Key research themes
1. How does Bakhtin's concept of dialogism and polyphony enhance understanding of intersubjectivity and ethical responsibility in language and social interaction?
This theme explores Bakhtin’s foundational ideas of dialogism and polyphony as frameworks for understanding the multiplicity of voices, perspectives, and ideological positions within communication. It emphasizes how responsibility toward the ‘other’ emerges within dialogic encounters, highlighting the co-construction of meaning and ethical relations in various contexts including literary writing, clinical encounters, and pedagogy. The theme is crucial because it grounds language use and social actions in responsiveness and responsibility, challenging monologic or reductionist views of communication.
2. In what ways does Bakhtin’s notion of carnival and the grotesque body provide a methodology for analyzing cultural rituals and artistic expressions of identity?
This theme focuses on Bakhtin’s conceptualization of carnival as a social and cultural phenomenon that subverts traditional hierarchies by celebrating ambivalence, contradiction, and bodily excess (‘grotesque body’). It serves as a critical lens to analyze communal rites, rituals, and artistic works that negotiate identity through alterity and the inversion of binaries. The theme highlights how carnival’s dialogic principles enable participative resistance and reconstruction of cultural meanings in diverse historical and geographic contexts.
3. How can Bakhtin’s philosophy of unfinalizability and dialogic writing practices inform contemporary conceptions of academic and narrative writing?
This theme addresses theoretical and methodological innovations inspired by Bakhtin’s idea of unfinalizability—that texts and utterances are never closed but open to continual reinterpretation and negotiation. It emphasizes dialogic writing as an embodied, responsive process that subverts finalized, singular interpretations, enriching qualitative research and narrative formation in the human sciences. This perspective challenges conventional academic prose, advocating for polyphony and openness as epistemic virtues.