The contributions to this forum have highlighted how the limits to scholarly dialogue are multiple and have had serious consequences for the ways in which knowledges are produced and debated in the academy, the media, and wider society. In this rejoinder to the commentaries on our article, ‘The Possibilities and Limits to Dialogue’, we embrace the stance of affirmative critique in order to constructively engage with the important issues that our interlocutors raised. In particular, we consider questions of dialogical recognition, refusal, and the politics of listening as well as the need to strive not only to engage in dialogue but also to work toward changing the terms and terrain of dialogical engagement in order to produce a more equitable and just space of dialogical encounters in the academy.