked in the described monological, deterministic and universalistic worldview, and are embedded in its Cartesian rationality and split cognitive (-affective?) discourse in spite of the post/modern rhetorics to “individuate”/“emancipate”/“exit” from both. Just as the mainstream tradition, they have been reproducing/perpetuating the artificially drawn binaries that they “criticize”, “hybridize” or “bridge”. Equally superficial attempts that are made to compromise or blur the boundaries only (un/ wittingly) reproduce new discourses of power/knowledge

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(Foucault) as collective monologues (Piaget) essentialize various pre-labeled/marked/fixed identity categories, reify certain asymmetrical(power) positions, disable agency of resistance and creativity, perpetuate conservative metaphysical commitments, and so on. Thus, from an authentically dialogical and distanciated perspective, they do not seem to “extend” Psychology’s self (James), but “expand” the cultural market for the technologies of (its own) Self through exponential multiplication of (seemingly novel) cultural artifacts as bad reproductions/contract manufactured importations. These metaphysical commitments, additionally, resist the “(re)turn of psychological discourse’s repressed/omitted others” such as critical psychoanalysis and the “affective turn”. In short, as it stands, dialogism is far from being something that “goes without saying” in psychology’s habitus (Bourdieu),which is fundamentally and hegemonically ego-, self-, techne-, logo-, and andro-centric even in most attempts at dialogicality and (psycho)dynamics of dialogue. Thus, dialogic philosophical orientation, and its relation-oriented, affectdependent, communica(tive ac)tion seeking attitude as a lifestyle, primarily involves and includes almost all that materialist, pragmatist, universalist, Americanized, and cognitivized psychology (un/consciously) keeps at bay (as its “other/s”). 2.3. Dialogical philosophy of difference and emancipatory post/metaphysics Dialogic understanding of/in our times and genuine dialogical activity necessitates a philosophical psychology of difference in that dialogue is neither a modernist “meta-discourse/narrative”, nor a postmodernist “mega-metaphor”. It requires the incorporation/embodiment of a dynamic, non-essentialist and non-foundationalist metaphysics, and “naturalization” of a relationally perspectival “frame of mind”, both of which are inherently moral, critically political, authentically relational, and integrally pluralistic. Such philosophical and conceptual thinking would be compatible with both all the previously listed explicit/implicit features of dialogue and the radical inclusion of all alterity that has been divided/omitted/excluded from the mono-logic of psychology. In other words, potentially dialogical psychological discourses can no longer ignore the partiality and the locality of, and rely on, its given/inherited monologically fabricated knowledge-practice products. Unfortunately, they already are overgeneralized and universalized, whether about/in the centre, or foreground (i.e., the body, the individual, Ego, the self, conscious mind), about/in the periphery, or background (i.e., the environment, society, Alter, other/Other, unconscious mind), or about/in “process” in linear time (i.e., progress, adaptation, internalization, individuation, emancipation, civilization, democratization). So that, if only jointly reflected (deconstructive-reconstructive-inventive) efforts simultaneously are made towards such transformative transformations, then the constitutive role of “radical otherness/difference” within the changing material-social-cultural human dialogic life-worlds would gain central epistemological-ontological-ethicalaesthetical-practical importance in psychology. Absolutely not before. The entire monological mentality, inquiry, and

techne of psychology as a communicative whole demand radical (or not so) change to properly welcome dialogue for enabling human transformations, as I will elaborate further. 2.4. Dialogically transformative dialogues and human transformations Psychological dialogues happen with a life of their own making insufficient/irrelevant the dysfunctional dichotomies drawn by “old” (epistemological/ontological) anxieties of “darkness” and uncertainty. Hence, in my view, the (un)consciously “speaking (but also reading/writing/ acting/making) subjects” of/for dialogic psychological accounts need to move beyond the old (“representational”) mappings that erroneously stabilize and parse its dynamic and silenced vast territory. So I think that the generative “conceptual matrix” with its generic concepts and language (of connections, translations, and interpretations with high inclusivity of, and functional equivalence between, the discourses, worldviews, paradigms, theories, models, and metaphors, etc.) that I proposed elsewhere (e.g., Gülerce, 1997) intrinsically addresses such a challenge. Through the “progressive” and refractive optic of transformational epistemology/ontology a tria/multi-logical approximation of the accuracy of the content (ontological and ecological validity) gains equal importance as much as the suitability of the form(epistemological and technical precision) in their dialogical co-constitution for legitimacy and accountability of dialogical knowledge. In that, psychological dialogues (as actual human condition/phenomena and discourses about them), simultaneously and all at once, are inner outer, individual collective, visible invisible, present absent, here there, now then, self other, conscious unconscious, intentional unintentional, real irreal, rational irrational, material spiritual, microcosmic macrocosmic, sensical nonsensical, objective subjective, singular normative, particular general, private public, and so forth. 2.5. Coordinations and orchestrations of psychological discourses and realities The psychological enterprise already has turned into a giant hyper(active)text (similar to Gargantua in reference to Bakhtin’s use of a gigantic king in Rabelais), by rapidly producing nothing but a cacophony of monologues, and growing without developing, let alone “dialoging”. Ironically, Bakhtin was particularly keen on Dostoevsky’s orchestration of the characters in his heteroglossic novels. However, this cannot be possibly heard, perhaps, if the reader is “deaf”, or has a mono-logic “ear”, to his polyphonic “music”. Thus, partially in response to the rationalist and pragmatist concerns to transcribe/map and to coordinate, and not only attuned to such anxieties of “disorder” and aspirations to “conduct”, but also to its severe allergy to its non-self others (i.e., history of human thought, critical psychoanalysis, arts and literature, etc.) that have been explicitly/implicitly evident in the general discourse of psychology, I offered a pluralist hermeneutic “tool-kit” (e.g., Gülerce, 1997, 2010).

