If I understand you - Paul - you take issue more with Hicks interpretation than Bahktin himself. I ask because in the reading I found myself more critical of Bahktin than Hicks per se. In many ways, I wondered if Hicks interpretation was not that far off - which is where your critique is directed.
Bahktin seems to struggle or put forth this notion of agency in the strangest places. In Dialogic Imagination he seems to really romanticize the "novel" in contrast to other genres. "Love" and the carnival also seem to have this notion of agency embedded within it.
Even the intonation we give discourse appears to me to be overly romantic as far as agency is concerned. I think there are instances of this kind of agency but they are mostly seen in Wertsch's example of teachers in Estonia using tone to mimic official ideology, or the creative use of African American children utilizing words like "tight" - meaning cool. Hicks - with Bahktin I believe - would see this as one turning - transcending ones material constraints.
So, if were talking about the novel, carnival, love, intonation, "morality" etc there seems to be this sense of transcending ones oppression or material conditions. Tobin has a piece with Hawaiian kids use of "carnival" with self initiated videos. They are are cruel, sexist, ableist, grotesque etc but in the spirit of Bahtin, I believe, seen as transcending cultural morals of inclusive (race and disability).
Here, the morality in the early works seems important - a needed buffer in many ways considering where agency tends to be situated in his work. Or with with his emphasis on discourse - there does seem to be this tendency to treat it as having a life of its own forgetting actual people are uttering these words in actual activities.
What I do find helpful with Bahktin is language - our use of it being politicized. Its a struggle - its how consciousness is transferred although not a one way street. We are very much in a language medium and its hard work using words to say what we want to say, and hear what others are saying. But that's also exciting because that how consciousness is transferred - translated.
I know I have had some uneasiness with how Bahktin gets implemented into education - some of it is interesting in the sense of richer descriptions of experience but others just seem immoral like I mentioned above. What I found interesting was the morality stuff came first because in many ways it seems like a needed morality to his other work.
Nate
From: Ricardo Ottoni Vaz Japiassu
To: xmca
Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2001 11:32 AM
Subject: Deborah's article
I read with much interest Deborah's article on Bakhtin. And this was only possible - to read it - because of Nate's intervention sending it attached to one of his XMCA's posts.
(1)
As the author, I also believe that "narratives histories of persons and their concrete forms of answerability are central to a theory of knowledge" and that too much can be lost "if theorists focus their interpretive readings less on concrete histories and narratives and more on generalized descriptions of activity setting and the mediational means that constitute them". But this, do not take over the importance of those "generalized descriptions". It came to my mind the distiction made by Davidov between Activity as an explain principle and Activity as an object of study in his La énsenñanza escolar y el desarrollo psiquico: investigación psicológica teórica y experimental (1988:29). It seems, somethimes, that professor Deborah signs the importance of Activity as an object of study rather than an explain principle.
(2)
I must confess you all that the use of the word individual by the author - to refer to a particular subject - does not make me feel confortable at all along my reading of the article. In my mind individual is to subject as organism is to body (Body, of course, undestood as something cultural and beyond physical characteristics and functioning - Remember, please, ocidental now-a-days body building fever).
(3)
Whe she refers to Wertsch, it seems to me she makes a distiction between Voloshinov and Bakhtin. Am I wrong? I think Bakhtin used the name of Voloshinov to sign Marxism and Phylosophy os Language. Is it true?
(4)
At "Aesthetic Activity" She says - reffering to mother-child interaction:
"(...) words that for the first time determine his personality (...)" (Bold mine)
It looks like that the concept of personality, to the author, is something stable and can not change. A subject's personality changes according to contextual surroundings and situations in my undestanding.
(5)
Despite this reservations Professor Deborah shows a very interesting Bakhtin's reading that calls attention to the importance of considering particular forms of answerability, aside general socio-cultural systems and discourse analysis, relevant to understand more and better human activity.
Ricardo Ottoni Vaz Japiassu
Universidade do Estado da Bahia-Uneb
Cond. Aldeia de Trobogy
Rua B1, Bl. 49C/301
Patamares - Salvador
41680140 BAHIA
Brasil
Fone: (071) 3660923
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