pausing as a dialogic practice

Once I got practiced at the technique of pausing and listening (which is very different than stopping and thinking), almost invariably, those who asked what my dissertation was about would make a connection to my response, rather than give me the blank stares that often come when I chose my response based on my intellect alone. This integrated way of knowing, which I now use consistently and explicitly for reading, writing, presenting and researching, I refer to as 'dialogic'* in order to acknowledge that it is done in communication with animate Earth.

This hypertext is designed to be read in a similar way: in communication.

* I give credit to Plumwood (2002) for my first encounter with the word for this word (although I use it in a somewhat different way than she does). Bakhtin (1981) is most often credited with use of the word in reference to the notion that all language and thought exists in relation to other thoughts and literatures before, and in some cases, after it (see in particular, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays). Harvey (2006a) also uses the word in his discussions of animism.