How Story Dialogism Differs From Narrative? - PeaceAware.com

CHAPTER 2: How Story Dialogism Differs From Narrative?
David M. Boje
January 17, 2006; revised Dec 3, 2007
Storytelling Organization (London: Sage, for release 2007)
This chapter develops various types of dialogism as the key difference between story and
narrative. Dialogism is defined here as different voices (polyphony), styles (stylistics),
space-time conceptions (chronotopes), interanimating discourses (architectonics), and
dynamic-interplay of these varied dialogisms (I call the polypi). The chapter gives
examples from McDonald’s of the interplay of narrative control and story resistance
across the five dialogisms.
Dialogism is the main difference between story and narrative. 1 Dialogism
(Bakhtin’s, 1973 dialogicality) predates Derrida’s (1978) play of difference and
differance and de-centered discourse. Writing in the late 1930s Bakhtin (1981: 284) said,
“Discourse, lives as it were, on the boundary between its own control and another alien
context.” One way to look at the relationship of narrative and story is that narrative tries
to constrain the dialogic manner of story. Story is not an object, for text, or mimetic
orality. Story is enacted in social events, with thought, action, and feeling happening all
at once, in the moment of Being. As Bakhtin (1973: 13) put it, “narrative genres are
always enclosed in a solid and unshakable monological framework.” Dialogism
overcomes binary opposition of signifier/signified, text/context, self/other, as well as
narrative/story, in order to look at Einsteinian relativity, a more holographic relationship
of complexity.
Instead of foreswearing narrative genre models (from Aristotle’s Poetics to
Burke’s Pentad), my thesis here is to look at the relationship of narrative-genre-forms to
living story. Living story means participating in dialogical processes, asking questions,
being answerable, “with eyes, lips, heads, soul, spirit, with [one’s] whole body and
deeds” (Bakhtin, 1973: 293, bracketed addition mine). As Shotter (1993: 62) comments,
“Those denied this possibility can, to say the least, be expected to feel humiliated and
angered.” I want to see how story resists narrative-deadness, is able to escape the
1 Bakhtin (1973: 34) used the term, dialogicality, and never used the word ‘dialogism,’ a word invented by
Holquist (1990: 15). I use dialogism and dialogic interchangeably to mean dialogicality. Holquist’s (1990)
reading is ‘dialogism’ describes Bakhtin’s anti-Hegelian dislike for Absolute Spirit dialectic. Bakhtin
preferred neo-Kantianism more “speculative epistemology” Holquist, p. 17), a move from Newtonian to
Einsteinian worldview (i.e. relativity of time/space).
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narrative-trap, and crack the narrative-forms with a regenerative power. In the social
transactions of a Storytelling Organization, there is a dance of narrative and story that
yields self-organization. The relation of story to narrative is ‘heteroglossia.’
Heteroglossia is defined as opposing language forces of centripetal (centralizing
deviation-counteraction) and centrifugal (decentering variety-amplification). It’s the play
of centripetal to centrifugal, that’s thoroughly “dialogized” (Bakhtin, 1981: 14, 273).
Once upon a time, story was not the same as narrative, a retrospective “systematicmonological
Weitaschauung” (Bakhtin, 1973: 64). The more centripetal “centralizing
tendencies in the life of language have ignored this dialogized heteroglossia” in the social
sciences (Bakhtin, 1981: 273). Retrospective sensemaking, without prospective,
reflexivity, or transcendental sensemaking filters what we attend to and notice.
Narratologists swoop down on living story like hawk searching for prey, ready to
make a proper kill. After all, as they say,’ the only good story, is a properly dead
narrative form.’ Narratology has made narrative adhere to monologism, while story is
ridden with one or more dialogisms. Narrative, across modernity, has turned more
monologic, removing itself from a time and a place of telling. If as Czarniawska (2004)
theorizes, narrative is petrification. I take the counter-view that story is something more
lively. By fixating on one logic, narratology turns narrative into a formula, into a onedimensional
model, into a form (i.e. representationalism). It is a researchable question
whether narrative remains invariant (petrified) across human interactions and human
plights for a longer time than story. The reason it has been impossible for narratology to
understand story, is inherent in the monologic model-form-formulae, such as the sjuzhet
and fabula of Russian Formalism (Propp & Shklovsky).
Sjuzhet (usually refers to narrative discourse) is the representation and reshaping
of underlying events through narration into plot (& in film by camera angles, in film and
novels via flashbacks in temporal sequence, etc.). Fabula usually refers to the stuff of
story. Sjuzhet and Fabula are Russian Formalist terms, used by Vladimir Propp and by
Viktor Shklovsky.
Jonathan Culler's (1981: 170-172) critique of Sjuzhet and Fabula is that they
constitute a narrative double-move. The first move is to set Sjuzhet (narrative) in
hierarchical domination over Fabula (story). Story becomes relegated in the first move to
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a mere chronology of event. In the second move, narrative self-deconstructs its initial
duality (the hierarchy of narrative over story), in order to double back to efface supposed
underlying order of event (Culler, 1981: 171).
Jerome Bruner summarizes Sjuzhet as the plot of narrative, and Fabula as timeless
underling theme (Bruner, 1986, pp. 7, 17-21). He wants them to be more loose fitting: "I
think we would do well with as loose fitting a constraint as we can manage concerning
what a story must 'be' to be a story" (p. 17). Yet, Bruner is also trying to fashion “story
grammar” (p. 14), to take story from its crooked line, its spiral, into a linearity. He
perceives a difference in narrative and story: “But the world making involved in its
[narrative] speculations is of a different order from what storymaking does” (p. 14,
bracketed addition, mine). Bruner is after something, “what is it that makes good stories
powerful or compelling” (p. 15) but he is not looking at compelling storyability from the
lens of Bakhtin’s answerability (1990, 1991). Rather, for Bruner (1986: 15) he aspires to
be one of the “story grammarians” who study minimal structure necessary to create story.
