Dialogism is “the characteristic epistemological mode of a world dominated by heteroglossia. Everything means, is understood, as a part of a greater whole - there is a constant interaction between meanings, all of which have the potential of conditioning others” (Bakhtin 2004 426). Applied more broadly, dialogism is a development out of dialectics, the process by which meaning and knowledge are created through change and the alignment of binary, oppositional forces that results in defined points in history and cycles. Dialogism is networked, multiple, fractal, complex and 'chaos' driven. It builds depths and surfaces, not cycles.
Craig Brandist, David Shepherd, Galin Tihanov (eds)
Collection
of articles about the work of the various members of what is now known
as 'the Bakhtin Circle', other than Bakhtin himself. The volume also
includes translations of original works by members of the Circle.
In a dialectic process describing the interaction and resolution between multiple paradigms or ideologies,
one putative solution establishes primacy over the others. The goal of a
dialectic process is to merge point and counterpoint (thesis and
antithesis) into a compromise or other state of agreement via conflict
and tension (synthesis). "Synthesis that evolves from the opposition
between thesis and antithesis." (Eisenstein, "The Dramaturgy of Film
Form" 23). Examples of dialectic process can be found in Plato's Republic.
In a dialogic process, various approaches coexist and are comparatively existential
and relativistic in their interaction. Here, each ideology can hold
more salience in particular circumstances. Changes can be made within
these ideologies if a strategy does not have the desired effect. An
example of the dialogic process can be found in Nozick's, Anarchy, State, and Utopia.
Engelska D, litt.vet. inr. 30 hp 12a Digital literature 12b Bakhtin and the Dialogic Principle
15th April 10:15-12:00 C203.
'Life knows two value-centers that are fundamentally and essentially different, yet are correlated with each other: myself and the other; and it is around these centers that all of the concrete moments of Being are distributed and arranged.' — Mikhail Bakhtin, Towards a Philosophy of the Act
What is Digital Literature? See http://eliterature.org/pad/elp.html The term refers to simulative and representational works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer. Within the broad category of digital literature are several forms and threads of practice, some of which are:
•Hypertext fiction and poetry, on and off the Web •Kinetic poetry presented in Flash and using other platforms •Computer art installations which ask viewers to read them or otherwise have literary aspects •Conversational characters, also known as chatterbots •Interactive fiction •Novels that take the form of emails, SMS messages, or blogs •Poems and stories that are generated by computers, either interactively or based on parameters given at the beginning •Collaborative writing projects that allow readers to contribute to the text of a work •Literary performances online that develop new ways of writing (Adapted from the Electronic Literature Organization)
Henry Jenkins, Game Design as Narrative Architecture Jenkins' essay outlines a way of thinking about computer games, as digital communicative artifacts, some of which embody stories or narratives. Central to Jenkins ideas about computer games and narrative are:
1. Spatiality: “Before we can talk about game narratives, then, we need to talk about game spaces. Across a series of essays, I have made the case that game consoles should be regarded as machines for generating compelling spaces, that their virtual playspaces have helped to compensate for the declining place of the traditional backyard in contemporary boy culture, and that the core narratives behind many games center around the struggle to explore, map, and master contested spaces.” (Jenkins 4)
2. Environmental Story Telling: “Environmental storytelling creates the preconditions for an immersive narrative experience in at least one of four ways: spatial stories can evoke pre-existing narrative associations; they can provide a staging ground where narrative events are enacted; they may embed narrative information within their mise-en-scene; or they provide resources for emergent narratives.” (Jenkins 5-6)
3. Enacting Stories: “Spatial stories are held together by broadly defined goals and conflicts and pushed forward by the character's movement across the map. Their resolution often hinges on the player's reaching their final destination, though, as Mary Fuller notes, not all travel narratives end successfully or resolve the narrative enigmas which set them into motion. Once again, we are back to principles of "environmental storytelling." The organization of the plot becomes a matter of designing the geography of imaginary worlds, so that obstacles thwart and affordances facilitate the protagonist's forward movement towards resolution. Over the past several decades, game designers have become more and more adept at setting and varying the rhythm of game play through features of the game space.” (Jenkins 7)
4, Embedded Narratives “According to this model, narrative comprehension is an active process by which viewers assemble and make hypothesis about likely narrative developments on the basis of information drawn from textual cues and clues. As they move through the film, spectators test and reformulate their mental maps of the narrative action and the story space. In games, players are forced to act upon those mental maps, to literally test them against the game world itself. If you are wrong about whether the bad guys lurk behind the next door, you will find out soon enough - perhaps by being blown away and having to start the game over.” (Jenkins 9)
