No description available.

This article proposes a way of understanding consciousness in both dialectical and dialogical terms. More particularly, Vygotsky (1978, 1934/1986) argues that consciousness involves a number of dialectical progressions (e.g., from primitive to cultural knowing, from basic to expert knowing). These dialectics involve a dynamic reorganization of the subcomponents of consciousness (e.g., memory, attention, perception) along a developmental continuum. Bakhtin (1975/1981, 1929/1984a), on the other hand, draws attention to the dialogical within consciousness; specifically the ideology and values that imbue consciousness as a type of knowing. This presents us with a more "vertical" continuum between "authoritative knowing" (knowledge tied to a figure of authority) and "carnivalistic knowing" (knowledge that subverts and de-crowns our taken-for-granted assumptions). I examine the dynamics between these ways of knowing in terms of both the development and the operation of consciousness. I argue that while there are substantial differences between these frameworks, they also mutually enrich each other. In particular, I argue that Bakhtin's dialogics draw attention to the presence of a sensing self within consciousness while Vygotsky's dialectical method can help make sense of a transformation of carnival and authority from an interpersonal to an intrapersonal relationship.

This thesis examines the depiction of female characters as New Women in a comparative analysis of the fiction of two authors from fin-de-siècle United States of America and late Ottoman/early Republican Turkey: Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905), The Custom of the Country (1913) and The Age of Innocence (1920), and Halide Edib Adıvar’s Raik’in Annesi (Raik’s Mother, 1909), Handan (Handan, 1912) and Kalp Ağrısı (Heartache, 1924). It argues that these novels can be read as examples of New Woman fiction, with their challenge to conventional fictional treatments of womanhood and their depiction of complex female heroines struggling against restrictive social roles, conventions and moral codes. Examining these texts together opens up a hitherto unexplored area of comparison into how the construct of New Womanhood was perceived and dealt with differently (and similarly) in the American and Turkish societies of the era. The thesis brings a new approach to the analysis of the novels under question not only by reading Wharton’s and Adıvar’s fiction in a comparative perspective but also by approaching New Woman fiction by means of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of dialogism, complemented by the work of feminist critics such as Dale M. Bauer, Gail Cunningham, Luce Irigaray and Lyn Pykett. A feminist dialogic approach informs my reading of the novels as texts that present a pluralistic exchange between multiple discourses and that resist a singular interpretation - instead offering multiple “readings”, with a surface narrative and counter narrative: whilst the surface narrative appears as authoritative and seeks to maintain the status quo (through voices that attempt to stabilise the New Woman and assert the authority of conventions and moral codes), this is disrupted and destabilised by the subversive marginal voices of the counter narrative. By attending in this way to the juxtaposition of a multiplicity of conflicting voices on the New Woman question in the texts - particularly as these are expressed in the heroines’ inner dilemmas and conflicts and around the issues of marriage, divorce and sexuality - I attempt to go beyond a reading of the texts as reflections of the biography of the authors or their views regarding a certain model of female identity, instead emphasising the problematisation and unfixing of identity in the novels and their depiction of New Women that are complex, fragmented and contradictory. Furthermore, influenced by the ideas of feminist thinkers such as Judi M. Roller and Elizabeth Bronfen, I propose that the unhappy endings of Wharton’s and Adıvar’s novels can be read as critiques of the oppressive effects of hegemonic discourses about women and a recognition of female agency and struggle. By examining these aspects of the novels, this comparative thesis aims to contribute to feminist studies focused upon the “woman question” and to the growing body of scholarly work on the New Woman.

