Hidden Dialogue Research Articles

The Dialogics of Southern Quechua Narrative

Southern Quechua conversational narratives aredialogicalin four senses. First, at theformallevel, the narrative is produced between interlocutors; second, narrativeembedsdiscourse within discourse by means of quotations or indirect discourse; third, implicit or hidden dialogue between texts is brought out through theintertextualreference to other coexisting narratives; and, fourth, there is a complex pattern of participation through which dialogue takes place not only between actual speaking individuals but between distinct, intersecting participantrolesthat evoke multiple interactional frameworks. Rigorous attention to each level allows us to integrate narrative analysis more closely into ethnographic study, in terms of both the social tactics of specific narrative events and the broader discursive frameworks that they illuminate.

The Sins of the Fathers: Bergman, Ronconi, and Ibsen's ‘Wild Duck’

What is The Wild Duck ‘about’? What is the relationship between text and subtext in a work whose usually understood message ‘against idealism’ appears to contradict the conclusion no less usually drawn from A Doll's House? Thomas Bredsdorff here analyzes the approaches of two major modern directors of the play – Ingmar Bergman, in his Stockholm production of 1972, and Luca Ronconi, who directed it five years later in Rome – and suggests the ‘hidden dialogue’ at work in such a comparison. He also explores the issues of patricide and power which may be deduced by applying the insights of Erich Fromm concerning the nature of human aggression, basing his own conclusions on a careful examination of Ibsen's highly pertinent stage directions. Thomas Bredsdorff has been Professor of Scandinavian Literature at the University of Copenhagen since 1978, and theatre critic of Politiken since 1965. This essay is translated from his most recent book, Magtspil (Power Play), published in Copenhagen by Gyldendal in 1986.

The Ancient Maya and the Political Present

Can archaelogists depict the past with any accuracy, and is that their goal? Where do archaeologists' ideas come from in the first place? This paper suggests that archaeological discourse has a dual nature: at the same time that it pursues objective, verifiable knowledge about the past, it also conducts an informal and often hidden political and philosophical debate about the major issues of contemporary life. This paper investigates this second, hidden dialogue within a single subfield of archaeology, Maya prehistory. What gives power to the past, and to archaeology, is the way it is used to political and philosophical ends. The task is to recognize the nature of the dialogue and to take responsibility for it.

"Hidden Dialog" in "The Mad Mother" and "The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman"

"Hidden Dialog" in "The Mad Mother" and "The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman"