Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895-1975).

Mikhail Bakhtin is a major critical theorist. See Boje's Grandfathers and Grandmothers of Organization Study (main page). This web site was created by Professor David M. Boje, March 11, 2004; Updated May 10 2004.

His writing is becoming incresingly influential in critical theory. To Marx, Bakhtin's work is an amendment, substituting dialogic for dialectic. To work with Bakhtin, you need to understand his life story, and how the many terms he invented work together. Definitions are meant to apply the terms to organization studies (more complete definitions are in the links that follow). As a special feature, unique to this web site, I have created a special Bakhtinian Dictionary - Learn the language, but clicking on next link.

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Bakhtinian Dictionary

There are many good places to begin your study, to deepen your understanding of the above list of Bakhtinian terms:

  1. Katica Kulavkova page on Intertextuality - (Bakhtin/Volsinov) references - Implications here for language systems
  2. The Bakhtin Center - good site to get involved in current list discussions, find out what is happening currently with Bakhtin's work
  3. The Bakhtin Circle site will give you an introduction to how his thoughts and concepts developed over time. Members of the original Bakhtin Circle included Matvei Isaevich Kagan (1889-1937); Pavel Nikolaevich Medvedev (1891-1938); Lev Vasilievich Pumpianskii (1891-1940); Ivan Ivanovich Sollertinskii (1902-1944); Valentin Nikolaevich Voloshinov (1895-1936) and others. This is an excellent site to get a sense of how the Circle relates to Bakhtin's development as a critical theorist.
  4. "During his imprisonment, Bakhtin began suffering health problems caused by chronic osteomyelitis, a painful inflammation of the bone marrow, and while his exile to the frozen isolation of Kazakhstan was no doubt severe, it undoubtedly saved him from a certain death in prison...." Part 2 of Chapter 2 gives good grounding in heteroglossia and is difference with polyglossia, and an introduction to chronotope. We use the terms quite differently in organization studies.
  5. Narrative Psychology site - Short, concise overview of Bakhtin, showing his relationship to narrative therapy, to the idea that we are a community of storytellers, and that some stories become dominating in our lives; how to liberate our voice from more oppressive narratives.
  6. Some Bakhtin pages - quotes for Dialectic Imagination; Discourse in the Novel section of DI;

For more on Bakhtin in the Boje web library, see on line Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communicaton Research

Send your Bakhtin papers to the http://scmoi.org conference (standing conference for Management & Organization Inquiry)