Bandlamudi, L. (1999) Developmental Discourse as an Author/Hero Relationship. Culture &...

http://cap.sagepub.com/Culture & Psychology

http://cap.sagepub.com/content/5/1/41The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/1354067X9951003

1999 5: 41Culture PsychologyLakshmi Bandlamudi

Developmental Discourse As an Author/Hero Relationship

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

can be found at:Culture & PsychologyAdditional services and information for

http://cap.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://cap.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

http://cap.sagepub.com/content/5/1/41.refs.htmlCitations:

What is This?

- Mar 1, 1999Version of Record >>

at LA GUARDIA COMMUNITY LIBRARY on September 20, 2012cap.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://cap.sagepub.com/

http://cap.sagepub.com/content/5/1/41

http://www.sagepublications.com

http://cap.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

http://cap.sagepub.com/subscriptions

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

http://cap.sagepub.com/content/5/1/41.refs.html

http://cap.sagepub.com/content/5/1/41.full.pdf

http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtml


Abstract Dialogism views the individual as emerging from,operating within, and transacting with a complex set of socialrelations in an ever-changing world. Mikhail Bakhtin, in his

assessment of the Bildungsroman, provides general schematicframeworks for classifying various types of novelistic genres, and

explains how some genres present a static image of the hero andthe world around him, while others can account for the

emergence of the hero in historical time. In this paper, somenovelistic genres are applied to various theoretical models of

human development, in order to identify the image of thedevelopmental subject and his relationship to significant others.

Bakhtin identifies the nature of spatio-temporal relations(chronotopic motifs) in various types of literary genres, and is

persistent in pointing out the limitations of monologic discourses,as they are weak in temporal categories, and as such are

incapable of accounting for the hero’s development. Chronotopicmotifs are extended to theories of development for a critical

examination of cultural and historical processes in our discourseson development. It is concluded that a dialogical approach canoffer a novel perspective on how cultural spaces and historical

times mediate developmental phenomena and the phenomenonabout development.

Key Words chronotope, culture and development, dialogue,history

Lakshmi BandlamudiCity University of New York, USA

Developmental Discourse as anAuthor/Hero Relationship

Development as an idea is given flesh and blood in various forms—reflected by genres the author/researcher uses to describe these. Genresgrow in historically evolving cultural landscapes. Developmental psy-chologists, as in any other field of knowledge construction, choosecertain aspects of developmental events and convey their observationsthrough selected genres. The chosen genre creates a configuration ofevents and presents a specific image of the ‘actors’ in those events to thereaders. It explicitly or implicitly conveys the author’s relationship tothe actors in those events. Thus, narratives are not neutral discursive

Culture & Psychology Copyright G 1999 SAGE Publications(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)

Vol. 5(1): 41–65 [1354–067X(199903)5:1;41–65;006222]


http://www.sagepub.co.uk/

http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journals/details/j0160.html


Culture & Psychology 5(1)

forms that represent ‘real events’, but they carefully select and organizeevents and even disclose the ontological status and world views of thenarrating individuals. Narratives can be viewed more as a ‘manner ofspeaking about events’ than as mechanical signifiers of events (deCerteau, 1988; Sarbin, 1986; Schafer, 1992; Spence, 1982; White, 1987).

In this paper, I argue that the study of development is to aconsiderable extent a relationship between the developmental subject(the hero) and the researcher (the author), both of whom are located ina broader episteme, connected to and determined by various social,historical and political forces. I want to suggest Mikhail Bakhtin’stheory of dialogism, which is more holistic in its orientation, as a basisfor making sense of psychologists’ work. In particular, Bakhtin’sdiscussion of the developing relationship between the author and heroin aesthetic activity could be a model for looking at the discourse ondevelopment.

Reality through Genres

According to Bakhtin (1986), genre is not only a linguistic device thatcombines thematic content, style and compositional structure, but it isalso a specific way of visualizing a given reality. In order to under-stand and create we must learn to see reality through the eyes of genre,as Bakhtin and Medvedev (1985) explain:

Each genre possesses definite principles of selection, definite forms of seeingand conceptualizing reality, and a definite scope and depth of penetration. (p.131)

All areas of human activity entail the use of language, and thereforeBakhtin and Medvedev explain that genres are not exclusive toliterature, but they govern human consciousness, serving as ‘mind’seyes’ for conceptualizing reality. Both our inner thought and outerexpression possess series of genres for comprehending and expressingreality. Therefore, whether it be in literature, history or in daily speech,our everyday beliefs and philosophical viewpoints are realizedthrough various genres. A genre can be understood as a ‘conceptuallens’, irreducible to neither a pure linguistic ‘form’ nor a pure ‘ideo-logy’, but which must be treated as ‘form-shaping ideology’ throughwhich authors embody various types of experiences (Morson &Emerson, 1990). In other words, linguistic forms, that is, the choice oflexical, phraseological and grammatical aspects of the language, andideological tones are organically interrelated. In various types ofnovelistic genres, literary authors create unique psychological profiles

42



Bandlamudi Developmental Discourse

of their heroes and construct a certain ensemble of social relations inthe world.

Bildungsroman and Its Relevance to Developmental PsychologyIn much of the Bakhtinian oeuvre, the concentration has been onvarious types of novelistic genres, and each type constructs a specificimage of the hero and presents a unique set of social relations andestablishes different kinds of relationships between the authors andtheir created heroes.

Bakhtin (1981, 1984, 1986) classified various types of novelisticgenres. The first type consists of ‘novels without emergence’, in whicha static image of the hero and the world around him is presented, andthus one does not see the development of the hero’s character. In thesecond type, the hero’s development is visible against the backdrop ofa static world. The third type—with which Bakhtin was most pre-occupied—was the ‘novel of historical emergence’, in which the herodevelops alongside an ever-changing world.

Bakhtin’s (1986) assessment of the Bildungsroman and his take on the‘typology of the novel’ provides developmental psychology a uniqueopportunity to assess and critique existing developmental paradigmsand create newer models. Although Bakhtin was not a psychologist,there are valuable psychological issues in his writings. He was pre-occupied with identifying ‘developmental’ potential in polyphonicnovels, and was persistent in pointing out the limitations of monologicnovels. Herein lies Bakhtin’s relevance and creative potential todevelopmental psychology. In particular, Bakhtin’s discussion on thedeveloping relationship between the author and the hero in aestheticactivity is germane to our discourses on development.

In his early philosophical essays, Bakhtin (1990) repeatedly pointedout that the author cannot (and must not) have the final say on thehero’s character and his growth, nor does the hero develop independ-ently of the author and the world around him. At any given moment inthe aesthetic activity, Bakhtin was interested in the changing role of thecreating author, the created hero, the receiving audience, and theirstruggle with ideas and ideals, and the eventual transformation of allthe parties involved. Bakhtin persistently pointed out that one cannotspeak of the hero without considering the author, as he wrote:

The artist’s struggle to achieve a determinate and stable image of the hero isto a considerable extent a struggle with himself. (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 6)

In many ways the uneasy relationship of the author to his hero has astriking resemblance to the relationship that researching developmen-

43




tal psychologists have with the children whom they often undertake tostudy. The child/hero is a creation, albeit not finalized, of the adult/author, always figuratively and occasionally literal, and therefore onehas to come to grips with the child both as an extension of the self andas the other.

