Hello -- I too was at the Bakhtin conference and would like to take a look at
the Hicks article.
Helena Worthen
Here's the abstract that I think we're talking about:
Self and Other in Bakhtin1s Early Philosophical Essays:
Prelude to a Theory of Prose Consciousness
Deborah Hicks
University of Cincinnati
The self is not a thing, a substrate, but the protagonist of a life1s
tale. The conception of selves who can be individuated prior to their
moral ends is incoherent. We could not know if such a being was a human
self, an angel, or the Holy Spirit. [Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self,
p. 162] "We think we are tracing the nature of the thing, but we are
only tracing the frame through which we view it." So writes Ludwig
Wittgenstein in "Philosophical Investigations," about processes of
social scientific inquiry. We interpretively read social events through
various disciplinary lenses; this is no less true of our readings of
theorists. My purpose in this reflective essay is to read the work of
Mikhail Bakhtin through an interpretive lens that differs somewhat from
the norm within contemporary sociocultural/historical theories of
psychology and education. My essay hinges on the argument that, among
sociocultural theorists, Bakhtin's work has tended to be aligned with
frameworks that focus more on social systems of activity and discourse.
Though Bakhtin's writings do address shared genres of discourse and
social action, his work also addresses another aspect of living and
learning. As they draw on mediated systems of social action and
discourse, individuals construct histories that are ethically
particular and attuned to moral ends. Dialogue, as depicted by Bakhtin,
entails a form of answerability that is morally responsive to unique
others and particular relationships. Considered outside of such moral
ends, social actions and discourses lose a crucial part of their
concreteness -- their embeddedness in relationships constituted by
thoughts, feelings, and histories between unique individuals. The
complex particulars of morally-imbued relationships have been oddly
missing from theoretical discourses about learning in social context.
Considered in their breadth, Bakhtin's writings offer a critical
alternative: A theory of discourse, selfhood, and social action that
draws heavily from moral philosophy and literature, and that places high
theoretical value on ethical particularity. His early philosophical
essays argue that discourse and action outside of morally imbued
relationships might be true of angels and spirits, but not of persons
engaged in historical moments of living.
Phillip White wrote:
> i like the suggestions to discuss Aug Nishizaka, as well as the Hicks
> article - but my first preference would be for the Hicks article just to
> get more into Bakhtin, especially since Judy and others are going to be
> fresh from a conference on such. Could we do the Bakhtin first and then
> return to the Nishizaka? I'm particularly interested on the relationship
> of emotions and perceptions and activity.
>
> phillip
> * * * * * * * *
> * *
>
> The English noun "identity" comes, ultimately, from the
> Latin adverb "identidem", which means "repeatedly."
> The Latin has exactly the same rhythm as the English,
> buh-BUM-buh-BUM - a simple iamb, repeated; and
> "identidem" is, in fact, nothing more than a
> reduplication of the word "idem", "the same":
> "idem(et)idem". "Same(and) same". The same,
> repeated. It is a word that does exactly what
> it means.
>
> from "The Elusive Embrace" by Daniel
> Mendelsohn.
>
> phillip white
> third grade teacher
> doctoral student http://ceo.cudenver.edu/~hacms_lab/index.htm
> scrambling a dissertation
> denver, colorado
> phillip_white@ceo.cudenver.edu
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