Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues that dialogue is considered to be at the core of any democratic society. It addresses the limits to dialogue and discusses how the concept of tolerance functions in the democratic state, which is based on the ideas of social dialogue and equality. The book discusses non-governmental organizations (NGOs) fundraising strategies to analyze the psychological foundations of dialogue. It examines how traumatic memory can be accessed through Freud's mechanism of deferred action in regard to two literary works by Marguerite Duras. The book demonstrates artistic works signify different speakers in a dialogue and thus practice heteroglossia in the cultural sphere. It explains how the category of the people functions in various democratic constitutions, and shows that it does not exhaust the existential and political dimension of communality.