5. Emergent Narratives "The characters [of The Sims] have a will of their own, not always submitting easily to the player's control, as when a depressed protagonist refuses to seek employment, preferring to spend hour upon hour soaking in their bath or moping on the front porch. Characters are given desires, urges, and needs, which can come into conflict with each other, and thus produce dramatically compelling encounters. Characters respond emotionally to events in their environment, as when characters mourn the loss of a loved one. Our choices have consequences, as when we spend all of our money and have nothing left to buy them food. The gibberish language and flashing symbols allow us to map our own meanings onto the conversations, yet the tone of voice and body language can powerfully express specific emotional states, which encourage us to understand those interactions within familiar plot situations." (Jenkins 12)
Who was M.M. Bakhtin? http://www.rpi.edu/~zappenj/Bibliographies/bakhtin.htm Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was born in Orel, south of Moscow, in 1895 and grew up in Vilnius and Odessa. He studied classics and philology at St. Petersburg (later Petrograd) University, then moved to the country, first to Nevel and then to Vitebsk, in the wake of the revolutions of 1917. During the 1930’s and early 1940’s, he completed some of his most important studies of the novel, including "Discourse in the Novel," "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel," and "Epic and Novel." He also completed his major work on Rabelais, submitted as his doctoral dissertation to the Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow in 1941 (he was later awarded the lower degree of Candidate). A successful teacher in Saransk during the 1950’s, Bakhtin was discovered in the early 1960’s by a group of Moscow graduate students who had read his Dostoevsky book. He wrote notes titled "Toward a Reworking of the Dostoevsky Book" in 1961; published a second edition of the book, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, in 1963; published the Rabelais book, Rabelais and his World, in 1965; and published a collection of his most important essays on the novel, The Dialogic Imagination, in the year of his death, 1975. During the last twenty-five years of his life, he also wrote several essays later published under the title Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. His work spread throughout the West in the 1980’s and is the subject of vigorous debate and reassessment in Russia in the mid 1990’s (Emerson, First Hundred Years).
Bakhtin can be described as a philosopher, cultural and literary critic and theorist. In his large body of work, much of which has not been translated into English, Bakhtin provides several theoretical devices that can be used to critically analyze cultural and symbolic systems. Chronotope, Carnivalization, Heteroglossia, Polyphonic, Monologic, and Dialogism are all terms which Bakhtin applies complex meanings to, in a sense as analytical tools. The last of these, dialogism is what we will be discussing today, particularly in relation to a work of digital literature.
In the English translation of “The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays” by M. M. Bakhtin (2002 edition), dialogism is described as
“Dialogism is the characteristic epistemological mode of a world dominated by heteroglossia. Everything means, is understood, as part of a greater whole – there is constant interaction between meanings, all of which have the potential of conditioning others. Which will affect the other, how it will do so and in what degree is what is actually settled at the moment of utterance. This dialogic imperative, mandated by the pre-existence of the language world relative to any of it current inhabitants, insures that there is no actual monologue. One may, like a primitive tribe that knows only its own limits, be deluded into thinking there is one language, or one may, as grammarians, certain political figures and normative framers of “literary languages” do, seek in a sophisticated way to achieve a unitary language. In both cases the unitariness is relative to the overpowering force of heteroglossia, and thus dialogism.” (Glossary to Bakhtin,2002:426 by Holquist)
Key Words and Phrases
“Epistemological mode” "A theory of the grounds of knowledge: how we ‘make meaning'." (Pearce 2)
“Heteroglossia” “Many Tongues”
“Refers to the ‘internal differentiation’ and ‘stratification’ of different registers within a language in particular, the struggle between the official (ideological dominant) and nonofficial registers.” (Pearce 62)
“The base condition governing the operation of meaning in any utterance. It is that which insures the primacy of context over text. At any given time, in any given place, there will be a set of conditions – social, historical, meteorological, physiological - that will insure that a word uttered in that place at that time will have a meaning different than it would have under any other conditions; all utterances are heteroglot in that they functions of a matrix of forces practically impossible to recoup, and therefore impossible to resolve. Heteroglossia is as close a conceptualization as it possible of that locus where centripetal and centrifugal forces collide; as such it is that which systematic linguistics must always suppress.” (Glossary to Bakhtin,2002:428 by Holquist)
“Monologue” “Speaking alone”
“Monologue refers to those texts in which (to quote Lodge) ‘the authorial narrator does not merely impose his own imperative frame on the table, but makes the characters speak the same language as himself.’ (p19) Bakhtin, as we have already seen, associates this type of authorial hegemony largely with prenovelistic discourse, although it is also a tendency in the classic-realist novel fronted by the so-called ‘omniscient narrator’.” Pearce 51)
"Dialogue" Not simply ‘turn taking’, but is perhaps better expressed in the word closest to that used by Bakhtin; dialogism. Dialogism is a state or condition, not just an activity but a quality of being.
