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Neighbors and Citizens: Local Speakers in the Now of Their Recognizability

Few concepts in the work of Walter Benjamin have inspired more theoretical reflections and fewer concrete examples than his notion of "the dialectical image." As a partial corrective, this essay attempts to anchor the dialectical image—along with several related terms, notably "dialectics at a standstill," "temporal differential," "historical index," and the "now of recognizability"—in a communicative practice characteristic of ordinary civic life: the introduction sequence. More than a simple rhetorical act, allowing local speakers to introduce themselves to assembled audiences, the introduction sequence is a complex sociopolitical event in which speakers divide themselves into neighbors and citizens—embodied social beings bound by webs of personal association and disembodied political actors empowered by the rule of law. Understanding this constellation of social and political agency is the basic task of this article.