Departmental Presentation

Mikhail Bakhtin and His Theory of Dialogism

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar
Jaswinder Singh
Ph D scholar HSS

16/09/2014

Mikhail Bakhtin: Major works

Art and Answerability (1919), Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity

(1920-24), The Problem of Content, Material and Form in Verbal Art
(1924) as in Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Works by M M
Bakhtin ed. Michael Holquist and Vadim Liapinov, University of Texas Press,
1990.
Problems in the Work of Dostoevsky (1929) trans. by Caryl Emerson in
Rethinking Bakhtin: Extensions and Challenges, Northwestern University
Press, 1989.
Discourse in the Novel (1934-38) From the Prehistory of Novelistic
Discourse (1940), Epic and Novel (Toward a methodology for the
study of the novel) (1941) as in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by
M M Bakhtin ed. Michael Holquist, University of Texas Press, 1981.
The Problem of Speech Genres (1951-52) as in Speech Genres and
Other Late Essays ed. Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson, University of
Texas Press, 1986.
Problems of Dostoevskys Poetics ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson,
Minneapolis University Press, 1963.
Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky, Indiana University Press,
1984.

Mikhail Bakhtin and Dialogism

Nature/Culture

Dialectic/Dialogue

Mikhail Bakhtin and Dialogism

Authority/monologue vs. Dialogue

Self and the Other

Mikhail Bakhtin and Dialogism

Is language
Unitary/centralized/centripetal?
Passive/abstract?
Neutral/impersonal?

Mikhail Bakhtin and Dialogism

Heteroglossia
Individual consciousness

Social Consciousness

Mikhail Bakhtin and Dialogism

World: an open ended/ unfinalized process
Idea never finalizes
Sign/Word/utterance has two sided directionality
Idea/word/utterance: intersubjective territory

Mikhail Bakhtin and Dialogism

Important Quotations:
The living utterance, having taken meaning and shape at a
particular historical moment in a socially specific environment, can
not fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogic threads,
woven by socio-ideological consciousness around the given object
of utterance; it cannot fail to become an active participant in social
dialogue. (The Dialogic Imagination, 276)
Any utterance- from a short (single word) rejoinder in everyday
dialogue to the large novel or scientific treatise- has, so to speak, an
absolute beginning and an absolute end; its beginning is preceded
by the utterances of others, and its end is followed by the
responsive utterances of others. (Speech Genres and Other Late
Essays, 71)

Mikhail Bakhtin and Dialogism

Important concepts:
Simultaneity
Architectonic
Outsidedness

Mikhail Bakhtin and Dialogism

Literature:
A mere sign?
Informatory or communicative?
Individual or social?
An utterance/ an ideological form: a realization of ideas

Mikhail Bakhtin and Dialogism

Some dialogic tools:
Irony
Parody
Humor
Allusions

Mikhail Bakhtin and Dialogism

Recontextualization/reversal of figure
-ground metaphor
Center

Margin

Margin at center

center at margin

Mikhail Bakhtin and Dialogism

Epic vs. Novel:
Epic: a dead genre

Novel: a novelizing process

Mikhail Bakhtin and Dialogism

Novel as social discourse:

Discourse of instruction
Not based on memory or mere imagination
Multi styled and multi languaged
Everyday language
Contemporary life
Open to future

Mikhail Bakhtin and Dialogism

Bakhtin in Indian context:

Is Indian ideological tradition dialogic?

Thank you!