A textual dialogue: Bakhtin and Derrida on meaning in philosophic and poetic texts
Abstract
If discourses interact and answer each other, then shouldn't we study "meaning" as "response" rather than just as "reference" and "signification"? Through a textual dialogue between Mikhail Bakhtin, Jacques Derrida, Martin Buber, Tess Gallagher, Adrienne Rich and many other authors, we explore Bakhtin's conjecture that different discourse types can enter into dialogic relationships. We supplant Derrida's claim that meaning is undecidable and deferred down a deconstructed signifying chain with the claim that meaning is dialogic and gathered in meetings between people or between different kinds of language use. We suggest that although poetry and philosophy seem monologic, they can be "dialogized" so that together they contribute to an interdisciplinary context of meaning which enriches and continues our cultural conversation. As individuals who participate in this diverse heteroglossia, our own subjectivity is constituted by the dialogic words we share with other people.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Schrag, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Philosophy
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