Interestingly, many pundits of developmental psychology claim tohave discovered the ‘principles’ of human behavior in their children.Piaget found his daughter to be an emblem of an ‘epistemic subject’,while Freud saw ‘desire’ in his daughter Anna. Darwin claimed tohave detected ‘emotions’ in his son Doddy, and Baldwin identified‘thought’ in his daughter Polly, while Watson offered his son Billy as aproof for classical conditioning and counseled parents as to how theymay shape their children’s behavior (Kessen, 1979). These theoristsargue that universal laws of thought and action are at work ‘in’ thechild and that developmental patterns or progression can be tracedthrough careful observation and controlled experiments. In practice, tosome extent the subjective experience of a parent–child relationshipwithin particular cultural systems at a specific historical time hasbecome universal objective ‘truth’ about children’s development. Howthe parent and/or researcher is transformed into an author aboutchildren and their development has not been an issue till recently inour scholarly discussions.

That the developmental phenomenon with its own internal logic andtime-table operates within the subject, and that the researcher/theoristcan trace these developmental patterns through some neutral appara-tus, is only one part of the story. This phenomenon is selected, high-lighted and given a certain posturing and assessment by the observing,researching and other-evaluating audience. From such a dialogical per-spective, knowledge about development could be understood as amixture of voices. Neither is the researcher/theorist a neutral observerwho documents developmental events, nor is the account entirely sub-jective. Instead, the researcher’s voice intermingles with other voices.The researcher retains her subjectivity within intersubjectivity, andlocating knowledge between ‘voices’ is an immediate reality in a dialog-ical approach. Bakhtin (1986) argued that unlike the ‘exact sciences’, inwhich ‘the intellect contemplates a thing and expounds upon it’, inhuman sciences we are dealing with fellow-subjects who have a voice oftheir own, which must be given full weight, and, therefore, ‘cognition ofit can only be dialogic’ (p. 161). In this perspective, the researcher(author) neither transcends her subjective position, nor is she entirelybound by her positionality; instead she incorporates multiple voices ofthe subjects involved in the developmental processes.

44




In a dialogical approach towards knowledge, words are alwaysconsidered ‘half-ours and half-someone else’s’ (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 345).Multiple voices do not exist in a fragmented form; instead they‘interanimate’ each other and always leave ample ‘loopholes’ forcreating newer meanings. Bakhtin explains that in an authoritativediscourse the author assumes proprietorship and finalizes meanings,and as a result the discourse becomes inert and calcified, leaving noscope for further development. In an ‘internally persuasive discourse’,meanwhile, several voices come in contact with each other andproduce dialogic tension that ‘awakens’ dormant meanings and cre-ates other possibilities for future development. Dialogism considerssuch a discourse as the raison d’etre for development.

The dialogic approach has several other implications for the study ofpsychological development. First, it recognizes the active, constructiverole of the developing subject in complex cultural matrices. Thesubject’s voice and her uniqueness is not lost in the collective culturalflux. Bakhtin (1993) placed a great deal of emphasis on the individual’s‘unique’ and ‘never-repeatable acts’ in her ‘lived and experienced life’,and such acts do not dissolve in the cultural flux, but retain theirpersonal character, even as they interact with various others. Theuniqueness of the individual could be either an active or a passive rolein relation to cultural forces. The developing subject may imbibecultural codes automatically or she may be selective and absorb some,and consciously reject others (Bandlamudi, 1994). Such a bi-directionalmodel of self/culture relationship allows one to recognize ‘compensa-tory processes’ and ‘redundant control’ in developmental systems. Inother words, if the cultural ‘input’ is insufficient or undesirable, thedeveloping person can compensate by personal construction, or if thepersonal constructive process is inactive, then the cultural forces maypropel the individual in a socially desirable direction.

Second, dialogism considers an individual consciousness as beingawakened by and responding to various surrounding discourses.Consequently, it allows for the reconciliation between the individualis-tic and sociogenetic perspectives in developmental psychology.

Third, dialogism has beneficial methodological implications for thestudy of development. For Heinz Werner and Lev Vygotsky, methodwas a central issue in approaching the question of development.Werner (1980) observed:

The concept of ‘developmental psychology’ is perfectly clear if this term isunderstood to mean a science concerned with the development of mentallife, and determined by a specific method, i.e., the observation of psycho-logical phenomena from the standpoint of development. (p. 3)

45




Whereas, when the term is defined only by its content, Werner arguesthat we are referring solely to the problems of ontogenesis. However, ifwe approach mental processes from the vantage point of development,ontogeny becomes one aspect of the developmental study of largersocial entities. From this standpoint, development is not a linearaccount of how a given function organizes itself at various levels inontogenetic processes, but it could be viewed instead as a ‘set ofqualitatively distinct states marked by varying levels of intrafunctionalorganization at varying levels of interfunctional organization’ (Glick,1992, p. 560).

Similarly, for Lev Vygotsky (Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1994) themethod was a central issue, because it must be suited to studypsychological activity in the processes of change. In other words, themethod must encompass the transition and transformation of interper-sonal functions into intrapersonal functions. Dialogism, with itsemphasis on multiplicity and simultaneity, aligns well with the meth-odological concerns of Werner and Vygotsky.

Finally, dialogism allows us to consider developmental discourse asa creative act which speaks equally about the researcher and thephenomena she undertakes to study. The developing subject (the hero)operates in complex cultural systems, and this ‘tale’ is conveyedselectively by the researcher. Like the novelist, the researcher alsoobserves the world around her, selects a plot and identifies itsprincipal characters and draws the parameters within which thesecharacters operate. She then draws from cultural discourses andintellectual histories to construct a storyline within which she creates acharacterological profile of the ‘developmental subject’—the hero/heroine.

Development and Childhood as an Idea and a Metaphor

The history of childhood offers us ample exemplars of the creation ofthe ‘child’ to suit cultural and historical processes (Henriques, Hollo-way, Urwin, Venn, & Walkerdine, 1984; Kessel & Siegel, 1983; Kessen,1965; Singer, 1992). Throughout history the status of ‘the child’ hasbeen changing, from a self-contained homunculus that grows accord-ing to a fixed pre-formed configuration, to a Lockian subject that hasabsolutely no pre-formed or essential traits, but comes into the worldas a tabula rasa. There is, furthermore, the Rousseauian subject, whodevelops according to some romantic plan of nature, and, later, theFreudian subject, who is driven by the pleasure principle. Finally,there is the Piagetian ‘epistemic subject’, who is endlessly inquisitive

46




about lawful relationships that exist in the world and becomes anactive architect of his mind.

These models of subject can be seen in research on human infancy.Over the years research on infancy has virtually become a ‘high-tech’enterprise in which one microscopically examines various gesturesand emotions of infants (e.g. Bower, 1974, 1977; Cohen & Strauss, 1979;Gesell, 1929), and the analysis extends to sub-atomic levels, such thataccuracy and precision become key words. The introduction of thevideo camera in research endeavors has radically changed the way we‘view’ children—literally and figuratively. Thus, the narratives weproduce about the child and childhood are mediated by and groundedin the materialistic reality and ideological environment, and thereforethese narratives are parts of culture in contention.

