The Communicative Relationship Between Dialogue and Care By Mari ...

or imperative in human communicative life—an idea developed later in this work through Hannah Arendt's concept of labor. The call to engage care coupled with the devaluation of care in recent times presents an opportunity to consider its relevance for communicative life.

Dialogue as the labor of care is offered here as a communication ethic that will assist in guiding our communicative actions in the current historical moment while reengaging the imperative of care in human relationships. Constructing the metaphor dialogue as the labor of care requires the meeting of the horizon of the projects of Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt. The question that guides our inquiry is simply this: How do Buber and Arendt suggest a communication ethic that reveals the importance and interdependence of dialogue, labor, and care? This book provides an invitation to further the conversation about this undeniable relationship.

The task of dialogue as the labor of care is to unite the underlying metaphors of caring and dialogue while emphasizing the necessity of dialogue to the caring relation, thus establishing that care is communicatively constituted. The metaphor of labor serves to underscore the necessity of labor that is both joy and suffering in the communicative lives of human beings living together. This particular historical moment calls for a communicative ethic such as dialogue as the labor of care for two important reasons: First, although care has been continually devalued throughout time, not only do the circumstances of this particular moment illuminate the need for caring, but current changes demand that we change the way we view caring. Today more than ever, people are finding themselves responsible for caring for another and have little idea how to enact that caring communicatively. Second, due to the manifestations of postmodernity, which is marked by loss of narrative background, routine cynicism, extreme individualism, and existential mistrust, people find it harder than ever to connect meaningfully with others.

The call of this historical moment, to reengage care, is made explicit through the unification of Buberian dialogue and care vis-à-vis Arendt's labor imperative. From the work of Martin Buber, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, comes the theory of dialogue that compels