“Dialogic relationships are possible not only among whole (relatively whole) utterances; a dialogic approach is possible toward any signifying part of an utterance, even toward an individual word, if that word is perceived not as the impersonal word of language but as a sign of someone else’s semantic position, as the representative of another person’s utterance, that is if we hear it in someone else’s voice. Thus dialogic relationships can permeate inside the utterance, even inside the individual word as long as two voices collide within it dialogically (microdialogue, of which we spoke earlier).” (Bakhtin, 2002:184)
In relation to a work of digital literature dialogism operates throughout the artifact. It is in the sense that the mechanics and design of the work of digital literature are also sources or sites of meaning. The materiality of literary works as dialogic systems, no matter what media, is well illustrated by a short video, “Learn the Book”:
What makes a book meaningful in the context of the ‘medieval helpdesk’ is learning the registers of its use. These registers are culturally, historically and socially situated. Because we are so familiar with books as a means of storing and transmitting information, culture, knowledge, and so on we do not question the dialogues that exist around such artifacts and how they are employed in the construction of meaning.
A well known and respected theorist of digital literature, Katherine Hayles writes;
“Let us begin rethinking materiality by noting that it is impossible to precisely specify what a book – or any other text – is as a physical object, for there are an infinite number of ways its physical characteristics can be described. Speaking of electronic text, for example, we could focus on the polymers used to make the plastic case or the palladium used in the power cord. The physical instantiation of the text will in this sense always be indeterminate. What matters for understanding literature, however, is how the text creates the possibilities for meaning by mobilizing certain aspects of its physicality.” (Hayles 2005 103)
So, how does the digital text create “the possibilities for meaning by mobilizing certain aspects of its physicality?” By observing the principles of dialogism as proposed by Bakhtin and applying them to a complex, one could say heteroglossic, example of digital textuality; we can gain some idea of how the possibilities are embodied in the assemblage.
Alleph http://www.alleph.net/splash.html Alleph is a complex labyrinth based upon seven depicted visual spaces; an overgrown garden, an abandoned school classroom, a brick wall, an abandoned workshop, empty prison cells, a landscape of menhirs and an abandoned medical theatre. From these dynamic, navigable spaces eleven texts of spoken and written prose, poetic and dramatic narratives and eight puzzles (game or toy like) can be opened from links in the spaces. Move your cursor around inside the images and when you come across a link a green mass will appear around the cursor. Click on the link and it will open a window of text, audio or graphics. As well as the spoken audio texts; in Rasta Creole English, Persian, Urdu and Standard English, there are also several sound and music audio texts. Spoken and written works included within Alleph are by Maqapi Selassie, Farid al Din Attar, and are performed by Amjad Hussain Shah and coded by Irvine Saunders. Alleph was produced using Macromedia Flash by a production team from Emote Media Production Company in Birmingham England, led by digital artist Sakab Bashir. The work is described by Bashir as “A true interactive story” and “a self portrait” in “a patient labyrinth of lines tracing the face”.
The remainder of this seminar shall be devoted to looking at, interpreting and experiencing Alleph by Sakab Bashir.
Texts Referenced Bakhtin M.M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. 1981. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: U of Texas Press, 2002.
Bakhtin M.M. Towards a Philosophy of the Act. trans. and notes by Vadim Liapunov, ed. by Michael Holquist and Vadim Liapunov Austin: Texas UP, 1993
Hayles, N. Katherine. My Mother was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Pearce. Lynne. Reading Dialogics. London: Edward Arnold, 1994.
The Classroom as Dialogic Space: Questioning How Space Effects Learning
The spatial arrangement of physical learning and teaching environments is an important part of how behavior and attitudes are negotiated in it. Outcomes from teaching and learning sessions are argued here as having degrees of relation to the space the session is conducted in. Following Bakhtin (1982) it is possible to build a relationship between discourse and dialogism, whereby the centrifugal (hierarchical, ordered, centralized) and centripetal (dispersed, horizontal) forces at work in a communicative act or assemblage (i.e. a classroom) are made apparent through analysis of the exchanges which take place in such a textual and discursive environment. The ‘authoring of space’ can be a way of discussing architecture and design in relation to teaching and learning practice and it is upon this premise that the paper is grounded. The paper discusses a small action research based study comparing spatial arrangements and dialogic interaction in learning and teaching environments where heightened dialogic learning is seen as the optimal state for all participants.
