Dialogism and carnival

Reflections on Bakhtin, language and the body

Bibliographic Data

ID20156730
AuthorsPeter John Massyn (University of the Witwatersrand, corresponding author)
Year1991
Volume7
Issue2
Pages132-145
Publication date1991-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Literary Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0256-4718 • E-ISSN: 1753-5387
PublisherUnisa Press (PUBLISHER • ZA)
DOI10.1080/02564719108529977
OpenAlexW1981189719
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited11

After sketching in outline Bakhtin's theory of language as well as the main features of Rabelaisian carnival and its associated “grotesque” body‐image, the article argues that Bakhtin's thinking about language and culture is essentially binary. The paper suggests that Stallybrass and White's transposition of the Bakhtinian notion of carnival into a broader cultural process of high/low binarism should be extended to include the theorist's critique of language. Drawing on Stallybrass and White, the article concludes that Bakhtin's thinking on language, like his conception of carnival, is constitutive of Western subjectivity. This displacement is helpful in illuminating the widely discussed aporia at the heart of Bakhtin's theory of language: the fact that dialogism is at one and the same time an oppositional discursive activity which subverts the objectifying tendencies of ruling discourse (monologism) and a theoretical description of all language

Epistemology · Linguistics · On Language · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Subjectivity · Linguistics and Education Research · Narrative Theory and Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology · Russian Literature and Bakhtin Studies

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