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This relationally and communicationally sensitive and parsimoniously generative conceptual matrix, I propose, is not only compatible with, but also inhabits Bakhtinian dialogicalism/dialogicality as one of its grounding principles and reason d’etre. Thus, it is potentially enabling for the relational concept of dialogue to enter volitionally the psychological discourse on (un/conscious) “human mind” through its hegemonically physicalist/neurobiologist materialist/concrete “human (person/society)-engineering/constructing” discourse. It looks for not only further comprehensiveness and accuracy of knowledge, but also transformative connectivity/solidarity and self-(dis)organizing complexity/simplicity of our human(e) transformations as irreducible experience. Let us now turn to our joint rendition of this multi-loci and multi-discursive perspectival perspective, and how it might be used as a “speaking transitional/transformational subject-object” of/for psychological translations that might be functional beyond the level of intertextuality in much broader reality of human dialogues. 3. Human? Human dialogues? Bakhtin has many seductive and sedative offerings with respect to many polarized tensions which occupy the knowledge-practice field, such as internal vs. external, self vs. other, individual vs. soci(et)al, singular vs. general, descriptive vs. normative, nature vs. culture, static vs. dynamic, mind vs. body, and so on. Yet, despite all its richness, the concept of dialogue also has its limitations for psychology. Psychology already is an alien and (self-)alienated discourse of/for a peculiarly epistemic subject. Whereas dialogue, clearly being discourse-based, or discoursedriven, brings along additional, but different kinds of distanciation, detachment, alienation, and isolation of the (“subject-ive”) self. It understandably forms/fits “intertextuality” (Kristeva, 1980). However, the I, as firstperson singular pronoun, is the subject of the English grammar, but not the “actor” (who speaks/writes) of the “linguistic activity”, for instance, let alone the actual activity and reality referred to outside the text. Not even in Bakhtin’s literary analysis, the hero(s) of the novel are “identical” to its author, for instance, nor Bakhtin to Dostoevsky, let alone the reader to Ivan of The Brothers Karamazov. Dialogical psychological analyses, therefore, need to move beyond merely looking at the intra-personal/”inner processes “of traditional psychology (placing society/ “outside in” the individual), and the “dead structures” of textuality, or of social positions in discourses as the “messenger objects” that cannot speak as in discourse analysis (turning the psyche “inside–out”). The magic of human dialogicality demands psychology to take into account the complex intertwining and dynamic transformations of the ontologically different phenomenadi.e., material (physical/natural), social, culturaldat simultaneously different levels of “punctuation”, to use Bateson’s word. Thus, the dialogical psychology that I envisage cannot be reduced to discursive/conversational (social) psychology, but aims at dialogically integral psychology of entire human transformations.

