Toward an embodied account of double-voiced discourse: The critical role of imagery and affect in Bakhtin’s dialogic imagination

Abstract

Abstract Drawing from Paivio’s (1986, Mental representations: A dual coding approach. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, Images in mind: The evolution of a theory. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 2007, Mind and its evolution: A dual coding theoretical approach. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum) dual-coding theory, I argue that an understanding of the structure and function of mental imagery and affect can lead to an embodied and more comprehensive account of the addressivity that characterizes Bakhtin’s double-voiced discourse. A dialogic exchange between characters in Orhan Pamuk’s (2004, Snow. New York: Vintage) Snow provides a literary example of an intersubjective encounter to demonstrate that crafting consciousness in the novel and sustaining Bakhtin’s double-voiced discourse relies on the cognitive capacity to access both verbal and non-verbal imagery. I position Bakhtinian dialogism within a historical overview of the nature of mind and mental imagery in western philosophy to elucidate the tenuous relation between Bakhtin’s dialogic existence and the principles of empiricism as expressed in Dewey (1987 [1934], Art as experience. In Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), The later works of John Dewey, 1925–1953, vol. 10. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980 [1916], Democracy and education. In Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), The middle works of John Dewey, 1899–1924, vol. 9. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press) and Mead (1934, Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964, The objective reality of perspectives. In A. Reck (ed.) Selected writings, 312–314. Chicago: University of Chicago Press). With reference to Damasio’s (1999, The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. New York: Harcourt) neurobiological account of consciousness, Langer’s (1957, Philosophy in a new key: A study in the symbolism of reason, rite, and art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) evolutionary account of language, and Thompson’s (2007, Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology and the sciences of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) phenomenological account of empathy, I outline how Bakhtin’s dialogism differs from embodied theories of mind and consciousness in several fundamental ways to preclude a full appreciation of the other’s empathetic experience of oneself in authoring a socially shared existence.