Rationalities of dialogue

Abstract

This article addresses debates on the notion of interreligious dialogue that have recently determined the public discourse on Islam in Germany. Focusing on political rationalities that configure dialogue as a governmental practice to regulate Islam in the public sphere, the author looks at ways in which these rationalities are reformulated, changed or questioned in different discursive fields. Practices that shape the public role of Muslims in Germany are not limited to institutionalized frames, but are permanently rearticulated in multiple settings and diverse, often conflicting discourses. By expanding the scope of interreligious dialogue, the author’s main intention is to demonstrate how political rationalities are reformulated and rearticulated in a relationship with each other that may be complementary, parallel or contradictory, but which is in any case productive and proliferative, shaping a ‘topology of power’.