Finally, an increasing number of Native-indigenous authors are positing a more
vibrant role of story, beyond Fabula, and in resistance to Euro-American Formalist and
Structuralist narrative. For example Leslie Marmon Silko (1981) says, "White
ethnologists reported that the oral tradition among Native American groups has died out"
(p. 28). Narrative Sjuzhet/Fabula tends to turn native story into museum artifacts, as
archetype narratives devoid of "harsh realities of hunger, poverty and injustice" (p. 280),
and that Native story traditions were "erroneously altered by the European intrusion -
principally by the practice of taking the children away from the tellers who had in all past
generations told the children an entire culture, an entire identity of a people" (p. 6). The
idea here is that story competencies are taught in the tribe, and the story memory, passed
from generation to generation is disrupted by pulling children out of the home, forbidding
their language, etc. Thomas King (2005 in The Truth About Stories, argues that narrative
compromises story. The Fabula of story, the social fabric of story loses its voice. King
argues that story shapes identity differently from narrative. In particular the Indian
identity concocted in American-European ethnology, folklore, anthropology, history, and
other narrative-literature --- is being challenged by Native storywriters. James Cox (2006)
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looks at narrative (in the tradition of Euro-American enterprise of Sjuzhet/Fabula) as
"tools of domination: (p. 24), and a "colonial incursion" (p. 25).
It is not just Russian Formalism, but European Formalists that posit narrative
grammars (i.e. Todorov's simple transformations of mode, intention, result, manner,
aspect & status, as well as complex transformations of appearance, knowledge,
supposition, description, subjectification, & attitude). Despite cataloguing a list of
narrativists who turn story into narrative, Bruner (1986: 32) fails to notice ways
narratology turns story into a "virtual text."
Victor Turner (an anthropologist), Tzvetun Todorov, Hayden White (an
historian), and Vladimir Propp (a folklorist) suggest that there is some
such deep structure to narrative, and that good stories are well-formed
particular realizations of it (Bruner, 1986: 15).
The virtual text thesis suffers, once again, from a kind of system thinking (see
chapter 1), where as Bruner (1986: 21) says, “each level has its form of order, but that
order is controlled and modified by the level above it,” in short, a linearization of
hierarchic levels. There is in narrative the presupposition of deep structure, a kind of
omniscient eye looking through a linear sextant. Narrative is a speech act, which for
Bruner subjunctivizes reality (p. 26). Narrative purports to be inner thought about a
retrospective recollection of events according to deep structure models. Perhaps many of
the deep structures just lack substance, when subjected to rounds of interpretive
reflexivity. Julia Kristeva (Semiotic, p. 146. As cited in Culler, 1981: 104) writes, “in
place of the notion of intersubjectivity installed that of intertextuality.” My colleagues
and I are looking at ‘narrative noticing’ at all the ways organizations have adopted
narrative that dampen reflexivity, and at ‘story noticing’ at the ways in which living story
is not willing to become virtual text. 2
The list of narrativists (and I would add Aristotle and Northrop Frye to Bruner’s
list) view deep structure as being innate, and that story stuff is out of bounds, just plain
improper, without narrative formula representing deep structure. For example, Turner’s
narrative rationality formula is described by Bruner (1986: 21) as “steady state, reach,
crisis, redress” is a sort of narrative expectancy. Italo Calvino (1979: 109), on the other
hand, seems to rescue story from narrative control:
2 See STORI http:storyemergence.org
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“I’m producing too many stories at once because what I want is for you to
feel, around the story, a saturation of other stories that I could tell…. A
space full of stories that perhaps is simply my lifetime where you can
move in all directions, as in space, always finding stories that cannot be
told until other stories are told first…”
As does Bakhtin (1973: 12), who says, “narrative genres are always enclosed in a
solid and unshakable monological framework.” Story, for Bakhtin, is decidedly more
dialogical than narrative, for example in the “polyphonic manner of the story” (Bakhtin,
1973: 60). We can begin to see that dialogism opens up a related set of domains of
contrast between narrative and story.
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Table 1: Domains of Contrast of Narrative and Story
Narrative Domains Story
No Dialogism Yes
No Multi-Plotted Yes
No Multi-Perspectival Yes
No Eventing Yes
No Systemicity Yes
No Unfinalizedness Yes
No Unmergedness Yes
No Reflexivity Yes
No Living Yes
No Prospective Yes
Narrative can now be defined as monologism, mono-perspective, mono-plot BME
(beginning, middle, end), linearity, discrete-events, wholeness, finalized and merged
parts, and too explicitly rendered as abstract hierarchy to be more than rational-formulaic,
not a reflexivity, but just deadness, in a retrospective grave.
Story can be defined as more or more dialogisms, multi-plotted, multiperspectival,
eventing, systemicity, unfinalizedness, unmergedness, and rich in spirals of
reflexivity, living in the now, and comfortable with prospective sensemaking. Stories are
dialogic not only in terms of being multi-voiced (polyphonic) but also in being multiperspectival
(polylogical), and in differing chronotopes. Eventing is a kind of chronotope
in which temporality is not fixed in spatial terms. The term eventing is from Benjamin
Whorf’s (1956: 256) study of the Hopi, following up an observation by Franz Boas that
the Hopi Natives do not experience themselves, as a narrative grammar of ‘past-presentfuture.’
Shotter (1993: 109) also refers to Whorf’s “eventing” as an alternative
conception of time-space. Story systemicity (see chapter 1) has several dimensions
included in Table 1, including the unfinished, unfinalized, and unmergedness, or nonwholeness
that is more holographic process, than a linear conception, such as BME
narrative. Reflexivity or the transcendental (see introduction to book), as well as implicit
knowing (see Chapter 1) is an attempt to interpret, to look at the nature of one’s practices
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in relation to other social worlds, imagined to be parallel, higher or lower, along side, or
hidden.
One reason narratology (including folklore & history) has not sorted out these
narrative-story differences is that narrative has been molded by the passage of modernity,
and reduced into being a monologic-form-driven theory that attempts to free itself of
context. Narrative has been imprinted by modernity with a kind of theory-envy.
In Table 2 we compare John Shotter’s (1993: 113) dimensions of theory versus
account, with the Table 1 domains differentiating narrative and story. Shotter does not
apply his theory/account dimensions as a way to distinguish narrative-story.