Definitions of innocence, ignorance, spontaneity, are all parts ofcontentious traditions that sanction some traits as desirable andprohibit others as undesirable. Those that ‘fit’ adult definitions of thechild become ‘childlike’ and are valued, and those that deviate fromthat definition are seen as ‘childishness’, and the former is valued evenamong adults, and the latter is admonished even in children (Nandy,1987). Thus, the ‘naturalness’ of childhood is constructed, and this is asmuch a reflection of adult ideology as it is about the essence ofchildhood. Narratives on ‘childhood’ are only in part about children,and the rest include narratives on those who undertake such studies—their personal and professional lives included—about those whomade such studies possible, and about why, where and how suchstudies take place. Children are or come to be what they are consideredto be by others, and how they consider themselves to be in relation totheir guiding, protecting and evaluating others. Out of this complexinteraction the ‘idea’ of childhood is born.

The conception of the child and childhood as an idea and metaphoris found in abundance before Bakhtin in the philosophical writings ofNietzsche. The image of ‘higher forms of consciousness’ has been used.This is consciousness determined not by a linear movement from abaser ‘body principle’ to a ‘rational state’, but by one that makessundered connections between visceral and rational principles. Theloose connection creates many ambiguous zones, and such zones forBakhtin function as ‘loopholes’ to trigger new meanings (Morson &Emerson, 1990) and for Nietzsche facilitate ‘transvaluation of values’(Schrift, 1990).

We must bear in mind that neither Bakhtin nor Nietzsche had anyinterest in children or childhood, and nor were they addressing‘developmental’ issues in the traditional psychological sense. Yet, in

47




discussing ‘aesthetic consciousness’ or ‘evolution of consciousness’they seem to speak tangentially about the psychology of developmentand in the process create a unique image of the child.

Consider how Nietzsche views ‘maturity’ in his writings in BeyondGood and Evil: ‘A man’s maturity consists in having found again theseriousness one had as a child at play’ (Nietzsche, 1966, p. 94). ForNietzsche, child play and childlikeness are full of ambiguities for it isnever clear whether the child is playfully serious or seriously playful.The need for childlikeness in defining one’s consciousness becomesclearer in Zarathustra’s discussion on the metamorphoses of thespirit—the transformation of the spirit from a camel to a lion andfinally to a child (Nietzsche, 1961). The camel is only a recipient of thegiven values and accepts the burden unconditionally, hence its con-sciousness is passively nihilistic. The lion, on the other hand, affirmsitself by devaluing the given values, and as such is reactively nihilistic,whereas the child is capable of revaluing the given values, and henceits consciousness is actively nihilistic (Schrift, 1990). The camel enduresthe hardships inflicted upon it by the world, whereas the lion estab-lishes its supremacy by terrorizing the world, yet both are incapable ofre-creating the ‘given’ world and establishing multiple and newerworlds.

For both Nietzsche and Bakhtin, multiplicity, indeterminacy andelusiveness are aspects of interpretation and essential ingredients forgrowth and development. Nietzsche (1967) wrote in The Will to Power:‘Inertia needs unity (monism); plurality of interpretations a sign ofstrength’ (600 [1885–1886]). For Nietzsche, multiplicity is the ‘will topower’ and any scholarly pursuit requires a tremendous amount ofself-examination and reflection and a willingness to take varioushighways and byways in culture and history. In a similar lightconsider what Bakhtin (1984) wrote about Dostoevsky’s polyphonicnovel and its ‘developmental’ potential:

Subjectively Dostoevsky participated in the contradictory multi-levelednessof his own time; he changed camps, moved from one to another, and in thisrespect the planes existing in objective social life were for him stages alongthe path of his own life, stages of his own spiritual evolution. (p. 27)

The idea of ‘development’ finds its best expression in Bakhtin’swritings on the novelistic genre, which to him is a radical break fromthe epic genre. He was intensely preoccupied with the novel as agenre, because this genre continues to ‘develop’ and is always full ofvarious ‘potentials’. We cannot thoroughly foresee all its ‘plasticpossibilities’ because there are various social, cultural, economic,

48




political and historical forces that define it, and as a result, ‘the birthand development of the novel as a genre takes place in the full light ofthe historical day’ (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 3). Unlike the epic hero, whosestruggles are over and whose character is forever finalized, the hero ofthe novel is like a growing child who is struggling to find his niche insociety even as his life story is co-authored by a variety of social,political and historical forces. The novel, Bakhtin asserts, is distinctly aheteroglot text; it embraces a variety of ‘social voices’, ‘politicalslogans’, ‘social dialects’, ‘authoritative pronouncements’, ‘contestingvoices’, ‘voices of the past and present’, all forming a variety of linksand interrelationships in a dialogized form.

The history of the novel symbolizes the history of consciousness inBakhtin’s scheme, because only the novel with its competing voices iscapable of generating dialogic energy and in turn serves as a drivingforce for further development of all the parties involved in andconcerned with the novel. This ‘developmental’ potential is unavail-able to the epic genre because ‘it lacks any relativity, that is, anygradual, purely temporal progressions that might connect it with thepresent’ (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 15).

49

While Bakhtin did not specifically have a theory of the mind, he didoccasionally write about ‘understanding’ in the context of interpretingliterary texts. Understanding entails at least four steps for Bakhtin(1986): (1) one must perceive the ‘sign’ psycho-physiologically; (2) onehas to recognize it, (3) understand its significance in the given contextand (4) engage in active evaluation. Understanding is not only a matterof ‘decoding’ but it also entails recoding and reaccentuating the giveninformation. The knower must understand not only the literal meaningof an utterance, but also the purpose of the utterance in the givencontext, establish a relationship with the ‘uttering’ subject, evaluateand relate it to his personal interests and also guess how potentialothers may interpret it. Understanding itself in many ways is a dramathat involves many actors and various conceptual frameworks:

. . . an active understanding, one that assimilates the word under considerationinto a new conceptual system, that of the one striving to understand, estab-lishes a series of complex interrelationships, consonances and dissonanceswith the word and enriches it with new elements. (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 282)

Bakhtin was not alone in viewing ‘understanding’ in a dramaticfashion; Lev Vygotsky also borrowed the concept of drama fromPolitzer and utilized it in various areas in psychology (Yaroshevsky,1989). In his writings on the Psychology of Art, Vygotsky (1971) pointedout that the reception of art involves a dramatic interplay between




sensory perception, emotions, imagination and fantasy; these elementsdo not necessarily correspond, but the incongruities among them andthe oscillation between them are necessary for development. The modelof drama allowed Vygotsky to detect theatrical elements in the transi-tion and transformation of personal meanings (thought) to publicexpression (speaking). These could also be found in the interplaybetween informal knowledge (everyday concept) and formal instruc-tion (scientific concept), in the analysis of neuro-mechanisms in theregulation of behavior, and finally in the history of psychology (Kozu-lin, 1990; Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1994; Vygotsky, 1987; Yaroshevsky,1989). Being sharply aware of the partial fusion and the tension betweenthe individual and the social, Vygotsky (1989) asserted that ‘psychology5 drama’, and that is the only way that ‘concrete human psychology’gets ‘humanized’. Vygotsky pointed out that the individual for Hegel isa ‘logical subject’ and for Pavlov an ‘organism’ or ‘soma’, whereas forhim the individual is ‘an aggregate of social relations’ and the socialenvironment is ‘full of internal struggles and contradictions’. Vygotskyavers that a ‘drama cannot be otherwise, i.e., it is a clash of systems’ (p.67). The clash is intrinsic even to the understanding of ‘self’, asVygotsky pointed out: ‘I am a social relation of me to myself’ (p. 67). Thedrama that Vygotsky is arguing for is not the kind in which eachindividual has a definite role to play: ‘A drama with fixed roles 5 theidea of old psychology’ (p. 69). In the new psychology, instead,Vygotsky directs our attention to the variation in roles.

Thus, we have a clear mandate to see ‘development’ as a drama withseveral actors, including those behind the scenes, and the ones in theaudience, who collectively contribute to the play. In the followingsection, we will examine how various types of drama (developmentaldiscourses) are constructed—some with fixed and others with chang-ing roles.

The Author/Hero Relationship in Novelistic Genres andDevelopmental Discourses

In order to investigate and classify various types of genres in devel-opmental discourses, I am adapting, extending and perhaps evenslightly altering Bakhtin’s take on the Bildungsroman or the ‘HistoricalTypology of the Novel’. Bakhtin in his earlier writings, specifically in‘Forms of Time and the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes Toward aHistorical Poetics’ (in Bakhtin, 1981), and in his later writings (theBildungsroman essay in Bakhtin, 1986) provided a complex classifica-tion system of novels based on the construction of hero’s image, plot

50




construction, specific world view and the unique composition of thenovel. A very sharp and tight analytical tool that he offered forclassifying novelistic discourse is ‘chronotope’ (‘time space’). Bakhtinargued that spatio-temporal relations are intrinsic to narratives that weconstruct about human beings, history and culture (Bakhtin, 1981, p.85). He pointed out that chronotopes define specific genres, and thosegenres that are constructed purely on ‘spatial’ terms present an imageof the hero who lacks development and give a very static view of theworld. Thus, temporal categories are crucial for Bakhtin in ‘chrono-topic motifs’ to understand the ‘true’ emergence of the hero—that is,his development alongside social and historical changes.

Like Kant, Bakhtin also believed that time and space are indis-pensable categories in understanding and representing reality. How-ever, for Bakhtin they are not mathematical abstractions; rather spaceis always cultural and time is historical, and these categories arenot only intrinsic to narratives, but the very foundation for groundingthe narrative. Thus, individuals experience and represent the worldfrom a unique position that they occupy at a particular time in aspecific place. Unlike Kant’s ‘transcendental’ subject, who needs toovercome perspectivistic restraints, Bakhtin’s subjects accept theirunique position in culture and history as an immediate reality andincorporate the ‘transgredient’ elements of multiple voices of thesociety. What type of novels incorporate multi-voicedness? The issuecan be examined in conjunction with Bakhtin’s typology of novels(described above).

Novels without EmergencePsychological Research Narratives as Travel NovelsThe first type—novels without emergence—operate in a descriptivemode, that is, naming and informing with a great deal of precision andaccuracy, and they present a static view of both the hero and the worldaround him. In this category, Bakhtin discussed the ‘travel novel’, inwhich the story is not about the hero at all. The image of the hero isthat of a minuscule and insignificant being against the backdrop of theworld’s vastness and diversity:

The hero is a point moving in space. He has no essential distinguishingcharacteristics, and he himself is not at the center of the novelist’s artisticattention. His movement in space—wanderings and occasionally escapadeadventures (mainly of the ordeal type)—enables the artist to develop anddemonstrate the spatial and static social diversity of the world (country, city,culture, nationality, various social groups and the specific conditions of theirlives). (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 10)

51




The travel novel is details-oriented and highly reductionist, so much sothat typical temporal descriptions are ‘at the same time’, ‘the nextmoment’, ‘a second earlier’, and so forth.

The travel novel genre manifests itself in various forms in boththeoretical orientations and empirical approaches in developmentalpsychology. In most APA-accredited journals on developmental psy-chology, the positivist paradigm dominates, and therefore a tightlycontrolled experimental method is preferred and only those with‘significant’ results are publishable (Danziger, 1990; Parker, 1989).What counts as admissible evidence is statistical significance achievedthrough various computer-generated statistical packages or programs.Kurt Danziger (1990) discusses in a detailed manner how psychologyhas been relentless in ‘numerizing’ and ‘serializing’ behavior. Bylegitimizing quantitative psychological knowledge, the discipline hasprided itself on being an ‘exact science’, and the gatekeepers of suchknowledge, Danziger observes, ‘constitute a new kind of priesthood’,sharply different from traditional theologians or philosophers. Unlikethe theologian who openly lays out his philosophical leanings andexpresses concern over human conduct, the researcher assumes aneutral position and ‘reports’ the results, very much akin to the waythe travel novel author reports about the ‘world’ through the hero hecreates. The researcher also reports, for instance, on how various socialgroups fare in particular developmental tests or scales and so on.Various stratifying factors in the society are reduced to a set of‘variables’—race, class, gender, ethnicity, age, and so forth—andemphasis is placed on differences and contrasts.

Bakhtin (1986) observed that the travel novel also tabulates differ-ences and contrasts in a mechanical fashion and the genre is com-pletely devoid of ‘historical time’; therefore ‘there is no understandingof the wholeness of such sociocultural phenomena as nationalities,countries, cities, social groups and occupations’ (p. 11). The manner inwhich the statistical significance of differences among aggregatevariables is achieved in psychological research points out the lack ofintrinsic ties in sociocultural phenomena. For instance, the ‘variables’that are isolated for research purposes are not necessarily separable inhuman beings. A ‘wealthy white woman’ is a unit in and of herselfand not an aggregate of class, race and gender. Bakhtin pointed outthat in the travel genre ‘the world disintegrates into individual things,phenomena and events that are simply contiguous or alternating’(p. 11).

The travel novel genre in a literal sense can also be identified incross-cultural psychological studies. The Piagetian project, especially

52




in the 1960s and 1970s, set many developmental psychologists off on avoyage to several ‘far-away and exotic lands’ to see if developmentaltrends that Piaget postulated existed among children in other cultures(Berry & Dasen, 1974; Dasen, 1972, 1975, 1976; Price-Williams, 1975;Rogoff & Gauvain, 1984; Steinberg & Dunn, 1976). The assumptions inthese studies are that psychological constructs exist and the task of theresearcher is to detect them in various ‘other’ groups and state clearlyany developmental delays, stagnation or violations in sequence. Sinceresearchers in this paradigm position themselves as ‘reporters’ or as‘neutral observers’, there is no need to discuss the social and politicalsettings of their experimentation and reflect on the research process.The author of the travel novel does not discuss how his hero’sencounters with various ‘exotic groups’ have raised any questionsabout himself, but through his hero he simply describes the lives andbehavior patterns of the ‘others’. Similarly in many cross-culturalstudies the story is about the ‘other’, especially the ‘exotic other’—whether Australian Aborigines or the Chiapas of Mexico possess thecapacity to conserve, and if so in what manner do they display suchcompetence and how do they fail ‘standard’ western tests. The story isabout the ‘other’—their peculiarities, contrasts and habits—and theself is defined only in contradistinction to the other.

