Abstract
Today, we face global conflicts between opposing ideologies that may be described in terms of cultural viewpoints and value judgments. It is difficult for individuals to determine whether ideologies are right or wrong because each ideology has its own worldview and sense of justice. Psychologists have an urgent mission to defuse the likelihood of fatal clashes between opposing cultural perspectives (ideologies), and to propose paradigms for peaceful coexistence. This paper examines the series of papers (Oh, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 51, 2017; Sakakibara, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 51, 2017; Watanabe, Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 51, 2017) contributed to this volume that investigate the effects of high school and university educational programs promoting productive dialogue aimed at bridging, or transcending, conflicting perspectives among Japanese, Chinese, and Korean students. Here, I have evaluated the capacity of these educational programs to coordinate opposing cultural ideologies using the framework of Bakhtin’s theories of dialogue and estrangement. Bakhtin viewed discourse with others who had opposing viewpoints as an opportunity to learn to overcome the one-sidedness of ideology, which ensues from automatic value judgments made by each speaker according to their culture, and he affirmed the value of flexible attitudes toward opposing viewpoints. In this paper, I review Bakhtin’s theories relating to communication in a context of different cultural viewpoints, assess the general values of the educational practices mentioned above, and propose new concepts for applying these methods to other educational fields in the future using Bakhtin’s theoretical viewpoints.
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Notes
According to Bakhtin, internal dialogues with imaginary others originate in dialogue with real outer others (Bakhtin 1984a pp.72–75). Thus, there is basically no conceptual difference between these dialogues; the point is that there are possibilities for unfolding a unique internal discourse for each speaker, one that does not always accord with outer, public discourse.
Bakhtin (Vološinov) ’s term “ideology” indicated the symbolic associations of meanings that particular social members expect to share with each other (Vološinov 1986 pp.9–11). Bakhtin (1981 pp.348–349; 1984a p.207 p.236) also used “‘ideology” to indicate a more systemic worldview, and he distinguished it from unsystematic views of individual concrete events in everyday life. I use this term for an individual’s systemic worldview, nurtured in each speaker’s cultural environment, one that is expected to be shared with the same cultural members.
Bakhtin (1984a p.110) distinguished between the Socrates of the early works of Plato and the Socrates of the late works. The early Socrates was admired as a critical fool, but the late Socrates became a dogmatic teacher who unilaterally pushed his pre-existing ideas onto his pupils. In referring to Socrates in this paper, I always mean the early incarnation.
“Wise fools” in the history of Europe are intellectuals who criticize fixed and authoritative customs or conventionally automatic practices from an outsider’s viewpoint (Kaiser 1973 pp.515–518). Kaiser indicated Socrates as a typical figure in the history of wise fools. Such fools had freedom to criticize ideologies, including religious and political discourse, as long as they wore the mask of a fool with no capacity or responsibility to lead a normal life in an authoritative society. I adopt this term to refer to Bakhtin’s fool who shows wise ignorance.
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This work was supported by KAKENHI Grant Number JP26780353 from The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) / Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).
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Tajima, A. A Dialogic Vaccine to Bridge Opposing Cultural Viewpoints Based on Bakhtin’s Views on Dialogue and Estrangement. Integr. psych. behav. 51, 419–431 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-017-9394-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-017-9394-6