Introduction The dialogic classroom (Galin and Latchaw 1998) is a space where teachers and students dedicate themselves to re-seeing their situations by “disbanding their habitual orientations” and learning to “restructure and re-examine” conflicting sets of “perception and understanding”. Dialogic teaching and learning involve, in part, openness to the unknown and a rejection of stale or habitual approaches to education, especially within contexts that involve technology. (Galin and Latchaw xi) In relation to dialogic learning Koschmann (1999) describes it “as the process of multiple voices coming into contact, both within and across speaker-produced utterances”. It is reasonable to equate the classroom with the spatial arrangement implied by Koschmann in that voices are situated spatially (“coming into contact”, “within and across”) in relation to each other. Over a time period of one week research was conducted in four learning sessions within particularly defined spaces on the campus of Umeå University. An overall assessment of each session was undertaken using criteria from Taylor et al (1997) regarding constructivist learning environments that exhibit dialogic qualities. In these environments students are able to
* Negotiate with the teacher about the nature of their learning activities * Participate in the determination of assessment criteria and undertake self assessment and peer-assessment. * Engage in collaborative and open-ended inquiry with fellow students. * Participate in reconstructing the social norms of the classroom.
The criteria from Taylor et. al. in conjunction with those of the dialogic classroom listed by Galin and Latchaw ( “disbanding their habitual orientations”, “restructure and re-examine”, and “perception and understanding”), were used to evaluate the dialogic qualities of four learning spaces at Umeå University where the design of the physical space is questioned.
The 12 essays collected in this book suggest both practical and theoretical approaches to teaching through networked technologies. Moving beyond technology for its own sake, the book articulates a pedagogy which makes its own productive uses of emergent technologies, both inside and outside the classroom. The book models for students one possible way for teaching and learning the unknown: a dialogic strategy for teaching and learning that can be applied not only to technology-rich problems, but to a range of social issues. This approach, based on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, understands language itself as a field of creative choices, conflicts, and struggles. After a foreword by Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe, essays in the book are: (1) "Introduction" (Jeffrey R. Galin and Joan Latchaw); (2) "What Is Seen Depends on How Everybody Is Doing Everything: Using Hypertext To Teach Gertrude Stein's 'Tender Buttons'" (Dene Grigar); (3) "Voices That Let Us Hear: The Tale of the Borges Quest" (Jeffrey R. Galin and Joan Latchaw); (4) "How Much Web Would a Web Course Weave if a Web Course Would Weave Webs?" (Bruce Dobler and Harry Bloomberg); (5) "Don't Lower the River, Raise the Bridge: Preserving Standards by Improving Students' Performances" (Susanmarie Harrington and William Condon); (6) "The Seven Cs of Interactive Design" (Joan Huntley and Joan Latchaw); (7) "Computer-Mediated Communication: Making Nets Work for Writing Instruction" (Fred Kemp); (8) "Writing in the Matrix: Students Tapping the Living Database on the Computer Network" (Michael Day); (9)"Conferencing in the Contact Zone" (Theresa Henley Doerfler and Robert Davis); (10) "Rhetorical Paths and Cyber-Fields: ENFI, Hypertext, and Bakhtin" (Trent Batson); (11) "Four Designs for Electronic Writing Projects" (Tharon W. Howard); and (12) "The Future of Dialogical Teaching: Overcoming the Challenges" (Dawn Rodrigues). A 76-item glossary is attached.
In Kathy Acker's disturbing novel "Empire of the Senseless" Thivai/Abhor are the two main characters. These two characters are products of a horribly diseased society and I combine the names in order to give expression to the absurdity of strict dualistic systems and monologic thinking. Instead we celebrate the wondrous chaotic creativity of relational thinking and polylogical discourse. Thivai Abhor is the revolution of the senses, freedom of expression, the virus that will eat the system from the inside out. Thivai Abhor is a catalyzing enteran that seeks to alter the corrupt system through pirated words and frenzied responses. Thivai Abhor operates in the margins of mutated meanings, seeking a new way of being, becoming, understanding and knowing. Thivai Abhor is the monstrous result of a system that eats its young. We are the Multitude!!!
