Abstract
Bakhtin’s thought is characterized by various finely interrelated aspects, such as language (dialogue, polyphony, voice), culture (carnival, laughter), memory, responsibility, and genre (Socratic dialogue, Menippean satire, the carnivalesque mode of writing). Ethical and poetic perspectives are intimately connected. An attempt to force these varied aspects into a closed system would fail to grasp their status as nascent theory, as theory in the process of ‘becoming’, which allows for speculative elements, for incongruity, for ambivalence. Bakhtin is a thinker of creative imprecision, of ingenious ideas that he dads in a highly metaphorical terminology. I will focus on the following aspects:
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1.
dialogism and responsibility: the word of the other;
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2.
the specificity of Bakhtin’s rhetoric and the relevance of the Socratic dialogue;
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3.
the anticlassical penchant in his thinking;
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4.
the concept of the fantastic.
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Lachmann, R. (2004). Rhetoric, the Dialogical Principle and the Fantastic in Bakhtin’s Thought. In: Bostad, F., Brandist, C., Evensen, L.S., Faber, H.C. (eds) Bakhtinian Perspectives on Language and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230005679_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230005679_3
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