ABSTRACT
At the core of the culture-centered approach is the privileging of the possibilities for listening to subaltern voices that have been historically erased from discursive spaces. This historical erasure is situated structurally, drawing upon the argument that inequities in distribution of resources play out communicatively. In other words, those with economic inaccess to resources are also disadvantaged in terms of their inaccess to communication platforms, spaces, processes, and resources (Dutta, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c). Therefore, dialogue offers a discursive opening for creating spaces of social change by transforming the structural inequities in the distribution of resources through the presence of subaltern voices in the discursive spaces. Stories of subalternity narrated through dialogues rupture the dominant ideological constructions that portray the subaltern as passive and without agency. Dialogic engagement with the margins seeks to disrupt the marginalizing processes that are carried out by the status quo by starting to listen to subaltern narratives. The goal of dialogue is not to operate within the structures to continue reifying the status quo, but to change the structures in order to address the inequities and injustices perpetuated by them.
