An Ecocritical Exploration of Bakhtin's Major Concepts in Solar Storms

Abstract

Mikhail Bakhtin is a Russian scholar who has been studied internationally in fields of literature and the humanities. Basing his theory on the principle of communication, Bakhtin formed a significant path in literary and cultural studies. Some scholars like Michael Gardiner (1993), Michael M. Bell (1994), Michael J. McDowell (1996), Timo Müller (2010) and Patrick D. Murphy (2013) propose that Bakhtin’s concepts can be appropriated to ecocriticism to make more powerful analyses of literary texts since both Bakhtinian literary criticism and ecocriticism highlight diversity, heterogeneity, agency, and interaction. In this way, Bakhtinian ecocritical theory suggests a new definition of the human subject in its relation to the physical environment and nonhuman beings. Revealing the viability of Bakhtinian critical theory with ecological concerns, this article aims to study the novel Solar Storms by Linda Hogan, a Native American female writer, through an “eco-Bakhtinian” approach to explore how nature is represented in Native American context, how the relationship between human and nonhuman worlds is depicted, how both worlds function in one another, how and why the perception of nature differs in cultural aspects, and how the concept of nature has changed over time. In doing so, this article attempts to show the interaction between culture-nature, human-nonhuman, earth-body, body-mind, traditional-modern, native-non-native, fact-fiction, story-history, self-other, individual-society, and text-reader.