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3.1. Unit of analysis for dialogically transformational psychology Thus, even in its broadest sense, utterance/speech act/ genre as a “unit of analysis” is far from inclusively spelling out all human psychological worlds and experience in action, in fiction, and in phantasy of which dialogue is indivisibly made up. Similar or different limitations expectedly apply, however, to other (“object-ive”) units of analysis as in the approaches to dialogicality via semiotic mediation, or mediated activity with (in)direct or no reference to Bakhtin, such as word, or sign. Primarily because we (as subjectobject matter of psychology) do not emerge, “live” and “die” (metaphorically/symbolically) solely in a “social world” of, we are subjected to, others’ words, guiding signs, and of socializing activities. But also, we simultaneously take part within in/visible or un/knowable “dialogues” of physical-natural worlds (literally/materially) and culturalspiritual worlds (ethically/poetically/aesthetically) from the very beginning till the end. Our (un/conscious) active bodily, discursive, fictive, virtual and phantasmic participations in life transform these realities as we transform ourselves in dialogue. I propose possible use of a generic root metaphor as a substitute “unit of analysis” for human dialogues, namely the triopus that I described earlier (e.g., Gülerce, 1997). In that illustration, each “leg” (with a distinct choreography of its own) as a moment of intensity(in Deleuze’s sense), rather than an independent dimension, is/makes/is made by one of the conceptually differentiated complex ecosystemic realities of our non-Euclidean 3-D three-systemicworlds as the triopus “dances” in that particular moment of historical time-space (4th dimension). At each transformational moment in historical time-transformational space, there is only one real/actual “object-ive” body (B1), n-number of potential semiotic/symbolic/social subject-ive (identity) discourses in competition (In), and infinite number of free-floating ”project-ive” virtual meaning potentials (SN) are in non/un/conscious triangulation as a horizontal dialogue for a personal triopus (Fig. 1). 3.2. The multiplicity of simultaneous dialogues and differentiated realms In this pluralist perspective, human dialogues necessitate simultaneous participation of sufficiently inclusive three-ontological-worlds (uni-verses) and threeepistemological/discursive paradigms about them, which are intrinsically different from, and yet symbiotically connected to, each other that I discussed earlier (e.g., Gülerce, 1997) are summarized in Table 1. The table draws conceptual distinctions between (I) natural/material, (II) the soci(et)al/symbolic, and the (III) cultural/imaginary realms of distinctly different realms/realities/reality discourses of human dialogues, as the experiential/analytic/discursive categories of/for necessary (post)metaphysical translations/transformations. It provides a multidiscursive sample of distinct features, as well as analytically corresponding points of contact (transition/ translation), on various source criteria of heteroglossic human psychological dialogues between and within the

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Fig. 1. Transformational time-space of a personal triopus’ be(com)ing (horizontal cut). B: Body (Material real object), I: Identity (Discursive symbolic subject), S: Self (Imaginary cultural project), and various non/un/conscious moments of triangulation possibilities (e.g., B1I1S1 and B1I1S2 represent two different possibilities of dialogue for the same material object and discursive subject, but two different cultural projective meanings at the same moment in time-space.).

three realms. It aims to point to dialogical relations to inspire and enhance “simultaneous translations” between the present elementalist/analytic/(post)structuralist pulses in our current accumulated knowledge. As I discussed elsewhere, this thinking differs from various other well-known triadic categories and analyses (i.e., Plato, Popper, Peirce, Freud, Lacan, Moscovici, Guattari,

Ricoeur) in spite of partial terminological or conceptual overlaps (e.g., Gülerce, 2010). These spatial realms are embedded in one another such that the First realm simultaneously is contextualized by the Second and the Third, the First and the Second are further embraced by the Third, where the Second is NOT always a mediator in-between the First and the Second (Fig. 2).

Table 1 Some corresponding characteristics of triadic (uni)verses which comprise human dialogues on various (i.e., ontological, epistemological, relational, communicational, systemic, discursive, dynamic) criteria. Criteria

(Uni)Verses First (Uni)verse

Second (Uni)verse

Third (Uni)verse

Symbolic Soci(et)al/discursive Construction Individual/group Soci(et)al discourse: Identity (Subject) Soci(et)al mind (Embedded) Diachronic Curvilinear Diagonal (mobile angle)

Imaginary Cultural/spiritual/virtual Cohesion Psyche Culture: Self (Project) Virtual mind (Expansive) Anachronic Cyclical Horizontal

Deductive Verbal, inferencial Embedded

Abductive Tacit, intuitive Embodied

(Un)certainty

Material Natural/physical Constitution Organism Ecology: Body (Object) Brain-mind (Embodied) Synchronic Linear Vertical, irreversible (unidirectional) Inductive Empirical, descriptive Explicit Deterministic

Indeterministic

Message code Message mode Language Linguistics Ecosystemic Life-world Ecosystemic path Ecosystemic mission Ecosystemic goal Feed-back- and-forth Emergent novelty Flow Cybernetics Bidirectional Processes Experience

Matter-energy Digital Textual Stylistics Physical/Organismic Morphostasis Survival Sustainable reproduction Deviation- correcting Error Discontinuous First order Objectivation, Adaptation Sensory/phenomnological

Uniformative probabalistic/Indetermin. deterministic Information Mixed Contextual Syntax Literal (semiotic)/Metaphoric (symbolic) Autopoiesis Maintanence Disciplinary regulation Paradoxical Compensation Continual Second order Subjectivation, Appropriation Mediated/guided

Reality Register Realm Dialogic function Dialogic negotiation and byproduction Dialogical mind space Historical timing Time line Time-space coordinator Logic/reasoning Knowledge

