‘If there is no tension, there is no reason to talk’ Ivana Marková interviewed by Nicola Magnusson
Ivana, you have just published your latest book, The Making of a Dialogical Theory: Social Representations and Communication. It presents a dynamic social theory situated within historical, political, and cultural challenges. What can social psychologists learn from the concept of dialogicality in relation to the study of contemporary political issues?
When people speak about dialogue, they often have in mind that dialogue will make our interaction much easier, smoother… that we shall resolve problems. Intersubjectivity is important. Although some researchers also speak about the question of subjectivity, ‘I express myself as an agent, and I also take into consideration you as my co-participant and we construct dialogue together’.
However, it seems to me that what is much more important to acknowledge is that dialogues are about strife. There are different ideas which come together, and it doesn’t mean that we are going to resolve the problem. We can make problems even bigger. The question of subjectivity and intersubjectivity creates questions – about tension, strife in dialogue and coping with strife. In fact, this feature of tension is absolutely essential in interaction… if there is no tension, there is no reason to talk.
Are there any significant events in your own story which have inspired your lifelong work on dialogicality?
It’s always difficult to look at your past with hindsight… you tend to find things which perhaps were not like that, when you actually lived them.
I could give you at least two examples.
The first one influenced me tremendously and somehow persecutes me even now. I was 12-years-old, in 1950. There were political trials or artificial trials in Czechoslovakia, in which people were submitted to torture and death. There was a politician, a deeply democratic person who spent her life during Nazism in a concentration camp, but who also worked very hard for resistance.
I could understand what Nazism meant. But what I couldn’t understand was why in 1950, she was imprisoned and condemned to death, because she was disagreeing with the communist regime, which came to power only two years earlier. This woman had a daughter, who was four or five years older than I was. I experienced this so strongly that somehow it persecutes me, even now. I feel offended. I felt offended.
I wrote everything I could. This was the most drastic case where Albert Einstein wrote a letter, the French president Auriol, Madame Roosevelt… but no, she was hanged for crimes which she didn’t commit. That was the regime in which I lived.
The other case was in 1953, three years later. Communism was well established in Czechoslovakia, and the regime decided to make a financial reform. A lot of people lost their money, whatever they had. There was a demonstration where I lived. I was 15, it was my last year in the secondary school and my father, my brother and I, went out together with the crowd. People were throwing out the photos of all these political leaders, Stalin. My brother, who was four years younger, he was just shouting, ‘Oh, it’s funny, Father, isn’t it’. Nothing much happened. But the next day, I was interrogated by a teacher, whom I desperately loved. She asked me with her very nice voice, ‘Did you go to the march, Ivana?’. What could I say? I was 15, I wouldn’t be allowed to go to gymnasium and to university. So, I just lied.
But it was such a big problem for me because I had colleagues, friends who didn’t lie. I met one after 40 years and she told me: ‘I couldn’t lie. I told the truth I was there. I was interrogated with my mother, and she was kicking me, not to speak, but I just couldn’t. So I was not allowed to go to school to study at all. My only satisfaction came later, after many years, when my children were good in sports, and became internationally renowned as sports people’.
There were many occasions of this kind, which must have had influence on what I did later. The question of loyalty: how do you split your responsibilities between your conscience and others?