Dialogism

Mikhail Bakhtin's ideas on the dialogic nature of language - the carnivalesque, the nature of the novel, outsideness and answerability - have gained currency in literary studies, anthropology, linguistics, psychology and social theory. Each discipline offers its own version of Bakhtin's legacy, but none, Michael Holquist suggests, can serve as an adequate basis for understanding the overall significance of Bakhtin's writings. Holquist accordingly draws on all of Bakhtin's writings known to exist, including Soviet archive material, to provide a comprehensive account of his oeuvre. Holquist argues that while work from different periods in Bakhtin's life is highly varied, there is a discernible shape to his achievement as a whole. The key to Bakhtin's distinctiveness is, Holquist suggests, his commitment to the concept of dialogue, and it is this commitment which provides coherence in the contributions Bakhtin makes to a wide variety of disciplines.
"Dialogism" examines Bakhtin's dialogue with other thinkers - for example Saussure, Freud, Marx and Lukacs - as well as other figures in the history of thinking about dialogue whose connections with Bakhtin's work have previously been ignored.