Table 2: Shotter’s Theory and Account Dimensions
Domains (Table 1) Theory [Narrative] Account [Story]
1. Dialogism --- ---
2. Multi-Plotted Predictive Shapes expectations but not
in precise way
3. Multi-Perspectival --- ---
4. Eventing Abstractness Works by use of examples
5. Systemicity
(Complexity)
System Thinking
Elements are intentionally
not rule-related to one
another
6. Unfinalizedness Completeness Descriptions are incomplete
7. Unmergedness Discreteness Context-dependent
8. Reflexivity Explicitness Open to interpretation
9. Living --- ---
10. Prospective --- ---
Shotter does not include monologism, mono-perspectivity, deadness, or retrospective
grave in his list of theory dimensions, or dialogism and multi-perspectival in aspects of
account (he does talk of them elsewhere). The point of Table 2 is to illustrate that, in the
main, narrative aspires to be theory, while story seems to be more an account of practice,
one that is also dialogic, multi-perspectival, living, and prospective sensemaking. I think
Shotter’s use of ‘systematicity’ is possibly derived from Bakhtin (1973: 43) a
systematicity that is “unfinalizedness [in] its open-endedness and indeterminacy.” I use
the term systemicity (see chapter 1). Reflexivity is openness to interpretation. Harold
Garfinkel’s (1967) studies found that when one begins to do rounds of reflexivityinquiry,
one becomes anxious, because what was assumed to be the bedrock foundation
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of reflexive (representational) knowledge, is very thin, a very shatter-able, very ridden
with an openness of interpretation.
It seems to me that narrative is compatible with a managerialist quest for tools,
cook book recipes, quick scripts, that are taken to be implicative of deep structure setting
limits and control on story, rending them into archetypes.
Next, we address the types of dialogisms.
TYPES OF DIALOGISMS
There are at least five types: polyphony (multi-voicedness), stylistics (multi-layers
of diverse styles such as orality, textuality & visuality), chronotopes (interplay of
different spacetime conceptions), architectonics (interanimation of cognitive, aesthetic, &
ethical discourses), and what I am calling Polypi (dialogism of the various dialogisms:
polyphonic, stylistics, chronotopes, & architectonic).
POLYPHONIC
DIALOGISM
STYLISTIC
DIALOGISM
POLYPI
DIALOGISM
CHRONOTOPIC
DIALOGISM
ARCHITECTONIC
DIALOGISM
Figure 1 – Model of Polypi Systemicity Complexity of Dialogisms
My contribution is to theorize five types of dialogism interplaying in the Storytelling
Organization: polyphonic, stylistic, chronotopic, architectonic, and the Polypi (dialogism
of these dialogisms at a systemicity of complexity, rather than each individually). Polypi
dialogism is defined as the dialogism of dialogisms of systemicity complexity (Boje,
2005 b, e, g). I develop each of the dialogisms in relation to Storytelling Organization.
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The word Polypi comes from Hans Christen Andersen's (1976) adult fairytale: "The Little
Mermaid" and is literally a colony of hydra, and for me a metaphor for understanding the
interanimation of the four dialogisms (polyphonic, stylistic, chronotopic, &
architectonic). Polypi, at the time of Andersen’s writing, was thought to be both
vegetative and animal.
POLYPHONIC DIALOGISM: Its defined as fully embodied plurality of multivoicedness
and unmerged consciousnesses, viewpoints or ideologies where none takes
primary importance, not able to impose monovocal or monologic synthesis or consensus
integration. Polyphonic Dialogism Theory assumes “multivoicedness of an epoch” is
rendered in narrative history. Epic history has just a few voices in a “systematic
monological philosophical finalizedness” (Bakhtin, 1973: 25-26, italics original). The
monologic and monovocal consciousness is still dominant. It’s what Bakhtin (1973: 12)
calls ‘polyphonic dialogicality,’ a “complex unity of an Einstein universe.” The materials
of emergent story and narrative control have deep socioeconomic roots in capitalism, in
the writing of capitalism. Dostoevsky anti-causality, and anti-evolution is a “deliberate
and fully formed polyphony” Bakhtin, 1973: 28).
Every act of creation is bound by the laws of the material on which it
operates as well as by its own laws (Bakhtin, 1973: 53).
The plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousness and
the genuine polyphony of full-valued voices… plurality of equal
consciousness and their world” (Bakhtin, 1973: 4).
His self-conscious lives on its unfinalizedness, its open-endedness, and
indeterminancy (Bakhtin, 1973: 43).
The unmergedness in polyphonic dialogic complexity is of “unmerged
consciousness(es)” (Bakhtin, 1973: 6).
It is precisely on polyphony that the combination of several individual
wills occurs and the bonds of an individual will are fundamentally
exceeded” (Bakhtin, 1973: 17).
In Dostoevsky’s novels, Bakhtin (1973, 1981) implies in polyphony an equality of
author’s voice with any hero’s voice, each equally valued in the dialogism. Keep in mind
this is not saying that there is no power and domination. It’s not an idealized equality of
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voices; there is hegemony here, as well as equality. “Polyphonic manner of the story”
(Bakhtin, 1973: 60) is beyond the four master narratives (framework, control,
mechanistic, open) but not quite beyond organic narrative hegemony. “The story is told
… oriented in a new way to this new world” (Bakhtin, 1973: 5). There is in Dostoevsky
novels a “destruction of the organic unity of materials” but that narrative metaphorization
is still in force (Bakhtin, 1973: 11). Story is no longer presented “within one field of
vision, but within several complete fields of visions of equal value… joined in a higher
unity of a second order, the unity of the polyphonic (Bakhtin, 1973: 12). Bakhtin’s
material conditions of narrative and story presages Derrida’s (1978) preference for
writing over orality; the difference is that Bakhtin treats the modes of telling (oral &
writing) as dialogically implicated.
STYLISTIC DIALOGISM: Its defined as a plurality of multi-stylistic story and
narrative modes of expression (orality, textuality & visuality of architectural & gesture
expressivity). Multi-stylistics juxtapose and layer in an intertextual complexity manner
that may or may not be polyphonic.
A dialogically agitated and tension-filled environment of alien words, value
judgments and accents [that] weaves in and out of complex interrelationships,
merge with some, recoils from others, intersects with yet a third group and all
this may crucially shape discourse, and leave a trace in all its semantic layers,
may complicate its expression and influence its entire stylistic profile
(Bakhtin, 1981: 276).
There are five stylistic modes (Bakhtin 1981: 262): artistic, skaz, everyday
writing, scientific writing, and official writing that I will illustrate in McDonald’s
strategic stylistics.
Artistic style – Includes the architecture that tells its own story, as well as artistic
décor of French McDonald’s restaurant choices is called ‘McStyle.’ McDonald’s even
has a “McStyle” website where customers and owners, sort through some nine décor and
architectural themes, selecting their preference. Any given city across the US, Europe,
Asia, or Australia, may exhibit a variety of artistic styles in photos, sculpture, décor or
architecture. Each style took shape in an historical moment (classical Americana Speedy
drive-in of 1950s, nouveau modern drive-through of 2000s, etc.). These restaurant styles
intersect with seasonal themes. There is something about French social aesthetics that
demands such differentiated styles. The chronotope of Clown-Rogue-Fool (Ronald,
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Hamburglar, & Grimace) is expressed stylistically differently in Europe (except
Netherlands) where a younger version of each occurs, as compared to the older characters
in the U.S.
