Fancy academic term for “struggle” – if I am being glib/nonchalant (which I never am, natch). But it goes beyond merely ‘struggle’, to talk about how actors are transformed (get bigger, smaller, stronger, weaker, smarter, dumber) for having engaged in battle with other actors, who are also changed.
There is a school of thought that says “anyone who claims to have understood the term dialectic is lying or wrong”.
See Hegel, obviously, but Octavia Butler‘s Dawn: Xenogenesis is excellent too, and far more readable!!
marchudson.net 