why dialogic reading?

Dialogic reading disrupts the common academic (and Western cultural) practice of replacing "percepts with concepts" (Bai, 2001, p. 87, 2009) and opens up opportunities to engage one's re-animated perception in reading, writing and researching practices. The results of dialogic reading are a "different kind of academic voice" (Lather, 2006), one that overwrites the "linguistic-conceptual mind" (Bai, 2001, p.87).

I following my increasing re-animated perception to come to the realization that I needed to re-present this research in hypertext. Yet I was well into the process of creating it before I realized the significance of the form that was emerging. Not only would the hypertext support images, music and 'spoken' voice, but 'readers' would also be provided with multiple opportunities to move through the research text using some of the same strategies I used to create it. In other words, there was a congruency developing between some of the patterning which had emerged in my own knowledge creation processes, and the dissertation form (Oberg, 2003).

Like my writing and reading practices, the dissertation would be a collage of small bits housed in many text files in my computer. 'Readers' would then be able to intuitively select their next link, choosing if they wished, to read with the support of one of many possible reading partners that constitute animate Earth.* This combination of thought and listening constitutes dialogic reading, and is supported by music, images, spaces-in-between the various components of the hypertext, and ultimately, the encouragement to choose links using one's intuitive, re-animated perception. In summary, this means that to read this work may require pausing to listen more than stopping to think.

*according to Harvey (2006a, 2006b), the task at hand is in part, learning not only to engage in dialogue with what he refers to as more-than-human persons, but also to determine who it is we are in dialogue with.