Academic Studies Press Inspired by Bakhtin: Dialogic Methods in the Humanities (Studies in Comparative Literature and Intellectual History)

Product Description In seven essays, this book offers a tour de force through those seven disciplines in the humanities that lately underwent a fundamental transformation. In order to apply “exact” scientific methods, these disciplines turned away from their very subjects― the understanding of the relationship or a dialogue that underlies the phenomena they are supposed to investigate. The revisionist approach in this book, based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s work, traces the search for common and specific grounds of the humanities, beginning with psychologism through hermeneutics and semiotics up to the present state of self-annihilation. As an alternative, the book seeks to define humanities as the examination of relationships, which offers an array of refreshing perspectives on each field discussed. Review “This engaging volume offers seven chapters with different perspectives on the ‘dialogic’ in the humanities, taking Mikhail Bakhtin’s formulation and testing it from the perspective of seven different disciplines within the humanities. … This is a thought-provoking read for anyone working in the humanities now, although it does expect a reasonable degree of familiarity with Bakhtin, and it creates a strong argument for defining the humanities in terms of the relational and the dialogic.” ―Forum for Modern Language Studies, Vol. 55, No. 2 ― Forum for Modern Language Studies About the Author Matthias Freise is professor of Slavic Literatures and Cultures at Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany.