A Bakhtinian Approach to Identity in the Context of Institutional Practices

Abstract

This study deals with the construction of identity in institutional contexts, taking as a starting point a Bakhtinian approach. We focus on the idea of author and hero and consider it as a metaphor allowing us to look for new models through which to understand human learning. We consider in particular the ethical and aesthetic dimension of human activity, which relate to the concepts of ‘I’ and ‘other’, respectively, and pay special attention to personal and interpersonal dimensions of consciousness. After exploring some of Bakhtin’s earliest texts, we focus on classroom conversations in which children worked together with their teacher and the researchers on the production of a web page which was to include their own comments and reflections following a discussion of violence on TV programs. Our examples are drawn from a wider investigation carried out in a Spanish elementary school, where we have been working from within an ethnographical and action research perspective. The analyses show that when mass media are present in the classroom, and children and adults talk about violence on television, specific situations are created that favor the construction of identity from an ethical-aesthetic perspective: that is, children are capable of assuming responsibilities and, furthermore, they create heroes who are also responsible for their own actions.