Where/when is the Bakhtin conference in Berkeley?
M. Freeman
Judy Diamondstone wrote:
> Paul, thanks -- that's a wonderful idea, to discuss Hicks' article. I'm
> sure you will introduce a different perspective :) but I know it will useful.
>
> By the way, there is an NCTE conference on Bakhtin this weekend in
> Berkeley, which I, Deborah, and others on this list, will be attending. So
> if others are amenable to Paul's suggestion, I hope the discussion won't
> begin until next week.
>
> Judy
>
> At 03:29 PM 2/7/01 -0800, you wrote:
> >On the basis of the abstracts posted so far, I think a discussion of Bakhtin
> >might be quite interesting since his name has periodically surfaced, and in
> >many ways he is responsible for the notion of co-constitution of the self
> >through dialogue, a topic which has been commented on repeatedly on xmca.
> >So I'd vote for:
> >> 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.
> >>
> >
> >
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