Another feature of the travel novel is that it describes the hero’smovement in a very mechanistic fashion; while it gives a detailedaccount of the movement, the explanation is rather superficial. There isno metamorphosis between the hero and the world. Therefore theschool of ‘behaviorism’ falls under this category. Like the travel novel,behaviorism focuses on the observables and places its faith in theworld for shaping and conditioning the subject (Skinner, 1978; Watson,1970). The ‘subject’ of behaviorism, like the travel hero, is passive andinsignificant, and neither possesses any unique characteristics. Thus,there is a mechanistic formulation of the subject and the world, andinternal contradictions among them and the cultural history that hasmediated such behavioral patterns are not part of the discourse.Therefore, temporal categories are virtually absent, and chronotopicmotifs are spatial in nature.

The travel novel operates through a ‘direct and unmediated object-oriented discourse’ and the author’s task is to accurately name, informand represent the information in a very detailed manner intended foran equally ‘unmediated object-oriented understanding’ (Bakhtin, 1984,p. 186). The author neither reflects on the travel, nor does he invite hisreader to reflect about his travel. The author maintains a clear-cutboundary between himself and his subjects and presents the informa-

53




tion with a great deal of systematicity, as Volosinov (1973) observedabout reported speech:

The basic tendency of linear style is to construct clear-cut external contours forreported speech, whose own internal individuality is minimized. (p. 120)

The boundary between the author and his subjects gives the authorabsolute semantic authority, according to Bakhtin, and this is theauthority that Danziger (1990) refers to as a ‘new priesthood’ inpsychology. This kind of authorial authority, as Bakhtin pointed out,can entertain only one dominant voice, which either affirms or repudi-ates an idea. Since this single-voiced discourse is devoid of anyindeterminacy or multiplicity, there is no scope for development.

Humanistic Psychological Narratives as Biographical NovelsAnother type of novel without emergence that Bakhtin (1981, 1984,1986) identifies is the biographical novel, which is composed of anindividual’s passage through various normative phases of life—birth,childhood, school years, adolescence, marriage, career, accomplish-ments, failures, and finally death. The movement through the typicalcourse of life is not necessarily developmental; the story does notindicate the emergence of the hero. Unlike the travel novel, which isdevoid of ‘time’, the chronotope in the biographical novel is built on‘biographical time’—that is, on the normative aspects of the socialclock, and the changes in the hero’s life are related to his age. Thehero’s character is given at the outset and he must meet and resolve thechallenges that each stage presents. The author has a definitive‘conception of life’, and through that fixed idea creates his hero’sobjectives in life—his works, relationships, deeds, feats, and so on—and assesses them through the category of happiness/unhappiness,success/failure, and so on (Bakhtin, 1986). Unlike the travel novel, inwhich the character is almost invisible, the biographical novel ‘relieswholly on the characterological definitiveness of the hero’ (Bakhtin,1984, p. 101). While the travel novel is built on the hero’s wanderingsin the world, the biographical novel is structured on the hero’s passagethrough the phases of life.

This type of genre can be identified in the ‘humanist’ tradition inpsychology, which attempts to trace life-span development, and isdeeply concerned with fulfilling life’s tasks while adhering to some‘time-honored’ virtues. Humanism’s emphasis is on strong familialrelationships, moral principles, and a steadfast determination to reachone’s goals. This kind of resoluteness in values can be identified inAbraham Maslow’s (1976) discussion on personal growth, in which the

54




peak experience is the self-actualization of deepest potentials in humanbeings. To reach the ‘peak’ of this ‘human need’, Maslow suggests thatperseverance, tenacity, making right choices, honesty, self-awarenessand the capacity to sacrifice are the necessary steps. How the social andpolitical climate may enhance or inhibit these ideals is beyond the scopeof Maslow’s theorizing. For that matter, the ‘world’ as an entity ceasesto exist in the humanist tradition; instead the human being and theworld are amalgamated into one unit and an ‘ideal’ is abstracted out ofit and is universalized. In humanism, as in the biographical novel, ‘life’presents its conflicts, and the individual’s ‘character’ is built by meetingthese challenges. Maslow argues that neurosis results from failure inpersonal growth. Similarly, Erik Erikson (1959) charts out the whole lifecourse and suggests that each stage presents a unique set of conflicts,and in the process of resolving them, one’s identity develops and a‘healthy personality’ evolves.

In humanism, as in the biographical novel, life itself is a ‘track’ withits own desired stations and destination and the individual’s task is tostay on the ‘right track’ and take all precautionary steps to avoidderailment. If ‘real life’ does not synchronize with the ‘ideal life’, thenthe therapeutic task, according to another humanist, Carl Rogers(1969), is to close the gap between the real and the ideal self. Thus life,in this school of thinking, is cyclical and has its own seasons (Levinson,1978), and the individual must be able to weather all its seasons inorder to mature.

What, then, is the developmental potential that is lacking in this‘idealism’? First of all, this genre does not recognize individual humanbeings in all their complexities and contradictions; instead somephantom ethics and ideals dictate and evaluate individual lives, and assuch there is either an affirmation or repudiation of concrete lives. ForBakhtin (1993), when the uniqueness of actually lived and experiencedlife in complex cultural systems is subordinated to an ‘abstract idea oflife’, it leaves no scope for a genuine dialogue between ‘what ought tobe in life’ and ‘what has been in life’. In other words, there is only oneconsciousness that maps out a ‘desirable ought to be’ and actual livesare measured accordingly.

Bakhtin did not necessarily suggest that we discard all notions of‘ought to be’, but such notions must gain validity only within con-sciously lived lives:

There is no aesthetic ought, scientific ought, and—beside them—an ethicalought; there is only that which is aesthetically, theoretically, socially valid,and these validities may be joined by the ought, for which all of them areinstrumental. (Bakhtin, 1993, p. 5)

55




For Bakhtin, while the ‘ought to be’ has the right to judge life, lifealso has equal right to assess the ‘ought’. The abstract and the concrete,in his view, are ‘answerable’ to each other. While Maslow contendedthat creative people essentially have certain needs, attitudes andapproaches, Bakhtin points out that social conditions validate ordiscredit notions of creativity. Of course, the humanist psychologistsdid study lives of ‘exceptional’ individuals and have provided a veryclear image of their heroes. Yet it is a clear and a fixed image, so muchso that the author speaks about the hero and not with the hero.

Monologism, whether it comes in the form of philosophical realismor idealism, creates a fixed image of the hero, and the author shapes hishero to suit his ideas and world view (Bakhtin, 1984). Bakhtinthroughout his writings cautioned against such possession and inva-sion of the hero by his author. Such a proprietory attitude can onlypresent a socially fixed ‘truth’ with no room for ambiguities andsubsequently no scope for development.