Meaning Analog Subtextual Semantics Phantasmic Illusionary Heterostasis Cohesion Connective diffusion Deviation- amplifying Creativity Continuous Third order Projectivication, Individuation Existential/reflexive

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Dialogic thought not only stresses heteroglossia in language but also refers to (inclusive) polyphasia of the human mind. Though not all analytically participant “voices” can be “object” to the sensibility/consciousness of the analyst (i.e., visible, vocal, tactile, olfactory, tastable, ESP?) who is also an active participant object-subject-project as a real personal body-identity-self of the triopus. The inclusive triopus leaves no other/Other “outside” as in the MobiousStrip (Fig. 3). Here it may be suffice to note that the indivisible dialogues of this dynamic trio altogether and at once provide the primary constituents of what it takes to be human be(com)ing anchored in historical time-place, and the crucial necessary ingredients of our (singular/general) dialogical human experience. Notwithstanding, the (potentially)self-reflective (dialogical) triopus is only a possibility as in Heidegger’s Dasein without the hermeneutic phenomenology of immediate experience, just as the dialogue in the absence of agentic and reflective (narrator/ author/actor) participants. To the sufficient “conditions of (im)possibility” of the dynamic process enabling the emergence of self-reflective dialogue(s) of human triopus, that would make us human(e), (forming the 5th dimension). Having discussed the concept’s implications for relational sociality, but also current limitations of psychological discourses to transcend/erode the inner-outer boundary (which to me, prospectively thinking, is a prerequisite even in critical rhetoric) on the way to understand/narrate the social embeddedness of dialogues, let us now think together further about the dynamic processes of human dialogues. 4. Trialectics? Trialectics of human dialogues? Dynamic worldview is another underlying tenet of dialogic philosophy that poses additional conceptual and (quantitative/qualitative) methodological challenges on conventional tendencies in the discipline of Psychology. Thus, just as mainstream social psychology has been a-social and non-contextual, cultural psychology has been a-cultural by not yet finding a proper analytical niche to

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Fig. 3. Triangulation between the first, the second, and the third realms where there is no inside outside distinction as in the Mobius Strip.

cultivate the category of “culture”, developmental psychology has been a-historical and non-developmental over the past century. Clearly, dialogue is not a noun phenomenon or entity. It neither is an event which can be treated as an independent, indexing, or mediating variable/process which effects the individual (self, I, me, subject, other interlocutors, meaning, etc.) at times. Nor is it a dependent variable/process that is affected itself by history, physical environment, social context, culture and other discourses at other times in our analyses. Also, as mentioned earlier, dialogue, as a living process itself, accentuates openness. However, this is not only in the linguistic sense, or refers to the indeterminacy of meaning in semiotic analysis as Barthes (1968) suggested. Rather, it comprehensively brings to the fore the metaphysical openness of entire human life-worlds and experience in time. Let us keep in mind, however, that different psychological discourses presume different human models (i.e., homo-sapien-mechanicus, homo-symbolicus, and homo-interpretant) primarily engaging/belonging to one (hegemonically the First) of the epistemological/ontological discourses/human realms described above. They are

Fig. 2. The three embedded and semi-autonomously coordinating realms of the self-(dis)organizing complex ecosystems of human (psychological) transformations in time-space (vertical cut). I: Embodied mind (Biology Ecology), II: Soci(et)al mind, (Ego identity Social discourse), III: Virtual mind (Private psyche Collective culture).

