The role of Dialogue Conferences in the Development of Learning Regions

they facilitate. This kind of shared, dialogically-structured, synoptic sense of a region, shared between all those actively living and working in it, is quite different from what has been sought in the past. Previous, monologic attempts to construct overall “synoptic” visions of a region (or a State) have led to the production of documents, or other kinds of pictures, maps, or representations, which officials in central offices can “read” without any “lived experience” at all of life out in a region. But, as Bakhtin (1984) puts it: “It is quite possible to imagine and postulate a unified truth that requires a plurality of consciousnesses, one that in principle cannot be fitted within the bounds of a single consciousness, one that is, so to speak, by its very nature, full of event potential and is born at that point of contact among various consciousnesses. The monologic way of perceiving cognition and truth is only one of the possible ways. It arises only where consciousness is placed above existence” (p.81).

We seek in what follows below, to replace the single orders of connectedness sought in centralized, “administrative” views, with the richly structured scenicsense of a region that all those participating in it can achieve between themselves ... if only they can be brought into living, responsive relations with each other.