BAKHTIN: THE DANGERS OF DIALOGUE

This article focuses on the relation to the Other - the underlying aspect of dialogism - in the works of Mikhail Bakhtin. His approach to heterology (science or knowledge of the Other) is fundamental to analysis of such themes of his oeuvre as carnival (laughter), history, and economy of human existence. On a certain stage it appears, that two configurations may be distinguished in Bakhtin's conception of the Other. First, the Other dominated and apprropriated by the subject, or Author, or Self in the dialogic relation – it is only a provisional Other. The second is the irreducible Other, outside the possibility of adequate knowledge and thus potentially excluded from dialogue. Thus, the end of dialogue, the silence remains as a dark shadow on the horizon of the meaningful discursive logic. Moreover, the concepts of meaning and truth itself seem to be jeopardized here, since answers to questions is what I call 'meanings' (Bakhtin). Nevertheless, Bakhtin never openly questions the fundamental values of knowledge and final truth; his position may be summed up thus: The truth is out there. Only it is probably not cognizable to an individual. Or may be not to anybody .