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often mute/silent about the others in an “introvert monologue” of psycho-logic/logy. As I discussed and summarized in Table 1 that these three “communicative self-regulatory ecosystems” are open to dia-logic messages which are different in kind (i.e., matter-energy, information, meaning), speak different languages “within” their “own” (uni) verses with different degrees of metaphysical determinism/freedom (Gülerce, 1997) and time-space (Gülerce, 2010). Nevertheless, we observe a “progressive path” in modern developmentalist and sociohistorical research in particular, or of several “different trajectories” in general, from the static Cartesian counter-positioning of dichotomic categories (via dialectic, then dualistic) towards dia-logic. As known, formal (Aristotelian) logic of Cartesian dichotomic thinking seeks absolute Truth. Thus its either/or frame of logic is not able to account for “change” (see Korzybski, 1958). Dialectics, however, “thinks” in terms of both, and (instead of either/or) and creates a synthesis, or a ‘third way’ (Giddens, 2000). In its widely used Hegelian definition, dialectical process describes the interaction, and resolution between a point (thesis, being) and its counterpoint (antithesis, nothing) into a compromise or other state of agreement (synthesis, becoming) via conflict and tension. Thus, unlike dialectic materialism of Engels and Marx, it is dialectic idealism. As Gadamer (1976, p. 16) noted, “it is in the nature of spirit to sustain contradiction and to maintain itself precisely therein as the speculative unity of things opposed to each other”. Bakhtin, however, conceived dialectics of dialogue as two forces analogous to the physical forces centripetal (emotional forces tending towards convergence, consistency) and centrifugal (emotional forces tending towards outward growth, unity). Just like the dualistic logic of Yin and Yang, in Bakhtin’s dynamic understanding, there is no ultimate resolution, but ceaseless battle and struggle. In my conceptualization, dialogic does not (necessarily) require polarized binaries (as in Cartesian mentalism, or structuralism) of presupposed totalizing unities where both ends (thesis and its negation) are true. Quite to the contrary. Not even the fuzzy logic inbetween the both opposing ends of a linear line of developmental continuum can describe dialogue, let alone their convergence or unification. On the other hand, trialectics is a rather novel and obscure concept that also developed in physics to overcome the tension between the poles (Horn, 1983; Ichazo, 1976, 1982) and spread to couple of other fields. In the logic of trialectics, “there are no ‘things’ in the world other than change, movement or process. It concerns “the change from one material manifestation point to another” (Ichazo, 1982, p. 74). Thus, I find it more “instrumental” to modify and utilize in making conceptual distinctions and transformative translations between its realms/discourses. At the final analysis, all these logics of “dynamic motion” are based on “mechanisms” of “change” which presuppose, are commensurable with, a dynamic, but reductive, closed and mechanistic physical worldview. The physical and semiotic systems by themselves are “closed” to human apprehension of meaning, though they may be open to information as in the Second world and to matter-energy as in the First world. Thus, they find room only within the

analytical space of the First (material, “object-ive”) realm as limited steps (“special case”) among the movements of the “first leg” of the triopus. Elsewhere, I discussed the reasoning behind my settling with the concept of “transformation” over other available “change” and “movement” metaphors in developmental thinking, and hence, how it differs from them (e.g., Gülerce, 1997). What concerns us the most here, however, is what psychologists can say about our becoming and sustaining human(e) in dialogues in terms of dialogic epistemology ontology aesthetics praxis ethics of our everyday lives. That is what we turn to next; conditions of (im)possibility for transformational trialectics to function transformatively in that direction. 4.1. Transformative? Transformative trialectics of human dialogicality? In its wide use, dialogue often presupposes the reconciliation between two a priori and conflictual (artificially dialectical) discursive positions/roles and a mediation object such as a word, utterance, language, tool, activity, symbolic action, etc. In my view (and apart from the point that I made about the source of tension/motion), the discursive tension they describe does not inclusively represent/reflect all the three realms that I described. Hence, the tension/difference to be negotiated does not provide/represent sufficient conditions of our human ontology, as they all belong to the Second (symbolic, “subject-ive”) realm of soci(et)al discourses at various points of layers or levels. Speaking of levels, on the other hand, even the (so-called agency-enabling) co-constructivist/interactionist accounts of bridging the individual and the social (using the mechanisms of adaptation, internalization, appropriation, socialization, etc.), disables human agency and constrains creative novelty. They position the individual and the structures of society/culture asymmetrically and on the vertical trialectics as in parent-child, teacher-learner, therapist-client, researcher-“participant” dialogues. Research often overlooks the mediating role of their (impartial) psychological discourse (psy-complex) in action, from the moment of question to the interpretation, which “speaks” for the silent/ silenced/voiceless “participants”. I drew attention to, for instance, how the “development” discourse of mainstream social sciences further silences/omits human subject-ivities in the interest of attaining/sustaining its object-ives on micro-mezzo-macro (sociopolitical) scales and levels (e.g., Gülerce, 2009b). Since I also described my concept of transformational trialectics as a pluralist logic (of difference/different logics) in relation to other types of logic elsewhere (e.g., Gülerce, 2010), I here will highlight only few interrelated points of contact with psychological accounts of dialogicality. Transformational trialectics better relates to the notion of differential difference than misguiding Cartesian dichotomies, and cliché Hegelian polarities which are not even negations of each other, and hence is more in line with Derrida’s différance. It operates within the (un)penetrable/(un)knowable transformational space of the “differences that make difference”. Dynamic change via desire for “inclusively” conjoint

