Bakhtin at the Boundaries: exploring self-positionality in relation to socio-cultural ideologies.

Abstract

Historically, social theorists, such as Marx, have applied ‘ideology’ as a framework to describe the dominant ideas and values within a given socio-cultural context. More specifically, this framework explores how such ideas and values not only produce hegemonic discourses of knowledge across domains like philosophy, science, politics, aesthetics, and religion, but also perpetuate asymmetrical power relations between the self and socio-cultural ideologies. Simultaneously, certain scholarship argues that relations between the Self and socio-cultural ideologies are embedded within power structures, while others advocate for the Self’s autonomous capacities for critical reflection and self-transformation. These two perspectives on the self’s relation to socio-cultural ideologies are often considered incompatible. While the finality of socio-cultural ideologies has its appeal, the aims of this chapter are two-fold. Firstly, by outlining Bakhtin’s notion of ‘culture,’ which he understands as the ‘objective domains’ of ‘sense or meaning,’ we argue that it challenges us to embrace the contradictions, disagreements, alterity and revised understandings that accompany any ideology through the use of parody. Secondly, to contextualise this point, we consider the dialogical relationship between religious ideologies (the text) and their audience.The full text will be available at the end of the publisher's embargo 12 months after publication