Skaz – taking a fragment of someone else’s everyday speech, and re-narrating
with another narrator’s intention (e.g. a corporate one) through it (examples: “I’m lovin’
it,” or Nike’s “Just Do It!). Skaz “lives, as it were, on the boundary between its own
context and another, alien context” (Bakhtin, 1981: 284). McDonald’s is filled with alien,
accented, a Tower of Babel of extra-artistic skaz, with “Mc” words, such as McJob,
McWork, McMeal, McFamily, McFun, etc. It’s the McDonaldization of language, and
McColonization of story stuff. McJob, for example, for the corporation, once meant
hiring the physically or mentally challenged, who would work for less money. McJob has
become an alien word meaning from the point of view of the corporation. It was
described as "a low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low benefit, no-future job in the
service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who have
never held one." (Coupland, 1991: 5). The term, McJob, was redefined, given a
counterstory, meaning dull, repetitive, low-pay, dead-end work, and became an entry into
Meridian-Collegiate Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary, and many others. The corporation’s
narrative writers struggle to dominate the meaning put to “Mc” words by culture
jammers, living wage, animal rights, environmental, slow food, vegetarian, anti-sprawl,
and other activist groups. In an open letter to Merriam-Webster's, former CEO Cantalupo
said that "more than 1,000 of the men and women who own and operate McDonald's
restaurants today got their start by serving customers behind the counter". 3
Everyday writing (example: a letter, a diary, annual report, and so forth). There
are narated bits from a CEO letters to shareholders with references to dead CEO Ray
Kroc in McDonald’s websites and annual reports, and many references to Ronald, a
simulacra virtual leader strategically constructed (Boje & Rhodes, 2005a, b). Kroc and
Ronald speak to the shareholders, and employees, through the everyday writing by
executives, and quotes of their folksy speech.
Scientific, Non-artistic Writing (examples: a scientific statement, a chart of
numbers from an account, an ethnographic description, or a philosophical treatise). For
3 BBC News Online 2003 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3255883.stm
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example, look on the tray-liners at McDonald's and the brochures available --> they have
scientific narrating of how nutritious, and fitness-conscious parents are who give their
children fast food.
Official Writing (examples: Ronald McDonald, Grimace, Hamburglar, but also
Bob Greene, Ray Kroc, or a new CEO. An official sign about do or don’t to this or that
on the wall is part of the telling. As is a pamphlet quoting McDonald’s official position is
on this or that issue.
In sum, stylistic dialogicality is strategic interactivity of multiple modes of
expression (oral, written, theatric, architectural, & so forth).
I situate stylistic dialogism as a property of “image” management. In
organization’s there are many managerialist attempts to control story with official
narrative. There is a strategic, centered (or centripetal), orchestration of multiple stylistic
modes of expression. In more “bottom up” governance, the stylistic multiplicity that
consummates the firm’s image is more a living story, than a managerialist orchestration
of public faciality or image narrative.
Now consider the global challenge of orchestrating stylistic multiplicity, caging
any pluralistic story and counterstory into managerialist central administrated narrative,
crafting the image of the corporation, around the world. The stylistic modes of
McDonald’s corporate narratives interact with more local stories of traditions. The
architecture itself, for example, varies from locality to locality, keeping the familiar “M”
emblazoned everywhere, accenting with “Mc” skaz. In France for example, McStyle
web page lists some 13 thematic narrative-choices of restaurant architecture and décor. 4
In a country with over 400 official cheeses, consumers are unwilling to limit their
stylistic choice to the plastic styles of American McDonald’s. We will explore the range
of stylistic differences in the next part of the book, with a chapter on stylistic dialogic
strategy. Here, I want to continue to list the types of dialogisms.
Stylistic modalities of Storytelling Organization construct dynamic image
complexity. Image storytelling can be more than simple sign BME narrative vision,
4 Go to McDonald’s France website, click “Entrez”, then “Tout Sur McDo” menu, for “McStyle” page;
http://www.mcdonalds.fr/
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value, and mission adventure strategy. Stylistic dialogism does not succeed or displace
polyphonic dialogism.
Holographic strategy is multi-voiced, multi-languaged, and polyphonically and
now multi-stylistically dialogic. Holography moves the field of strategy beyond oral
telling or analysis of text. Some styles are visual tellings without worlds. Stylistic
dialogism is all about image management in a variety of stylistic modes that are dialogic.
There is a widening of the circle in a multiplicity of expressive modalities. Branding is
an example of a reduction of stylistic dialogicality into a singular narrative-expressivity
and faciality
What is styled must become restyled to retain contemporary enthusiasm in acts of
re-contemporalization of established images. A ‘finalized monological whole’ stylisticnarrative
is uni-modal, and an anathema to ongoing renewing of a plurality of stylistics.
The stylistic modes of story and narrative are accomplished in an assemblage of stylistic
modes that are in “constant renewal” (Bakhtin, 1973: 87).
CHRONOTOPIC DIALOGISM: Chronotope is defined as the relativity of time
and space. Narrative unity depends upon maintenance of particular sorts of spacetime
chronotopes (i.e. those that are retrospective sensemaking), where as for story there are
prospective sorts of sensemaking. For Boulding it is complexity where symbols
differentiate from signs and images. Chronotopicity is literary fusion of space and time.
Its admix is temporalities and spatialities. The chronotopic manner of story is exhibited
when idea images of past, present, and future mix with diversity of spatial images
narrated and storied to become its own dialogism. Chronotope is “vertex of dialogically
intersecting consciousness” that also interacts with “polyphonic” and other dialogisms
(Bakhtin, 1973: 73-74).
There are more than ten ways Bakhtin (1973, 1981) conceptualized "chronotope"
defined as the relativity of time/space in the novel. 5 The theory is the chronotopes are
embodied in ways of writing, visualizing, and telling stories and narratives. I have sorted
the types into my own categories (adventure & folkloric). Chivalric is actually #5 in
5 Bakhtin (1981) says there are infinite types of chronotopes (he stops cataloguing in his review of 20 th
century novels, so more work is left to be done). The first nine are the major types of chronotopes. What I
include as the 10 th is an example of the minor type.