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communica(tive ac)tion itself is the motive, not the struggle as in dialectics or the balancing of energy within trialectics. Neither “totalizing unity” is possible as in dialectical synthesis, or “balance” as in trialectical equilibrium. Unification/ integration is not (idealistically) sought even if illusory conditions of (im)possibility could be actualized. But, authenticity, attunement, accuracy, congruency, synchronicity, aesthetics and ethics of dialogical communication gain higher priority and more significance. That is also why true appreciation of dialogicality requires not only apprehension of dynamic (post)metaphysics and (“cognitive”) epistemology, but also dialogically relational ontology, aesthetics, ethics and praxis. On the other hand, the prefix tri-should not be misleading in that trialectics actually operates as a multiplectics. Although with different concerns, in effect, Kristeva (1980) coined the term polylogue in place of Bakhtin’s dialogue, for it actually is polyphonic as in Dostoevsky’s style. Let us now proceed with how I conceptualize dialogue as inhabited within the dialogical habitus of transformative transformations of human difference. As mentioned, it is by definition, or by necessity of its spatial logic, simultaneously involves multiple logics. The multiplicity in question is not only in number of spatial points, I, identity, or social positions, or moments in time, but also in terms of (post-metaphysical) ontological kinds that I described. Transformational space always corresponds to more than two in/visible “dialogic participants”, let alone the so-called other/Other, which needs to belong to all three realms, described. In effect, the prefix dia- means thoroughly/ through. Yet, role-reversal, de-placement, de-centring, so to speak, or inclusion (even as a reserved “empty space” for the unknown/unknowable and doubt)is not an exceptional case, or rare opportunity (like carnival/esque) in my theorizing. Dialogue always takes place horizontally within any given triopus at any given historical time-place since all voices and the sounds of silence are included. Even at the level of micro-analytical punctuation, or in the smallest scale, of the triopus, all three “legs” coexist and participate at equal status at all times. That is to say that life (of the triopus) is trialecticaldi.e., simultaneously monological (the First), dialogical (the Second), and illogical (the Third) between its two fundamental punctuation points; from the primordial phenomenological dialogue of embodiment at its “birth” until the premortem existential dialogic moment of its “death”. Thus, none of the three analytical spheres (i.e., material, symbolic, and imaginary) has an a priori privileged status or ontogenetic priority over the other two. They conjointly work from their own realms toward simultaneous and horizontally dialogic translations in (non) sense making (without needing a central information processor/prompter/interpreter). For instance, the (bodily/ material) “object” and the (discursive/symbolic) “subject” engage in co-constructive/constitutive communication loop of objectivation subjectivation. The “subject” and the (psychic, cultural) “project”, on the side, form their communicative coalition of self-idealization projectivation, while the “object” and the “project” simultaneously are interlocked in the collusion of somatization disposition (Fig. 4).

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Fig. 4. Transformative triangulation in-between the object (O) of the first realm, subject (S) of the second realm and the project (P) of the third realm. OS: Subjectivation, SO: Objectivation, PO: (Psycho-)somatization, OP: (Somatic-)disposition, SP: Self imagination, PS: Projectivation.

Whereas the prefix tri-, as in triangulation, is no coincidence, as in triopus, dia-logical activity might occur between many analytical triopi involved as participants from different pretextual, textual, contextual, subtextual, nontextual and extratextual levels of transformational (horizontal/vertical) trialectics of many trajectories in flux. The dia-logical correspondents in domain simultaneously “use” three distinct languages and logics, which are unique to each dialogically ecosystemic sphere (see Table 1) during this joint communicative activity. In sum, vertical trialectics minds the epistemic/ontic gaps between the so-called inside-outside borders of the triopus at various analytical levels. For instance, there is no omnipresent moral/spiritual/cultural other/Other outside the infinite Third realm, just as there is no omnipotent magic psychic self inside of it. They are the same and the one, though may not be available to the conscious awareness (i.e., repressed, suppressed, displaced, projected, etc.). Similarly, the I non-I is in continual negotiation of the Second domain of sociality. Each ideological/ institutional discourse/social context contributes in the construction of its own “normative” subject as each subject is governed, ruled by, and identifies with, an available discursive activity at any given moment in time-space. As the word identification should suggest, there can be no single essentialist identity category, but simultaneously nnumber of potential I-points in n-number of social/ideological discourses in the Second time-space. The dynamic processes between the three domains (i.e., objectivation, subjectivation and projectivation) simultaneously communicate/negotiate through the horizontal trialectics, as triopus moves within the 4th dimension of dialogical time-space. Dialogues happen as (im)possible contingency of the synchronicity (“jumping together”) of the three “legs” of the triopus that I termed reflexive consilience (e.g., Gülerce, 2010). Let us note, however, that in all expressions (visual/verbal) of images, all imaginary intended meaning potentials of the present are mediated and reduced into some available and