Novels of EmergenceEpistemic Subject as Platonic SeekerMoving on to the novels of emergence, Bakhtin (1981, 1986) pointedout that in ancient biographical and autobiographical narratives, suchas Plato’s works on the Apology of Socrates and the Phaedo and others,we can detect the emergence of the hero. In this type of genre, theworld itself is a school and the individual is forever seeking analyticaltools to comprehend lawful and logical relationships that exist in theworld around him. Even if the world is forever changing, the task is todiscover stable forms. Thus, this is the story of a ‘seeker’ whoseconsciousness progresses systematically from an ignorant state to an‘enlightened’ state. The journey is not smooth; it is full of upheavals,self-doubt and constant experimentation with various schools ofthought, which ultimately leads to ‘true’ forms of knowledge thatfacilitate the understanding of both the self and the world alike. In thistype of novelistic genre, the seeker’s life is based on a ‘specificpedagogical ideal’ achieved in the ‘process of education’, and thereforedevelopment is viewed as being teleological and universal:

This kind of novel of emergence typically depicts the world and life asexperience, as a school, through which every person must pass and derive oneand the same result. (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 22)

The movement here is through the intellectual stages; as Bakhtin(1981) observed, the tale is about ‘the course of the soul’s ascenttoward perception of Forms’ (p. 131).

56




In developmental discourses, Jean Piaget traced this kind of intellec-tual ascent, taking the genetic baggage as the starting point. Piagetexplained how the child (the seeker) explores and constructs ‘struc-tures’ of knowledge in her mind through alternating processes ofassimilation and accommodation. These structures are not static;instead they are defined by wholeness, transformation and self-regulation (Gruber & Voneche, 1977). The transformation of structureis the result of intellectual crisis, that is, when the child faces newchallenges from the world she is disequilibrated, and in order to regainintellectual balance, it is necessary for her to construct superiorstructures (Piaget, 1963).

The seeker’s path is full of moments of crisis, and the resolution leadsto subsequent rebirth and elevates the individual to a higher level ofconsciousness (Bakhtin, 1981). Likewise, cognitive dissonance and dis-equilibration are necessary for Piaget’s epistemic child to develop. Theprogression is not gradual; it is marked by qualitatively distinct stages,and the progression through these stages is an indication of the child’sconstruction of logico-mathematical structures. Through these con-structive processes, the child manages to reach the formal operationalstage marked by abstract and rational thinking (Piaget, 1972).

57

Knowledge must lend itself to scientific reasoning, and only thendoes it qualify as ‘authentic’:

At its heart lies the chronotope of ‘the life course of one seeking trueknowledge’. The life of such a seeker is broken down into precise and well-marked epochs or steps. His course passes from self-confident ignorance,through self-critical skepticism, to self-knowledge and ultimately to authen-tic knowing (mathematics and music). (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 130)

The parallel between the seeker’s tale and Piaget’s epistemic child isclear. Piaget operated within the Kantian tradition and thereforeexplained the growth of scientific knowledge, and such a growthproceeds systematically in a step-wise sequential fashion without everreversing the forward movement. Piaget’s epistemic child proceedsfrom sensory experience to concrete actions to abstract thinking—increasingly becoming free of the body principle. The construction ofknowledge, in Piaget’s view, is the result of the mind’s ability toprocess information through the universal categories of time andspace. In tune with the Kantian tradition, Piaget conceived time andspace as physical categories and was interested in the child’s growingawareness of principles of geometry, movement, speed, number,physical causality, and so on, strictly according to logico-mathematicalprinciples. Therefore, the child’s situatedness is cultural space andhistorical time does not enter the picture.




If we can see the emergence of the hero, why did Bakhtin (1986) thenrefer to this genre as ‘Bildungsroman in the narrow sense’? First of all,the narrowness comes from the fact that the seeker emerges against thebackdrop of an immobile world. Even if there are rapid changesoccurring in the world, Piaget was concerned with how the childconstructs the world through universal logico-mathematical princi-ples. Bakhtin (1986), on the other hand, insisted that development isnot a private affair, for the individual develops ‘along with the world’and his development ‘reflects the historical emergence of the worlditself’ (p. 23). The transaction between the individual and the world isnot a mechanical one, but they ‘interanimate’ each other and mutuallytransform each other, and therefore Bakhtin (1986) insists that theindividual grows in ‘national historical time’ (p. 25). Piaget’s accountof development is devoid of this historical time.

Piaget’s focus on the de-centered epistemic subject with an emphasison cybernetic competence in cognitive development erases subjectivityand history (Broughton, 1981), even though Piaget claims that hisfocus on the structures of the mind has not brought about the death ofthe subject (Piaget, 1970). We may observe two tendencies in hisepistemic subject. First, he is the grand hero who is endlessly inquis-itive and unceasing in his activity to discover lawful relationships inthe objective world. Yet he is also a prisoner of his cognitive limitationsand as such goes through a period when he is incapable of approach-ing arithmetical problems until he has mastered the task of conserva-tion. External factors that mediate the transformation from the ‘under-developed subject’ to the ‘developed subject’ (the grand hero) are notwithin the scope of the theory.

The Issue of TimeIn Piaget’s genetic epistemology, time assumes two forms. At anontogenetic level time operates in a linear manner, and at a universallevel time becomes cyclical, that is, every generation must passthrough the same sequence. The linear developmental trajectory unfor-tunately does not match the coils and zigzags of developmentalprocesses in practice.

In criticizing Hegel’s narrative on the development of art forms,Spivak (1991) has argued that Hegel’s theory is not ‘an epistemology’at all, but ‘an epistemography, a graduated diagram of how knowl-edge (an adequate fit between sign and varieties of meaning) comesinto being’ (p. 100). Thus, the graph lays out what is normative anduniversal and any ‘misfits’ along the way lie outside the theoreticalfocus. Piaget took chunks of time and formulated a stage theory,

58




providing an account of the cognitive milestone reached in each stage.Like all structural stage theories, there is a greater tendency tospatialize time than to temporalize space. Derrida’s critique of struc-turalism becomes useful here as he points out that this theoreticaltradition focuses on space and reduces time to a dimension of space(Norris, 1987). Time in stage theory only serves as an anchoringpoint—by this time x, y, z, ought to be accomplished. How theindividual gains knowledge ‘in’ and ‘through’ time and space has alower priority than the individual’s knowledge ‘about’ time and space.Thus, the absence of historical time in these chronotopic motifs is asignificant limitation.

Novels of Historical EmergenceDevelopment is genuine only if the author sees his hero’s emergence inthe changing world:

Man’s emergence is accomplished in real historical time with all its neces-sity, its fullness, its future and its profoundly chronotopic nature. (Bakhtin,1986, p. 23)

The emergence of the individual in ‘real historical time’ can beidentified in Vygotsky’s writings. Vygotsky argued that developmentcannot be studied without considering the material and psychologicaltools that culture provides. This does not mean that culture determinesindividual development; instead cultural sign systems, tools andlanguage mediate development. The sign systems are not fixed; theyconstantly face the contradictory forces of history, and therefore thesemultiple layers of history are imbricated in developmental processes.According to Scribner (1985), Vygotsky considered at least four levelsof history in any developmental event—that of the human species,individual societies, the unique life history of the individual and aparticular psychological system. The perennial flux of histories pro-duces heteroglossia and therefore always creates ‘loopholes’ for freshmeanings to emerge. Bakhtin asserted that multiplicity, indeterminacyand unfinalizability are key ingredients in a dialogic world view, andwe find such elements in Vygotsky’s theorizing. For instance, Piagetsaw the child’s capacity for abstraction as an accomplishment, whereasfor Vygotsky (1990) it is simultaneously an accomplishment and anactive tool for creating novel meanings.