What are poets for in such an age? What is the use of poetry? If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of Apocalyptic times, even if this means sounding apocalyptic. You have to decide if bird cries are cries of ecstasy or cries of despair, by which you will know if you are a tragic or a lyric poet. Conceive of love beyond sex. Be subversive, constantly questioning reality and the status quo. Strive to change the world in such a way that there’s no further need to be a dissident. Read between the lives, and write between the lines. Be committed to something outside yourself. Be passionate about it. But don’t destroy the world, unless you have something better to replace it.
So with the words of Lawrence Ferlinghetti in my mind, I stumbled out this Christams morning to try and find some batteries to buy for one of my son's presents he was given yesterday (in Sweden Christmas is celebrated on the 24th). The shop was closed until midday and the streets where deserted. The build-up that has been part of our lives since late November (the 'gift of the year'...only twelve days to Christmas.....buy buy buy) had suddenly broken and the suburb where I live was silent and empty. Where was the festival?
Yule 2007
Like a ghost town is my quarter Christ returns to closed windows Population sleeping off pudding Punch and the last minute shopping
Home is quite but for the presence Played by electric bling sounds Moving pictures and a plastic weld Holding the fragile scene together.
Far away from our screens and streets Others are not aware of the celebration Broken feathers gather in dusty townships While sour winds blow down from the north.
Christmas is when the West breathes out Belches and stumbles on its way from work As 'A Whole Lot of Love' plays on an iPod And a million trees wilt quietly in the corner.
Today is not one for blogging. I sit in my office watching the dark grey day outside. It is now almost four in the afternoon and already it is dark. The November of our discontent is upon us once again. BUT, there is one ray of sunshine in all this, winter offers perfect working conditions to the computer bound doctoral student and I am writing a lot at the moment. Over a page done today which is high level production. In the course of my work today I stumbled upon a paper on Bakhtin written by a Russian, T.V. Akhutina (Department of Psychology,. Moscow State University). This paper, The Theory of Verbal Communication in the Works of M.M. Bakhtin and L.S. Vygotsky (Trans. 2003) contains references to a text by Bakhtin that I do not think has been translated into English yet: The Aesthetics of Verbal Creativity (1979). Apart from this gem the paper is a very interesting read as well and presents Bakhtin's theory of addressivity very well.
Through an invitation to link on my del.icio.us site I was made aware of the fact that Gavin Stewart (poet, academic, digital artist and Bakhtin follower) is now a Doctor of Philosophy. His thesis A Homecoming Festival: The Application of the Dialogic Concepts of Addressivity and the Awareness of Participation to an Aesthetic of Computer-mediated Textual Art is online as a written text and as a stunning multimedia work. I still harbour dreams of making a multimedia document to accompany my PhD thesis but I am afraid the time alloted to create the work is maybe just enough for me to struggle through writing a text and nothing more. The fact that Gavin Stewart has achieved such a standard in his PhD project is impressive.
Remix: Movements relative to discourse. These not so solid arrangements hold brief in the stream. We remix along the crystalline fissures which run with representation and simulation; signs, icons, symbols, images, references and the Real. The Author constructs the space and the Reader enters in to it. We take it on. Such compositions (compos (Lt.), having mastery of) are all around us; overlapping, flowing into each other, banking up into the welts of culture, running away into the evaporating sands of time. By the powers of discourse the genres are gathered. Accompanying this we now have the tools to manage intricate taxonomies, systems of global scale, often in the form of dialogic networks. This has been one hue of the broad and more profound recognitions of complexity since, let’s say, 1927. These treasures we break open and adorn ourselves with.
(c) 2007 Jan Valentin Saether/BONO (Used with permission).
“The poet is not able to oppose his (sic) own poetic consciousness. His (sic) own intentions to the language that he (sic) uses, for he is completely within it and therefore cannot turn it into an object to be perceived, reflected upon and related to Language is present to him (sic) only from the inside, in the work it does to effect its intention and not from outside, in its objective specificity and boundedness. Within the limits of poetic style, direct unconditional intentionality, language at its full weight and the objective display of language (as a socially and historically limited linguistic reality) are all simultaneous, but incompatible. The unity and singularity of language are the indispensable prerequisites for the realization of the direct (but not objectively typifying) intentional individuality of poetic style and its monologic steadfastness.” M.M Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel” in The Dialogic Imagination (1981) edited by Michael Holquist (Austin; University of Texas press 2002) 286.