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idealized order of “meaning-full/meaning-less” discourses of the past. Yet, all meaning (“lost in reduction”, but in trialectical translations) is made/found/exchanged/preserved within the Third domain together with the ones about the future. Transformative trialectics leaves no “empty” space as the Third realm embraces and diffuses with/in-between the spheres (as present absence/absent presence) at all moments in time (past, present and future). 4.2. At the end/towards a “beginning”? At the outset and elsewhere, I ventured some remarks on strong disciplinary conventions of psychology which have been put under scrutiny over the several decades from various (i.e., constructivist, social contructionist, feminist, critical, cultural, sociohistorical, discursive, and the like) points of view. Most of these accounts seem to be allured by Bakhtin’s utterance/discourse-based concept of dialogicality for different reasons or in different ways, but they share the common “target” of the mainstream discourse that represses diversity. As I observe, however, interpellation (Althusser) in habitual practices seem to unwittingly work towards resistance even during the welcoming/celebrating the concept of dialogue at the surface as in the dialogicality rhetoric. Thus, I claim, on the one hand, that it is yet too soon to say that dialogic orientation and style has been fully grasped, or holistically incorporated and infused in knowledge making/practicing in psychology, which still carries its primordial monologicality. On the other hand, I find the concept as an extremely heuristic device, not only for its confrontative potentials for some significant limitations of psychology, but also for its transformative potentials. Thus, I hermeneutically reflect on psychological discourses and its psycho-logic in dialogue with dia-logic, as the logic behind this discursive object of desire (Lacanian “empty signifier”?), with/in transformative trialectics that reframes and redefines the both, as it transforms itself. Therefore, in this reflective paper, I focus on the larger picture to face the complexity in this (im)possibly “dialogical” meeting of extremely specialized/fragmented psychology (as multiplicity of monologues) and the concept of dialogic. Since prospective attempts towards genuinely dialogical psychologies/psychological dialogues call for various modifications “(transformations”) on both parties on various accounts, I triangulate this exciting novel “doublesided” signifier“ object” (Lacanian “mirror”?) of the notion of dialogicality as a discursive object to signify the “subject” that psychology constructs as a hermeneutic sign of psychology’s monological “self”(-culture). Thus, I find it important to further differentiate and claim a distinct analytical space for the Third realm of culture. Especially because, it is this ocean of free-floating meaning potentials that provides enormous space not only for liberation/freedom of human agency and for unique creative power to subvert/transform the social, discursive orders, but also to cohere human populations via the preservation and the making of shared humane values. Dialogic meaning (making) is not only a bi-directionally sensual/phenomenological and designative/referential speech act/event, but also and perhaps more importantly, is

an existential and reflexively ethical/moral endeavour. That is precisely why I defined the personal self as nothing but “private culture” (Gülerce, 1997), which constitutes the “self” of any triopus, without perpetuating the Cartesian divides such as interiority/exteriority, individual/collective, conscious/unconscious, etc. The Third virtual mind/world is the singular collective making of psyche culture as the (uni-)verse of the Imaginary. It is inclusive of infinite imaginary meaning potentials of the whole of humanity beyond all soci(et)al order and linguistic grammars at all times-places in historical reality. While conventional accounts frequently use the categories of society and culture interchangeably, they also perhaps unwittingly conserve and universalize the modernist mainstream ideology of predetermined universalism. Thus, they treat society as if this has been, or is, only one type of society, social order (i.e., Western capitalist/ consumerist/individualist/atomist/survivist society) in historical time and global space. Although, indeed, these modern accounts have been pervasive and expansive from the hegemonic center towards an imaginary “global village”, however, they have been fostering “glocalization” instead with further fragmentations and particularizations of postmodernity. “Culture” (private or public, individual or collective, noun or activity) still is seen as if it can be equated to and be totalized under some given category like society, homogeneous group entity, identity, or I-position. Also, these analytical categories are intrinsically bounded to some particular geography or attached to an identifiable and essentializing discurses like colour, ethnicity, nationality, religion, etc. that reify/objectify just like postmodern discourses of identity politics. From my distantiated stance, while the dialogical self, positioning and mediation theories in psychology respond the demands/calls of hyperreality (Baudrillard) of our postmodern times, for instance, they often appear to struggle not only in their appropriation of the pluralism, relationalism, dynamism, and sociality principles of dialogue. But they also need to face strong challenges in their (non/developmentalsocial-cultural, nomothetic-idiographic, normative-deviative) theorization of the personhood and society at the junction. There seem to be serious confusions and discrepancy about the explicit/implicit definitions of primary concepts and constructs of introvert psychology such as the Self, the Me, the I, the I-position, the individual, the subject, the actor, the agency, the conscious, the unconscious, the mind, subjectivity, and so on, in/between various accounts. Furthermore, overall and above or underneath all, it is not clear what the psychological is. A multitude of (un)defined differences and inconsistent usages exist between the subdisciplines and various theoretical orientations of psychology and psychoanalysis, not to mention of other disciplines, common sense, everyday discourses, and the world wide web of human cultures and natural languages. Thus, re-viewed from a pluralist and political-historically sensitive theorizing that I propose, the Bakhtinian notion of dia-logic might have transformative potentials for this discipline of Western modernity in its second century. Notwithstanding, this opportunity/possibility appears to be at risk, if the differential meaning potentials of dialogicality are “lost in translation”, or migration to the