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Bakhtin's (1981) historical presentation of the first nine. The 10th (Bakhtin, 1973) is
disputed, a mystery I choose to tackle.
In contemporary Storytelling Organizations, the ten chronotopes are dialogic to
one another. Unlike Boulding, Bakhtin’s properties are cumulative, in the holographic,
rather than linear-order sense of levels. As Volosinov (1929/1973: 80), a member of the
Bakhtin Circle, puts it, “contexts do not stand side by side in a row, as if unaware of one
another, but in a state of constant tension, or incessant interaction, and conflict.” In other
words, the eighth chronotope could have properties of the tenth, or the seventh, but leave
out proceeding ones. Or we can look at them as holographic, as a multi-accenting of one
another.
The dialogic nature of chronotopes is a cutting edge research topic in strategy,
leadership, and organization change. In subsequent chapters I will assert that most
strategy writing is mostly about adventure chronotopes, leaving the folkloric (especially
orality) ones untheorized. Meanwhile, as I will illustrate briefly, in practice, the folkloric
ones are quite strategically realized. Complex strategy, may exhibit combinations of ten
chronotopic properties. For Bakhtin, they are hierarchically ordered. For me, they are not.
Table 3: Ten Chronotopes in Dialogicality
ADVENTURE CHRONOTOPES:
1. Greek Romantic
2. Everyday
3. Chivalric
4. Biographic
FOLKLORIC CHRONOTOPES
5. Reversal of Historical Realism
6. Clown-Rogue-Fool
7. Rabelaisian Purge
8. Basis for Rabelisian
9. Idyllic
10 Castle Room
FOUR ADVENTURE CHRONOTOPES
Calvino (1979: 218) challenges the linear-hegemony of the adventure plot:
How long are you going to let yourself be dragged passively by the plot?
You had flung yourself into the action, filled with adventurous impulses:
and then? Your function was quickly reduced to that of one who records
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situations decided by others, who submits to whims, finds himself
involved in events that elude his control.
Bakhtin’s challenge to linearization of narrative emplotment is to point out the variety of
adventure chronotopes, and then to show their dialogic interplay.
Greek Romantic Adventure - Abstract, formal system of space and adventure
time; link to time and space in more mechanistic than organic ways. Time sped up to
overcome spatial distance and conquer alien worlds. Adventure time in systemicity is a
large space with diverse countries, but without ties to place or history. The strategic
systemicity of McDonald's is well known. Its campaign to invade the world is well
known. The telling of Ray Kroc's founding is a romantic adventure narrative of the
franchise expansion. He succeeded the McDonald brothers, who invented the system of
fast food Taylorism. Heroes in Greek Romantic adventures have Aristotlian ‘energia.’
Their dramatic persona does not change, traits are merely discovered; energia is
consistent with Kroc's autobiography.
Everyday Adventure: Chronotopes are cumulative. This one mixes romantic
adventure with everyday adventure. The hero’s life is sheathed in context of
metamorphosis of human identity. The course of hero’s life corresponds to travel and
wandering the world. McDonald's operates in global space of diverse countries, avoiding
local historical ties when possible, adapting the menu when it must. This chronotope is
about strategic emergence and adaptation of the grander narratives of McDonald’s. There
is a type of metamorphosis is mythological cycle of crisis, so person becomes other than
what she or he was by chance and accident. McDonald's heroes wander the world, such
as Charlie Bell, Jim Cantalupo's successor (after his fast-food heart attack). Suddenly
CEO Charlie Bell fell ill, was replaced, and passed away. Both CEOs had health issues
that are allegedly related to fast food diet. McDonald's everyday adventure narrative is
interactive with Everyday adventure of has many suddenlys. This includes CEO’s sudden
death (Jim Cantalupo and Charlie Bell), release of Spurlock's Supersize Me documentary,
McLibel trial of Helen Steel and Dave Morris, and the celebrated trial of José Bové in
France, McFat children trials. 6 Since Cantalupo's heroic turn around of the company's
failing stocks and sliding same store sales record), and the sudden entry of "McJob" into
6 McLibel http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/
15

many dictionaries. Strategic narrative of McDonald's has had to adapt to everyday story
emergence.
(Auto) Biographical - Early biographies in ancient times had unchanging energia
personalities, not the kind of contemporary personality that transforms in reply to growth
experiences. Energia is Aristotle's more ideal time-space. The struggle is with the public
square, where the non-hero, the invisible servant or slave may come forward and
deconstruct the lionizing heroic-identity told by (auto) biographers. Formally,
biographical time is the metamorphosis of the hero seeking true knowledge of the self.
There are also many conversion narratives of biographical time that dissolves into
abstract time of ideal era. It’s laying one’s life bare, illuminating it on public square in
theatre of self-glorification, a masked identity completely on the surface, an exteriority
(energia & bios). McDonald's official (auto) biography-narratives are besieged by
counter-story biographers, who tell the other side of the story of change in identity. Ray
Kroc (1977) and other writers such as Westman (1980), crafted official narrative
biographies. There is counterstory writing, began with Boas & Chain (1976), replicated
by Schlosser (2001), and continued with Ritzer's (2002) McDonaldization thesis, which is
in turned countered by Watson (1997). In sum, the works become increasingly dialogical
to one another, citing and countering one another. The graphic display of this spiral of
counterstories to official narrative biographic is part of Boje, Driver, & Cia's (2005)
work.
16

+
I. Rationalist
Grotesque
II. Post-Rationalist
Critical
Kroc
1977
Westman
1980
Love
1986
Witzel
1994
Watson 1997
Ritzer
1993
Ritzer
2002
Reiter
1991
Leidner
1993
+
Leidner
1993
Alfino,
Caputo
&Wynyard,
1998
Talwar
2002
Kincheloe
2002
Boas &
Chain
1976
Schlosser
2001
-
III. Rationalist/Critical
IV. Post-Rationalist
Grotesque
1976 1993 2004
Figure 2 Novelizaiton of McDonald’s (auto) Biographies)
Chivalric Adventure - Hyperbolization of time with other-worldly verticality
(descent). This one mixes with previous chronotopes, in the testing of heroes’ fidelity to
love or faith in chivalric code. Sometimes its fairy tale motifs are linked to identity and
enchantment. This is the epitome of McDonaldland. A more mundane example is the
17

chivalric creed of Quality, Service, Cleanliness, & Value code at McDonald's. Portraying
one's corporation as chivalric (or ethical in its code) is a narrative strategy. Corporations
like McDonald's, have war rooms to track their narrated lines, to spin more favorable
press, and hire many so-called ‘story consultants’ to run focus groups, author and direct
story behaviors of the corporations. 7
SIX FOLKLORIC CHRONOTOPES
The more folkloric chronotopes are absent in traditional strategy writing,
but it’s very much a part of everyday practice. Whereas the adventure
chronotopes start out being centering (centripetal) kinds of more monological
narratives, the more folkloric ones are more about difference (centrifugal) forces.
