Monologue has dominated colonial encounters since the Hellenistic empire.

Evidence

Although he never wrote an explicit treatise on dialogue or anything comparable to the intercultural or interreligious dialogue articulated by some prominent theologians and philosophers, Tempels reflected deeply on the encounter between European and African cultures in a way that is instructive to intercultural philosophy as well as the theology of interreligious dialogue. In the West dialogue has played an important role in literature and philosophy since the time of the ancient Greeks and the writings of authors such as Plato and Xenophon. At the same time, the Greek notion of Barbarian sheds light on issues raised by Tempels in so far as monologue seems to have been the rule in the colonial context since the era of the Hellenistic empire. Needless to say, the lack of dialogue was conducive to the death of untold millions of humans since then. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 658

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘Ibn Battuta as negotiator’ theme and the colonial-imaginaries literature on the Americas and Africa.