This paper seeks to initiate a theory of “imaginative dialogues” by articulating four dialogical principles that enable such a dialogue to occur. It is part of a larger project that takes the Socratic dialogue, a widely utilized conversation technique in philosophy education, as a starting point and aims to reinterpret it by shifting emphasis to the pre-reflective, pre-linguistic, and multimodal aspects of dialogues, involving both their verbal and embodied dimensions. To integrate the verbal dimensions of a dialogue with its more (...) elusive embodied dimensions, the paper will examine the notion ‘dialogue’ from the perspective of two different strategies. The first strategy chiefly focuses on the dialogic encounter. The ‘in-between’ of this dialogic encounter enables something to emerge that transcends the individual perspective of the speakers involved. The second strategy is primarily concerned with internal differentiation. The minor differences that constitute this internal differentiation, differentiate a dialogue from within. These strategies are not mutually exclusive but indicate a variation in starting point and orientation. This paper proposes to combine these two strategies by linking accounts of the productive moments in verbal dialogues to an account of the imaginative potential of embodied dialogues. This will enable the articulation of four dialogical principles (derived from Lev Yakubinsky, Oswald Ducrot, Martin Buber, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz) through which an imaginative dialogue can proceed. (shrink)

Rabelaian carnivalesque provided philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin with a means of exploring the significance of humour through an examination of Middle Age peasant culture and the influence of the Renaissance on its legitimacy. This article argues that a similar phenomenon exists in modern educational settings and provides evidence to suggest that very young children are highly capable of working within this genre as a strategic orientation. It is proposed that the role of the early childhood teacher within this ‘underground culture’ is (...) to be a dialogic partner who recognizes their dual horizontal and vertical roles as both insider and outsider: appreciating humour with children but expecting (and celebrating) the child’s position within a distinct culture that necessarily resides outside officialdom. In doing so, the article concludes that teachers will gain deeper appreciation of the important role of humour as a means of positioning the self within institutions characterized by power dynamics that are typically beyond the young child’s control. Moreover, the teacher has greater opportunities to recognize the potential of humour as a form of social mobility and agency on the part of the child. (shrink)

The essay juxtaposes the intellectualpreoccupations and fraught careers of two great20th-century Russian philologist-philosophers,Aleksei Losev and Mikhail Bakhtin. AlthoughLosev''s is the more crippling case, theexternal trajectory of their lives develops inrough parallel (bold, prolific productivity inthe 1920s; arrest and deportation in the1930s; slow reintegration in thepost-Stalinist era; recent revivals, cults,booms, and scandals connected with theirlegacy). What is more, the subject matterthat fascinated them often overlapped (theClassical world, the status of the Word,Dostoevsky). Still, differences overwhelm thesimilarities. The essay concludes withspeculation about these (...) two types ofphilosopher-king squandered, martyred, andelevated by their home culture. (shrink)

The stars and the planets must have been in alignment when Paul Hager needed a doctoral student to work on his research grant at the same time that I had transitioned from 20 years as business practitioner to become an educator interested in workplace learning. This paper explores the Bakhtinian ways in which I learned about learning with Paul, and how our process of engagement continues to influence my appreciation of the philosophy and practice of education. In such musings, I (...) draw upon Bakhtin’s concepts of dialogism, answerability and ideological becoming to discuss how the invitational qualities of engagement sustain a pedagogy of practice that I am privileged to share with my guide and friend, Emeritus Professor Paul Hager. (shrink)