This study examines the three novels Cat s Eye, The Robber Bride, and Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. It focuses on the female characters and their relationships to each other: Their friendships are formed in a patriarchally structured environment and are therefore arenas for defending and controlling the norms of such a structure. The women continually watch each other and themselves, and through the power exercise of watching, femininity is constructed. Atwood describes acts of dialogic storytelling as a means to find options to gendered behavior. / digitalisering@umu

This dissertation attempts a Bakhtinian analysis of the polyphonic dialogue between Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Karel Schoeman's Na die Geliefde Land and Jason Xenopoulos' Promised Land. Specific Bakthinian concepts are employed to determine whether the films are "apt" adaptations of the literary texts; how the stylistically hybrid texts engage in conversation with different movements, genres and trends; how the polyphonic conversations between different texts and discourses, such as literature and film, or colonialism and postcolonialism, can provide insight into the variety of discourses, textual and ideological, of a postcolonial, post-apartheid South Africa; and how identity crises experienced by key characters can be explained using the notions of hybridity, "The Marginal Man" and liminality. All four texts have key characters that experience identity crises that spring from cultural hybridity; their cultural hybridity has the potential to either render them marginally stagnant or lead them to liminally active participation within their imagined communities. This dissertation argues that even though there are major differences between the films and the literary texts they are based upon, they are relevant to a specific target audience and therefore enrich the ur-texts. Salient characteristics of realism, symbolism, impressionism, modernism, postmodernism, postcolonialism and the apocalyptic dialogise one another within the four texts, thereby liberating the texts from one authorial reading. The dialogue between the discourses of literature and film supplement an understanding of the dialogue between war, imperialism, colonialism, postcolonialism and the Will to Power. / Thesis (M.A. (Applied Language and Literary Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006

My dissertation examines the roles of Emily and Anne Brontë as nineteenth-century women poets, composing in a literary form dominated by androcentric language and metaphor. The work of Mikhail Bakhtin, particularly concerning spoken and implied dialogue, and feminists who have pioneered an exploration of feminist dialogics provide crucial tools for examining the importance and uses of the dialogic form in the development of a powerful and creative feminine voice. As such, I propose to view Emily's Gondal poetry not as a series of loosely connected monologues, but as utterances in an inner dialogue between the dissenting and insistent female voice and the authoritative voice of the non-Gondal world. Emily's identification with her primary heroine, Augusta, enables her to challenge the controlling voice of the of the patriarchy that attempts to dictate and limit her creative and personal expression. The voice of Augusta in particular expresses the guilt, shame, and remorse that the woman-as-author must also experience when attempting to do battle with the patriarchy that attempts to restrict and reshape her utterances. While Anne was a part of the creation of Gondal, using it to mask her emotions through sustained dialogue with those who enabled and inspired such feelings, her interest in the mythical kingdom soon waned. However, it is in the dungeons and prisons of Gondal and within these early poems that Anne's distinct voice emerges and enters into a dialogue with her readers, her sister, and herself. The interior dialogues that her heroines engage in become explorations of the choices that Anne feels she must make as a woman within both society and the boundaries of her religious convictions. Through dialogue with the church, congregation, and religious doctrine, she attempts to relieve herself of the guilt of female creativity and justify herself and her creations through religious orthodoxy. Yet her seeming obedience belies the power of her voice that insists on being heard, even within the confines of androcentric social and religious power structures.

Thesis (M.A. (Applied Language and Literary Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006.

This dissertation attempts a Bakhtinian analysis of the polyphonic dialogue between Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Karel Schoeman's Na die Geliefde Land and Jason Xenopoulos' Promised Land. Specific Bakthinian concepts are employed to determine whether the films are "apt" adaptations of the literary texts; how the stylistically hybrid texts engage in conversation with different movements, genres and trends; how the polyphonic conversations between different texts and discourses, such as literature and film, or colonialism and postcolonialism, can provide insight into the variety of discourses, textual and ideological, of a postcolonial, post-apartheid South Africa; and how identity crises experienced by key characters can be explained using the notions of hybridity, "The Marginal Man" and liminality. All four texts have key characters that experience identity crises that spring from cultural hybridity; their cultural hybridity has the potential to either render them marginally stagnant or lead them to liminally active participation within their imagined communities. This dissertation argues that even though there are major differences between the films and the literary texts they are based upon, they are relevant to a specific target audience and therefore enrich the ur-texts. Salient characteristics of realism, symbolism, impressionism, modernism, postmodernism, postcolonialism and the apocalyptic dialogise one another within the four texts, thereby liberating the texts from one authorial reading. The dialogue between the discourses of literature and film supplement an understanding of the dialogue between war, imperialism, colonialism, postcolonialism and the Will to Power. / Thesis (M.A. (Applied Language and Literary Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006