TY - JOUR
T1 - Plurality in dialogue
T2 - A comment on Bakhtin
AU - Gurevitch, Zali
PY - 2000/5
Y1 - 2000/5
N2 - In the following analysis I will focus on Bakhtin's concept of dialogical plurality, arguing that in spite of his position against the finalization of speech and his attack on monologistic, authoritarian unity, his dialogism is itself based on a supposition of wholeness. By insisting on dialogue as a remedy, Bakhtin's dialogism tends to oversimplify the instability and threat inherent in dialogue. The present study explores plurality as dependent on a shift into dialogue. The threshold of entrance and of exit which defines the'betweenness' of dialogue comes out as a rather problematic, torn link. It requires a constant making of a topic and is threatened and informed by forces of coercion, exclusion, break, strangeness and silence. Plurality becomes a critical trope in social theory that focuses on the very threshold of dialogue rather than on either a simplified and smoothed version of the dialogic connection or on an exclusive version that splits between the dialogic and the monologic in an overstated ethics.
AB - In the following analysis I will focus on Bakhtin's concept of dialogical plurality, arguing that in spite of his position against the finalization of speech and his attack on monologistic, authoritarian unity, his dialogism is itself based on a supposition of wholeness. By insisting on dialogue as a remedy, Bakhtin's dialogism tends to oversimplify the instability and threat inherent in dialogue. The present study explores plurality as dependent on a shift into dialogue. The threshold of entrance and of exit which defines the'betweenness' of dialogue comes out as a rather problematic, torn link. It requires a constant making of a topic and is threatened and informed by forces of coercion, exclusion, break, strangeness and silence. Plurality becomes a critical trope in social theory that focuses on the very threshold of dialogue rather than on either a simplified and smoothed version of the dialogic connection or on an exclusive version that splits between the dialogic and the monologic in an overstated ethics.
KW - Bakhtin
KW - Dialogue
KW - Plurality
KW - Poetics
KW - Silence
KW - Sociality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0034178910&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/s003803850000016x
DO - 10.1177/s003803850000016x
M3 - ???researchoutput.researchoutputtypes.contributiontojournal.article???
AN - SCOPUS:0034178910
SN - 0038-0385
VL - 34
SP - 243
EP - 263
JO - Sociology
JF - Sociology
IS - 2
ER -