The Break of Conversation

The present essay explores conversation as a phenomenon of mutual turning (con‐versation). The act of turning reveals a basic tension between two approaches – that which puts the unmediated turn as the basis of dialogue (as in Buber’s I and Thou), and the present approach that regards speech and the creative text as part and parcel of the conversational turn. The controversy is brought to the point of “break” which is both theoretical and refering to actual gaps of silence that occur at the midst of conversation. Three such gaps or critical silences are explored – silence about, silence between and silence within. From these a general notion of break is discussed in a negative sense of a conversational crisis and in a positive sense of a creative breakthrough.