Place, Voice, Space: Mikhail Bakhtin's Dialogical Landscape

Abstract

Geographers have produced a host of different interpretations of the landscape. In this essay I aim to participate in such an endeavour by linking Mikhail Bakhtin's work to geographical inquiry. Concepts such as dialogism, heteroglossia, the chronotope, and polyphony are only a sample of his valuable contributions to the theory of knowledge, alongside the ‘carnival’ sense of the world that conveys a pathos of shift and change, of death and renewal. ‘Carnival’ sums up the rituals and diverse festivities that reflect popular culture. Together these notions lead to a better understanding of otherness and alterity. This understanding provides the basis for a conceptual landscape that indicates the moment and situation (time-space) of a dialogue whose outcome is never a neutral exchange. Landscape thus becomes not only ‘graphically visible’ in space but also ‘narratively visible’ in time through dialogue.