45 Ashley Taylor P H I L O S O P H Y O F E D U C A T I O N 2 0 1 0 Can You Hear Me? Questioning Dialogue Across Differences of Ability Ashley Taylor Syracuse University The pedagogical practice of intergroup dialogue seems to me a simultaneously important and difficult endeavour. Syracuse University offers a number of courses dealing in a variety of subjects or “social identities” from gender to sexuality to race. However, at present there is no intergroup dialogue on ability/disability. As I began to consider why this might be, I realized it was necessary to first consider how such a project of dialogue across ability/disability would occur. What would be its goals? And, are there specific differences — limitations perhaps — in dialoguing across differences of ability? This essay attempts to respond to these background questions. It is therefore an exploration of “dialogue across difference” and the specific possibilities and limitations for a dialogue across differences of ability. I take as a starting point Alison Jones’ critique of dialogue as an ideal of equality in critical pedagogy. In her example of dialogue across difference between a group of Maori and Pacific Islander students and their white counterpart we see difficult questions arise regarding knowledge, power, and experience, namely who emerge as knowers in this arrangement, who is empowered, and who actually benefits in relation to the aim of the project. These tensions trouble the aim of dialogue as generating mutual understanding, empowerment of marginalized groups, and, more broadly, equality. While Jones’ analysis is primarily concerned with a dialogue across racial differences, I am interested in dialogue as it occurs across differences of ability — that is, between groups of individuals with disabilities and their nondisabled counterparts. 1 Following Iris Marion Young’s assertion that all oppressed groups “face a common condition of oppression” but experience this oppression differ- ently, 2 I consider the tensions and impediments that seem particular to a dialogue across differences of ability, using specific examples to illustrate my points. This argument proceeds first by considering the goals of dialogue within critical peda- gogy and its different manifestations, looking closely at how these goals are complicated by structures and relations of power. I then explore how experiences of disability and marginalization more generally are relayed in and through the dialogic encounter in ways that at once centralize and distort the communicated experience of minority group participants. Finally, I address some enduring difficulties and, perhaps, impediments, to a dialogue across differences of ability. As I intend to make clear, the complex relations of power and social structures that hold individuals with disabilities in positions of inequality relative to dominant knowledge and norms of experience work to challenge the goals of dialogue and the possibilities for mutual understanding that are central to the project. Within critical pedagogy, as elsewhere, dialogue is heralded as an ideal of social justice, consisting of a mutual exchange of perspectives and a process of persuasion that has the potential to yield mutual understanding. For Paulo Freire, true dialogue