As such the folkloric chronotopes become counterforces to the adventure ones.
There’s a web site I maintain for illustrations and study guides on dialogic inquiry
into McDonald’s strategy
Reversal of Historical Realism - Reversal of here-and-now time/space into a
futuristic ephemeral temporality. An inversion to folkloric fullness of here-and-now
reality, and material world (folkloric historic realism) becomes transformed by mythic
thought into either epic past or ephemeral future (given more concreteness by the
appropriation); the here-and-now of systems becomes exceeded by the historical
inversion. Examples: the six McDonaldland videos produced by Klasky-Cuspo studios
(makers of Rugrats, Wild Thornbirds, & The Simpsons). 9 McDonaldland was strategy
enacted by Ray Kroc to imitate his war buddy, Walt Disney's success with Disneyland;
there is now an on line version of McDonaldland. 10
Clown-Rogue-Fool - Out of depths of folklore pre-class structure are three
medieval masks emerged. Obviously at McDonald’s this is Ronald McDonald, the clown,
Hamburglar the rogue, and Grimace the fool. It’s ironic that the world's no#1 fast food
corporation has appropriated Bakhtinian Clown-Rogue-Fool chronotope, exploiting its
7 They are often called ‘story consultants,’ but they more accurately should be called ‘narrative consultants’
since they are paid to enact narrative control, not to unleash dialogic story processes.
8 See my web site at http://peaceaware.com/McD
9 See http://www.klaskycsupo.com/data/questions.html
10 See McDonaldland in Wikipedia Encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonaldland
18

grotesque humor, while emasculating its force as socio-cultural and political commentary
(Boje & Cai, 2005; Boje & Rhodes, 2005a, b). In other words, McDonald’s grotesque trio
uses the masks in a parody, as an attractor to children, but not as a way to speak back to
power.
Rabelaisian Purge - The purge begins with (Everyday adventure, the suddenlys)
of the Supersize Me documentary or a McLibel or a José Bové trial. It continues when
McDonald’s wage servants and slaves begin to express counterstories to the official
corporate vernacular. And in this chronotope, the Rabelaisian Purge, it’s grotesque humor
that is used by the activists to poke story-fun at the McDonald's icons, and at their
spiritualization narratives (such as Ronald performing transmutations), such as
McSupper, and the McJob skaz controversy, already mentioned. 11
Folkloric Basis for Rabelaisian. This is grotesque humor. Folkloric time is
collective and part of productive growth, measured by labor events. Generative time is
pregnant time and concrete here-and-now, a time sunk deeply in the earth, profoundly
spatial and concrete, implanted in earth and ripening in it (metamorphosis). Pre-class
consciousness. For example, the slow food movement is focused on slow time to eat, on
using organic foods, on avoiding the fast and furious. It’s the antidote to
McDonaldization by home cook festivalism, visiting the non-chain, local restaurants,
where people take their time. McDonald’s strategic move is to invoke grotesque humor of
hybrid characters, such as Hamburglar, part burger-head and part boy. Their humor resets
the culture jamming, into a more romantic adventure chronotope. Animal slaughter is
countered with McFry Kids, and the McNuggets, as well as Birdie. Each is part animal or
human and part fast food.
Idyllic - Idyllic is organic localism that fragments modernity’s quest for global.
Idyllic folkloric time is agricultural, craft and labor time. It’s family organically grafted
to time events and spatiality (place), living organically in familiar territory, in unity of
place; rhythm of life linked to nature and cyclic repetition that is separated from progress
myth; not a stage of development; a rebirth. Growing your own food, taking time to be
rooted in a community, its non-fast food places. It would be a form of labor, where
11 See McSupper image at http://peaceaware.com/McD or at http://xray.bmc.uu.se/cgibin/gerard/image_page.pl?image=dombo/pics/last_mcsupper.jpg
19

workers own their tools, apply their trades, learned in apprenticeship. The previous
chronotope is extended in the idyllic. McDonald's apes the idyllic by invoking a family
trope in its McDonaldland stories, complete with McNugget aunts and uncles, McFry
kids, a sort of gay marriage of Ronald the Father, and Grimace the Mother; parenting of
sister and brother, Hamburglar and Birdie. In short, resistance comes out of the idyllic (&
the generative & grounded) as a centrifugal counterforce to the abstractness of global
narratives that are without time or place.
Castle Room – In addition to the major chronotopes introduced thus far, Bakhting
has several minor chronotopes. These can be seen in interplay in several of the earlier
chronotopes, such as the meetings that occur in everyday and travel adventures. Bakhtin
refers to time/space of trope of being in a Gothic "Castle" or “Salon” that affects the
sense of temporality and spatiality in the storying going on there. One could also say that
“Meeting” at McDonald’s is its own type of chronotope. 12 This is “a real-life chronotope
of meeting is constantly present in organizations of social and governmental life”
(Bakhtin, 1981: 99). In such Gothic, as compared to more modern and postmodern
meeting spots, there is a change in the discourse, in the atmosphere, in temporality and
spatiality. A medieval castle, in novels, carries a premodern temporal resonance, of
feudal oppression and irrationality (Bakhtin, 1981: 246 for castle/see pp. 97-98 for
meeting as device). 13 In Lincoln (UK), there is a castle converted to a prison in 18th
century, where prisoners attended church, seated in an arrangement where they could see
and be seen by the speaker at the podium, but could not see other prisoners. One could
argue that various kinds of meeting places in modern corporations afford have an historic
way of orienting our discourse, such as the Mahogany board room, a Playplace at
McDonald’s where plasticity of play is different from play in the forest, or meeting in a
McDonald’s without a Playplace is different from one with. One could argue that various
kinds of meeting places in modern corporations have an historic way of orienting our
discourse, such as a Playplace at McDonald’s where plasticity of play is different from
12 The Everyday chronotope is of meeting in travel adventure, is different from the 10 th chronotope of
meeting in salon or gothic castle that is more knitted into expectations about domination, plastic setting,
etc. that loom over the kinds of conversation in 10 th , as opposed to meeting in travel; the two chronotopes
are dialogic to each other.