Abstraction is not an end product, but it becomes an active tool fortackling and transforming the given concrete. Bakhtin (1990) similarlyobserved that an abstract thought provides ‘direction for seeingsomething concrete’—the direction is not singular, but a ‘direction thatis infinite’ (p. 209). According to Bakhtin, abstract thought is capable of

59




showing so many pathways of meanings because it contains abundantenergy of ‘extraspatial and extratemporal infinitude’ (p. 209) and isthus capable of activating dormant semiotic fields and generatingnewer meanings.

In a dialogic world view, as Bakhtin (1984) pointed out, the authorneither composes a tight plot, nor does he draw a fixed psychologicalprofile of the hero. Instead, the hero is seen as a ‘particular point ofview on the world and on oneself‘ (p. 47). The hero’s shiftingaxiological position enables one to engage in an ongoing dialogue withoneself and one’s surrounding world. The author visualizes the worldwith all these ‘accumulated points of view’ of his hero and constructs a‘field of vision’ in which competing viewpoints enter into an activedialogue. The polyphonic novels of Dostoevsky are a fitting exampleof these characteristics.

Similarly, Vygotsky’s writings neither have a fixed theme (a plot),nor does he achieve a characterological definitiveness of the devel-opmental subject (the hero). Instead, he tried to address the question of‘development’ from various vantage points. These ranged from aes-thetic responses to art and literature, to thought in schizophrenia, tothe role of cultural tools and symbols in child development, topedagogical issues in educating the deaf and dumb, and so on (Vander Veer & Valsiner, 1994).

Vygotsky was not looking for ‘the development’ in the child. Insteadhe identified developmental moments often in ordinary everydayfunctioning, ranging from a little girl trying to reach out for candyfrom the cupboard, or an infant pointing at an object, to children tryingto accomplish memory tasks using cues provided by culture. In allthese gestures and tasks, Vygotsky (1978) pointed out the inter-connections between physical actions and social meanings and avoidsreductionistic and essentializing tendencies. Since Vygotsky’s focuswas not on the product of development but on developmental eventsand the potential for future development, neither time nor space issubordinated to each other in this theoretical enterprise.

Bakhtin’s preoccupation with time in ‘chronotopic motifs’ was not asan abstract category but as a visible process. He admired Goethe for hiscapacity to ‘see’ time in both inanimate objects and human actions:

The ability to see time, to read time, in the spatial whole of the world and, onthe other hand, to perceive the filling of space not as an immobile back-ground, a given that is completed once and for all, but as an emergingwhole, an event—that is the ability to read in everything signs that show timein its course, beginning with nature and ending with human customs andideas (all the way to abstract concepts). (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 25)

60




Objects, nature, human activity, all must bear the marks of the past,present and future for Bakhtin, and we find such traces in Vygotsky’swritings. Consider how Vygotsky (1989) articulated ‘developmentalpotential’ in our interactions with ‘tools’:

The telephone operator plus the telephone is a special type of organization, aprimary concept in higher psychology. Not only the telephone but also thetelephone operator develops. The two together: the entire uniqueness ofchild development. (p. 70)

Throughout his life, Vygotsky was interested in the microgenesis ofdevelopment, and therefore his Weltanschauung is saturated with time.Vygotsky’s developmental subject is neither a sole constructor ofreality nor a passive recipient of reality, but a co-participant in receivingand creating reality, and, like the Bakhtinian subject, recognizes andappreciates the significance of the ‘other’ in developmental events.

Conclusions: Dialogism and Accounting forDevelopment

Dialogism is not a set of theoretical postulates about the world, but amethod for interrogating and understanding humans in an ever-changing world. The dialogic method operates at every level of theresearch activity, from the way we frame a question to the methods wedeploy and the style in which we communicate our observations.Bakhtin (1986), in proposing a methodology for the human sciences,clearly pointed out that ‘question’ and ‘answer’ are not fixed logicalcategories; every response must not only give rise to new questions,but it also reformulates the original question. Ludwig Wittgenstein(1980) captured this complex relationship in a rather cryptic manner,

So you see it as if you knew that about it. And if that seems a foolish way ofputting it; then it must be kept in mind that the concept of seeing is modifiedby it. (p. 71e, § 386)

Second, dialogism recognizes the limitation of ‘precision’ in thehuman sciences. In other words, dialogism challenges the practice ofnumerizing and serializing behavior or narrative. The units of analysisfor Bakhtin (1986) were ‘speech genres’, which combine thematiccontent, linguistic style, compositional structure and ideological over-tones. Thus, the method resists reductionism.

Furthermore, the dialogical approach treats the developing subjectas a central figure and not the development of mental phenomenaextracted out of its lived experience. For instance, in traditional

61




practices of developmental psychology, the assumption is that variousmental processes such as language, memory, perception, cognition andmorality, and so on, have an independent existence with a uniquedevelopmental path, and therefore the researcher takes the child as astarting point for investigative purposes. In such practices, the childbecomes the site for constructing the discourse on the development ofdisembodied and de-historicized concepts. Bakhtin (1993) argued thatwhen knowledge is built by subordinating actual life in all its fullnessto abstract theoretical concepts, it loses its validity and significance,because ‘alien concepts’ guide and assess life. Bakhtin laments that thetheoretical world operates ‘as if I did not exist’ (p. 9). Nietzsche (1968)in Twilight of the Idols referred to such knowledge that works withpetrified concepts as mummified Egyptian consciousness, and hisattack on such epistemology is vitriolic because conceptual mummiesbring about the death of the subject.

Third, dialogism recognizes development in both the cultural andhistorical contexts. For Bakhtin, historical events are neither random,nor are they completely ordered, but what is crucial in understandingpsychological and social phenomena is to recognize the ‘clustering’and ‘unclustering’ of cultural entities at a given time and over a timeperiod (Morson & Emerson, 1990). It is only amidst these centripetaland centrifugal forces that ‘development’ occurs.

Fourth, a dialogic approach towards development acknowledgesmulti-linearity and multi-voicedness in the phenomena and appre-ciates equally the ‘developmental subject’ (the hero) and other relevantcharacters and the author’s struggle to find their niche and achievesignificance in the world of others. Development, when conceived as apartnership between the author and the hero, allows ‘cognitive-ethicalmoments’ to be incorporated in the discourse. Bakhtin (1993) pointedout that there is no pure cognition, or judgment or discourse, buteverything that is understood must be connected to the world in whichthe action is performed. Such a dialogized discourse concurrentlyrecords, describes, explains and generates both the developmentalphenomena and the phenomenon of accounting for development.

References

Bakhtin, M.M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin: Universityof Texas Press.

Bakhtin, M.M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics. Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press.

Bakhtin, M.M. (1986). Speech genres and other essays. Austin: University ofTexas Press.