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English linguistic/discursive mind just as Freud, Piaget, Vygotsky, Bergson, Wittgenstein, and some other creative thinkers, while many others silently might be awaiting for their “turns” of recognition, or appreciation if they ever get (un)lucky. We make believe that reflexivity and authenticity is the defining quality of our human dialogicality. Transformative thinking also accentuates the reflexivity and authenticity aspects of human(e) dialogues. Therefore, unlike the Cartesian transcendental, disengaged, monological and epistemic self in solitude, there is no authentic self without another (not the Other) actual, agentic, engaged, committed and passionate self in dialogue. Thus dialogicality of human (un)consciousness cannot be “actualized”, and hence cannot be “traced”, in dead structures or pre-scripted positions of soci(et)al discourses of epistemic subjects without the inclusion of author’s/narrator’s/actor’s own imaginary world of meaning potentials. However, the authentic self does not belong to an “autonomous” person (who has “internalized” others’ voices), but is always conjointly made with inclusion of actual/”true others”. The experience/description/expression of one’s authentic self needs one’s “knowing” who, if anyone ever, genuinely acknowledges/listens/reads/sees/hears/cares. Otherwise, it merely becomes and endures in time as projectivication as I discussed its role in a micro-meso-macro genetic analyses of türban (a type of Turkish headscarf) as an individual collective, private public, identity nonidentity, and so on transformative-transformational object-subject-project (Gülerce, 2012b). To close, let us turn again to Charles Taylor’s (1992) concept of authenticity and politics of recognition. Using Bakhtin’s notion of dialogicality, Taylor defines authenticity as the “internalized” voices of others. Thus, he makes a “progressive” point that identity depends on recognition by others. So, if a member of an oppressed/excluded group is denied recognition as a member of the group, this may lead to internalization of a poor image of the self. Therefore, the contemporary liberal society must recognize the equal worth of different cultural groups instead of practicing the “cultural blindness” of classical liberalism. This is a quite typical understanding of individualistic and monologic view of dialogue and psychologization of sociocultural politics of (multiculturalism) in terms of a single authority and ‘“group”-“identity”’. Yet, for me, and in my reading for Bakhtin, all the voices that are born outside of a genuine dialogue are only fictive, as authenticity, recognition and mutual acceptance are only functions and experiences of dialogue. Psychology, at the intersections of philosophy, natural and social sciences, humanities, nonscience and international politics (Gülerce, 2009a, 2009b), not only has been influenced by them, but unwittingly/unknowingly, has been exporting many of its own products with great political significance and practical consequences to the global society. Thus, a serious (re)thinking of human dialogicality, I suggest, requires Western modernist/religious political ideal of “progress” take an “affective/cognitive turn” and reflectively incorporate hermeneutics of un/conscious affect and the role of anxiety, desire and phantasy in ontology, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics and global social

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praxis. At present, and in my view, psychology’s cognitive/ affective discourse (as an awkwardly moving intellectual triopus) seems at “developmental arrest” in (the concrete) “cognitive turn” in spite of its (“socially avoidant”) aspirations for a “linguistic turn” which is interested in pure grammar. In other words, language and practice of reflexive dialogue are not developed yet because it requires a genuinely dialogical appreciation of the Third human realm for “true” self-confrontations as well as celebrations towards/within nondualistic culture of dialogue. As it stands, this seemingly is beyond its cognitive affective moral development, and scientific evolution and instrumentalist rationality, which split and isolate cognition from affect, and the Self from the other/Other, and so on. Space limits does not allow further elaborations and illustrations of my views on these points, but some are offered elsewhere (e.g., Gülerce, 2012b). Many artificially induced and politically instrumentalized Cartesian dichotomies and determinist worldviews have been globally tested against meaningful and fleshy (selfother) human lives. Even the notion of Lacanian ‘lack’ in avant-garde “dynamic” thinking implies a given order and predetermined whole, or an a priori “existence” of some unity/coherence which is “incomplete”. Thus, the motive and the source of dynamism is to “complete” what is missing (as in the Second), or to uncover the Truth (as in the First) by making all visible/tangible with symbols. Truly emancipated and secular understandings of semantics of truths “critically” and “realistically” needs, as first step, a recognition of the reality of the imaginary and unconscious as legitimate sites of alien-ness/alterity/otherness (as in the Third). Let us, then, end here-and-now by noticing a “difference that makes a difference” in my favourite quote from Bakhtin: Truth does not just come from dialogue; truth is dialogue itself.

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