13 See www.literaturecompass.com/images/store/LICO/chapters/784.pdf and
http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb00-2/keunen00.html
20

play in the forest, or meeting in a McDonald’s without a Playplace is different from one
with. In sum while the chronotopes are developed by Bakhtin in their genealogical
emergence in changes in the novel, its clear that it is not a hierarchic ordering, but rather
a kind of holographic interplay among them, where the more centripetal ones of narrative
are countered by the more dialogical manner of story in conceptions of time and space
that are more centrifugal.
ARCHITECTONIC DIALOGISM: Its defined as the interanimation of three
societal discourses: cognitive, aesthetic, and ethic. The cognitive architectonic was
invented by Immanuel Kant (1781/1900: 466): "By the term Architectonic I mean the art
of constructing a system... Reason cannot permit our knowledge to remain in an
unconnected and rhapsodistic state, but requires that the sum of our cognitions should
constitute a system." Bakhtin in (1990) added ethical and aesthetic discourse to Kant's
cognitive architectonic. Bakhtin preferred the term "consummation" to construction, and
was careful to not assume a monophonic, monologic, or mono-languaged system (rather
he preferred to look at the unmergedness, the unfinalizability of system, or what I defined
above as systemicity. Ethics here is not ethics of conceptions of beauty, but the very
notion of answerability. Aesthetics is about how and for whom a given systemicity is
consummated. There are no strategy studies or theories of architectonic strategy
(exception, Boje, Enríquez, González, & Macías. 2005).
POLYPI DIALOGISM: Polypi is a manner of story at an order of complexity
above the separate dialogisms. In polypi there is dialogic interplay between official
master-narratives (sign-representation monologisms) and the more dialogic intercourse
among respective dialogisms. Polypi, then, is a plurality of dialogisms, in struggle with
modernity. The polypi manner of the story forces a Socratic interrogation of modernity.
It’s problematic questions of unknowable, unfinalizedness, unmergedness, indeterminacy
of systemicity combine with the most problematic question of all the transcendental. At
any moment the plurality of dialogic story can degenerate, be reduced to mere plasticity
of individual dialogism or just narrative monophonic.
In Hans Christian Andersen’s (1974) adult tale of The Little Mermaid, the
transcendental question is raised, as the crude underworld of the sea, comes into an
encounter with the human world. The purgatory of sea-foam, and the world of here-after.
21

In my Wilda storytelling, I pick up on what I see as a further problematic, how late (post)
modern capitalism tells stories of its own spirituality and religiosity ((Boje, 2005 e, g).
Wilda is my grandmother’s name, and my sister and I believe she too was an enchantress,
who lived in the wildness. Wilda, the enchantress of the polypi, is a businesswoman,
willing to exact a dear price of suffering for a shot at immortality (Boje, 2005 e, g). The
fantasy life of corporate storytelling organizations, here and there, does embrace the
transcendental, and on the public square, now the marketplace, once again there is an
interrogation about ultimate questions. Yet, in a moment, the polypi can self-deconstruct,
into separate dialogisms, no longer an encounter of unknowable with knowable, this
world, the underworld, and what’s next. Polypi is emergent story complexity antecedent
and interactive to transcendental and retrospective sensemaking.
In Andersen’s tale, the enchantress is protected by the Polypi (hydra colony),
where she lives and works, selling her mystic potions for a dear price. Bakhtin (1981:
139) says “capitalism brings together people and ideas just as the ‘pander’ Socrates had
once done on the market square of Athens.” To me, Wilda brings capitalism onto the
market square, where an interrogation can take place. I intend an interrogation of the
relation of multiple spiritualities and religiosities to the storytelling of capitalists and their
enterprises; how the transcendental is brought into business. Globalization, for example,
is quite the evangelical project.
In terms of emerging story, the implication is that each story is socially in motion,
relative to sensemaking between bodies (physical, political, social, bodies of ideas, etc.),
and to another way of telling (para Holquist, 1990: 20-21). Each dialogism is a
systemicity complexity property that is “unfinalizedness [in] its open-endedness and
indeterminacy” (Bakhtin, 1973: 43).
Polypi is a manner of story that addresses the struggle of narrative control of
story, and more critical counterstory of transcendental business of business escaping its
instrumental ethic. The official utopia-narrative is opposed by counterstories exposing
transcendental fakery. The plurality of dialogisms becomes a struggle of the
phantasmagoric interrogation on the public square (now just a market place), with the
legitimating of business in transcendental storytelling. And “life seen in a dream makes
normal life seem strange” (Bakhtin, 1981: 122).
22

For example, McDonald’s has a rich fantasy life, with grotesque characters
(burger-headed sheriff, mayor, and child-burglar), and a clown, who in recent years, has
an executive office, a seat on the board of directors, and is spokes-clown for the “Go
Active” nutrition and fitness global strategy. But also, this clown is a transcendental
figure, contemporalized as a savior, as a Christ-like super-hero-representation. And
what’s “McDonaldland,” if not the idyllic-netherworld, capitalism descending into the
underworld, then born again into the human world, with special powers (spirit
representation to sell fast-food). Polypi is a manner of story that invokes the holography
of systemicity, with a special role for transcendental as counterstory. As we shall explore
in subsequent strategy chapters, the polypi of dialogisms, can be orchestrated quite
strategically by storytelling organizations. Yet, our theory and empirical work lags
behind what is common practice to so many storytelling organizations, the manipulation
of narrative and story.
Polypi manner of story exceeds single dialogic context, subtext and intertext, to
invoke transcendental dialogic angles. The polypi manner of story does not replace or
nullify monogonic monologic narrative. Dialogized story is interactive with the linear
manner of BME narrative. Retrospective narrative generic models (Aristotle’s Poetics,
Burke’s Pentad, Turner’s Breach, etc) reconstruct a living story life to be context-free,
nuance-free, and no longer generative.
As we address more complexity, the polypi of dialogisms widens, modernity
comes into conflict with its banishment of transcendental and reflexivity discourse that is
outside of dead forms of narrative. Enlightenment seeks once again to exorcise
transcendental from secular ways of telling capitalism, but cannot resist using and
exploiting what transcendental can mean to sales and image managment.
