Social education through the lens of Bakhtinian theory

Main Article Content

Oleg Osovsky
Svetlana Dubrovskaya
Ekaterina Chernetsova

Abstract

A review of Bakhtin in the Fullness of Time: Bakhtinian Theory and the Process of Social Education, Edited by Craig Brandist, Michael E. Gardiner, E. Jayne White and Carl Mika. L.: Routledge. 2020. 160 p.


The review of the collection of articles Bakhtin in the Fullness of Time: Bakhtinian Theory and the Process of Social Education represents an analysis of the perspectives, main trends, and interpretations of key points, ideas, and concepts of M. M. Bakhtin in the contemporary theory and practice of Social Education.


The book’s nine chapters are grouped within three problem areas, researched by the book’s contributors. This is, in the first place, a re-establishment of those philosophical and sociological sources that trace back to the roots of Bakhtin’s early views that had defined the nature of his responses to the challenges of his time in his early philosophical texts, books about Dostoevsky and books about bildungsroman. Another field of examination is Bakhtin's late dialogue with his contemporaries. Sometimes this dialogue is active and obvious, as it happens in the situation with the latest aesthetic and literary trends in Russia at the beginning of the 1920s. Sometimes this dialogue turns out to be ambiguous, therefore researchers can only guess how to reconstruct it, basing their views on the complementarity of Bakhtin’s ideas and Lev Vygotsky or Paulo Freire’s ones.


An equally important aspect of this collection is a number of articles devoted to how Bakhtin's theory is transformed into "classroom practice", whether it concerns the use of dialogue and its capabilities in interaction with foreigners, providing educational opportunities to the most economically vulnerable segments of South African society, or communication with preschoolers in kindergarten.


The authors of the book managed to create a convincing picture of how Bakhtinian theory is becoming one of the most important elements of contemporary theory and practice of education. At the same time, not only Bakhtinian ideas, primarily the concepts of dialogue, polyphony, carnival, and chronotope, are important, but also that free polyphony, which puts into effect any creative practice.

Article Details

How to Cite
Osovsky, O., Dubrovskaya, S., & Chernetsova, E. (2021). Social education through the lens of Bakhtinian theory. Dialogic Pedagogy: A Journal for Studies of Dialogic Education, 9, R7-R16. https://doi.org/10.5195/dpj.2021.440
Section
Book Reviews
Author Biographies

Oleg Osovsky, Mordovia State Pedagogical Institute

Oleg Osovsky works as a Chief research fellow in Pedagogical University in Saransk. He is a Dr. of Philology. Professor Osovsky is the author of several books on M.B Bakhtin’s ideas and their reception in Anglo-American humanities, Russian émigré school in Europe.

Svetlana Dubrovskaya, Mordovia State University

Svetlana Dubrovskaya works as a professor of Russian as foreign language at Philology department of Mordovia State University in Saransk. She is a Dr. of Philology.  She published books and articles on M/ Bakhtin’s biography, his theory of laughter and comic discourse, methods of teaching Russian as foreign language

Ekaterina Chernetsova, National Research University Higher School of Economics

Ekaterina Chernetsova is an Associate Professor in School of Foreign Languages at Higher School of Economics (Moscow). She specializes in American Studies and World Literature, problems of teaching languages and literature. Her research also focuses on contemporary American fiction, clash of paradigms in literature, and Bakhtinian approaches to a literary text. Her recent book is Chernetsova E. (2018) After New Journalism: History, Myth, Imagination in Norman Mailer’s novels of the 1980s – 2000s

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