62




Bakhtin, M.M. (1990). Art and answerability: Early philosophical essays by M.M.Bakhtin. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Bakhtin, M.M. (1993). Toward a philosophy of the act. Austin: University ofTexas Press.

Bakhtin, M.M., & Medvedev, P.N. (1985). The formal method in literaryscholarship: A critical introduction to sociological poetics. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press.

Bandlamudi, L. (1994). Dialogics of understanding self/culture. Ethos, 22,460–493.

Berry, J.W., & Dasen, P. (Eds.). (1974). Culture and cognition. London:Methuen.

Bower, T.G.R. (1974). Development in infancy. San Francisco, CA: Freeman.Bower, T.G.R. (1977). The perceptual world of the child. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press.Broughton, J.M. (1981). Piaget’s structural developmental psychology:

Knowledge without self and without history. Human Development, 24,320–346.

Cohen, L.B., & Strauss, M.S. (1979). Concept acquisition in the human infant.Child Development, 50, 419–424.

Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the subject. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Dasen, P.R. (1972). Cross-cultural Piagetian research: A summary. Journal ofCross-Cultural Psychology, 3, 23–39.

Dasen, P.R. (1975). Concrete operational development in three cultures.Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 6, 156–172.

Dasen, P.R. (Ed.). (1976). Piagetian psychology: Cross-cultural contributions. NewYork: Gardner.

de Certeau, M. (1988). The writing of history. New York: Columbia UniversityPress.

Erikson, E.H. (1959). Identity and the life cycle. New York: InternationalUniversity Press.

Gesell, A. (1929). Maturation and infant behavior pattern. PsychologicalReview, 36, 307–319.

Glick, J. (1992). Werner’s relevance for contemporary developmentalpsychology. Developmental Psychology, 28(4), 558–565.

Gruber, H.E., & Voneche, J.J. (Eds.). (1977). The essential Piaget. New York:Basic Books.

Henriques, J., Holloway, W., Urwin, C., Venn, C., & Walkerdine, V. (1984).Changing the subject: Psychology, social regulation and subjectivity. New York:Methuen.

Kessel, F., & Siegel, A. (Eds.). (1983). The child and other cultural inventions.New York: Praeger.

Kessen, W. (1965). The child. New York: Wiley.Kessen, W. (1979). The American child and other cultural inventions.

American Psychologist, 34(10), 815–820.Kozulin, A. (1990). Vygotsky’s psychology: A biography of ideas. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press.Levinson, D.J. (1978). The seasons of a man’s life. New York: Ballantine.

63




Maslow, A.H. (1976). The farther reaches of human nature. New York: Penguin.Morson, G.S., & Emerson, C. (1990). Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of prosaics.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Nandy, A. (1987). Traditions, tyranny and utopias: Essays in the politics of

awareness. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Nietzsche, F. (1961). Thus spoke Zarathustra: A book for everyone and no one.

London: Penguin.Nietzsche, F. (1966). Beyond good and evil. New York: Random House.Nietzsche, F. (1967). The will to power. New York: Vintage.Nietzsche, F. (1968). Twilight of the idols/The anti-christ. London: Penguin.Norris, C. (1987). Derrida. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Parker, I. (1989). The crisis in modern psychology, and how to end it. London:

Routledge.Piaget, J. (1963). The psychology of intelligence. Princeton, NJ: Littlefield, Adams

& Co.Piaget, J. (1970). Structuralism. New York: Basic Books.Piaget, J. (1972). Intellectual evolution from adolescence to adulthood. Human

Development, 15, 1–12.Price-Williams, D.R. (1975). Explorations in cross-cultural psychology. San

Francisco, CA: Chandler & Sharp.Rogers, C. (1969). Freedom to learn. Columbus, OH: Merrill.Rogoff, B., & Gauvain, M. (1984). The cognitive consequences of specific

experiences: Weaving versus schooling among the Navajo. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 15(4), 453–475.

Sarbin, T.R. (Ed.). (1986). Narrative psychology: The storied nature of humanconduct. New York: Praeger.

Schafer, R. (1992). Retelling a life: Narratives and dialogue in psychoanalysis. NewYork: Basic Books.

Schrift, A.D. (1990). Nietzsche and the question of interpretation: Betweenhermeneutics and deconstruction. New York: Routledge.

Scribner, S. (1985). Vygotsky’s uses of history. In J. Wertsch (Ed.), Culture,communication and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Singer, E. (1992). Child-care and the psychology of development. London:Routledge.

Skinner, B.F. (1978). Reflection on behaviorism and society. Norwood, NJ:Prentice Hall.

Spence, D.P. (1982). Narrative truth and historical truth: Meaning andinterpretation in psychoanalysis. New York: Norton.

Spivak, G.C. (1991). Time and timing: Law and history. In J. Bender & D.E.Wellbery (Eds.), Chronotypes. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Steinberg, B.M., & Dunn, L.A. (1976). Conservation competence andperformance in Chiapas. Human Development, 19, 14–25.

Van der Veer, R., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (1994). The Vygotsky reader. Oxford/Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Volosinov, V.N. (1973). Marxism and the philosophy of language. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1971). The psychology of art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

64




Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress.

Vygotsky. L.S. (1987). The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky: Vol. I. Problems ofgeneral psychology. New York: Plenum.

Vygotsky. L.S. (1989). Concrete human psychology. Soviet Psychology, 27(2),53–77.

Vygotsky. L.S. (1990). Imagination and creativity in the adolescent. SovietPsychology, 29(1), 73–88.

Watson, J.B. (1970). Behaviorism. New York: Norton.Werner, H. (1980). Comparative psychology of mental development. New York:

International Universities Press.White, H. (1987). The content of the form: Narrative discourse and historical

representation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Wittgenstein, L. (1980). Remarks on the philosophy of psychology (Vol. 2).

Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Yaroshevsky, M. (1989). Lev Vygotsky. Moscow: Progress.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported (in part) by a grant (PSC-CUNY #667514) fromthe City University of New York PSC-CUNY Research Award Program.Many thanks to the reviewers of this article and to John Dore, Mark Zuss andMinda Tessler for their suggestions.

Biography

LAKSHMI BANDLAMUDI received her doctoral degree in DevelopmentalPsychology and Women’s Studies. Her work is interdisciplinary and she isinterested in the area of semiotics, theories of the mind, critical culturaltheories and post-colonial theories. Her doctoral thesis explored theinterrelationships between interpreting self (autobiographical narratives) anda cultural-historical text (the Indian epic Mahabharata), and currently she isworking towards converting the thesis into a book entitled The History ofUnderstanding and Understanding of History. Her earlier work focused on theconstruction of self and culture in dialogic encounters. In her recent work shehas explored the points of convergence and divergence between MikhailBakhtin and the Sanskrit grammarian Bhartrhari. She is currently anAssociate Professor at LaGuardia Community College, City University ofNew York. address: Dr Lakshmi Bandlamudi, Social Science Department,LaGuardia Community College, 31–10 Thomson Ave, Long Island City, NewYork 11101, USA. [email: [email protected]]

65



Bandlamudi, L. (1999) Developmental Discourse as an Author/Hero Relationship. Culture &...

Documents

Transcript of Bandlamudi, L. (1999) Developmental Discourse as an Author/Hero Relationship. Culture &...