The Dialogical Self: Toward a Theory of Personal and Cultural Positioning

TLDR

The dialogical self theory decentralizes self and culture, challenging the notion of a core essential self and culture by integrating Jamesian psychology and Bakhtinian dialogics. The study aims to reconceptualize self and culture as a multiplicity of positions enabling dialogical relations, and outlines future research directions focusing on contact zones, complexity, and uncertainty. The approach emphasizes collective voices, power asymmetries, and embodied dialogue as key mechanisms. The findings portray cultures and selves as dynamic, mixing entities increasingly responsive to travel and translocality.

Abstract

The dialogical self proposes a far-reaching decentralization of both the concept of self and the concept of culture. At the intersection between the psychology of the self in the tradition of William James and the dialogical school in the tradition of Mikhail Bakhtin, the proposed view challenges both the idea of a core, essential self and the idea of a core, essential culture. In apparent contradiction with such a view, the present viewpoint proposes to conceive self and culture as a multiplicity of positions among which dialogical relationships can be established. Particular attention is paid to collective voices, domination and asymmetry of social relations, and embodied forms of dialogue. Cultures and selves are seen as moving and mixing and as increasingly sensitive to travel and translocality. Three perspectives for future research of self and culture are briefly discussed: the shifting attention from core to contact zones; increasing complexity; and the experience of uncertainty.