Next, I differentiate dialogism from some synonyms, dialogue, debate and
dialectic.
23

DIALOGISM NOT THE SAME AS DIALOGUE, DEBATE, & DIALECTIC
Organizations.
Dialogue, debate, dialectic, and dialogism are types of deliberation in Storytelling
DIALOGUE (that
becomes monologic
rational consensus)
DELIBERATION
TYPES:
DEBATE (working out
grounds, warrants &
claims)
DIALECTICS (thesisantithesis-synthesis
teleology)
DIALOGISMS
(generativity)
Figure 3 – Model of Deliberation Types
Each deliberation mode balances the relationship of narrative to story quite
differently. Dialogue privileges the supremacy of consensus-rationality, during every
dialogue into a set of monologues. Debate let’s rationalities enter into context. Dialectics
has its teleology. Dialogism is especially favorable to the generativity of living story.
DIALOGUE: Dialogue is a type of deliberation most common in organizations,
particularly corporate ones. Dialogue in hierarchical organizations is often quite
monologic, a single unitary logic, a top-down narration, a let’s do consensus, and all
agree to sign up for the winning logic. The dialogue is a pretense. The bureaucratic and
managerialist dialogue easily becomes a monologue, reducing and controlling difference
into monologic-consensus, or just going along with some powerful official logocentrism,
or some form of groupthink. A plethora of points of view that could emerge is reduced to
a narrative line. Narrative control is strongest in what passes for dialogue in the
administratively ordered world. In the administered world, narrative-control works topdown
while story-liberation is kept from working bottom-up. That is why we need to
look at the interplay of narrative and story in dialogue. Narrative, as a form of control,
regulates and legislates sensory input, with mental models petrified by a build up of many
encounters where one learns it is better to conform to narrative expectancy of one’s boss,
24

to pretend dialogue, and just ape the monologue expected. The plus side is that narrative
expectancy allows one to predict the acts and intention of others’ speech acts (Bruner,
1986: 49). Dialogues in most corporate circumstances cannot satisfied the dialogic
conditions of “multi-voiced polyphony” (Bakhtin, 1973: 293).
DEBATE: Debates are two logics, each with grounds, warrants, and claims; each
trying to subdue or out do the other one. Debates are staged and facilitated, more
accurately described as a battle of monologues. The parties are expected to give grounds,
warrants and claims, to make narrative truth-claims entirely explicit. Walter Fisher’s
(1984, 1985a, b, 1989) Narrative Paradigm Theory (NPT) is a kind debate-deliberation,
to conform story into a narrative search for veracity, an obsession with falsification. For
Fisher, there are two tests of ‘narrative rationality’: probability and fidelity of stories that
gird decisions about to be made, or already made.
• Probability is defined as people’s inherent storylistening skill or
competence in evaluating stories and storytellers for fidelity. Is this story
probable or some kind of lie or fantasy?
• Fidelity is defined as storylisteners comparing and evaluating what they
hear in someone else’s story against their own similar experiences and
belief systems in a search for coherence.
Gertrude Stein (1935) made the point that as people listen to stories, they also tell stories
of themselves to themselves. But the research question is, do the storylisteners, telling as
they are listening, just wander in their reflexivity and imagination or are they doing
narrative-fidelity (seeking coherence of probability & fidelity)? Reducing story animals’
living story to narrative-rationality, fails to investigate that question. We who study
narrative in relation to story need to look at how reflexivity-transcendental is
accomplished by story and narrative animals. For example Bruner (1986: 5) asks, “Do all
readers assign multiple meanings to stories” or ask “what kinds of category systems” they
fit into to become narratives? Are stories imprisoned in what Bruner calls “an
instantiation of [narrative] models we carry in our minds” (p. 7, bracketed addition,
mine). If readers are placing story into one or more alternate narratives models then it is
an act of story control, a domestication of the storytelling animal. Narrative then becomes
25

a powerful tool for organization story control, to regulate sensemaking, to shape social
reality along official lines.
NPT is a mental representation narrative-mirror-model that is reductionistic of
storytelling. Fisher argues that people as ‘storytelling animals’ attempt to tell a ‘credible,’
‘comprehendible,’ and ‘coherent’ stories [more accurately narratives] in a ‘storytelling
world’ that is overrides storylistening with narrative-formulae-evaluation competencies.
To me, there is a double move by NPT, first to impose narrative-form-coherence onto
story stuff, and second to reduce reflexivity to model seeking. According to NPT people
(storytelling animals) tell stories by giving them narrative-mental-situation-models of
people, objects, actions (events), and places (locations).
To me, Fisher’s NPT is incommensurate with Walter Benjamin’s (1936) theory of
the death of story competences. Benjamin theorizes that such competencies as
subjunctivizing, being able to fill in the blanks, have eroded significantly due to the overexpository
explicitness of narrative in the novel and in the rise of information processing.
Storytelling for Benjamin in a craft, one that grew up in the pre-capitalist craft world of
people sitting around telling and listening to stories while they did their sewing, weaving,
or sea-faring crafts. When late modern capitalism imposed workers silence and division
of labor as ways to enhance performativity of production, the arena for workers
practicing the ancient arts and secrets of storytelling, especially generativity, was
destroyed.
NPT purports to be an alternative to [monological] rationality of Critical Thinking
models. NPT elements are called ‘good reasons’ storytellers give for actions and
decisions. These are not the same as grounds, claims and warrants. Fisher’s theory is
nevertheless one of ‘narrative rationality.’ NPT does not distinguish between (1)
storyable and unstoryable events, such as trauma, or (2) the differences, and possible
retrogression of storytelling and storylistening competencies, or (3) the implications of
polyphony on a world of stories and storytelling animals that have been somewhat
domesticated by narrative-control in late modern capitalism.
In sum, while debate uses grounds, warrants, and claims to be narrative order,
story, in my view, is richer, has more variety, and generative power because it escapes or
ignores knowledge versions of a world presumed to be over-coded in deep structure.
26

DIALECTIC: Hegelian dialectic is teleology, seeking a logico-rational, or some
universal God’s hand in the world order, and ideal type of time categorization, into the
linearization of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. For Volosinov (1929/1973: 106) it’s a
“dialectical generative process” as multiple contexts come into tension with one another.
However, Bakhtin, I believe moved away from dialectic, and preferred a more dialogic
conception of deliberation. Ricoeur (1992) takes a different approach to dialectic,
proposing that an identity of sameness is dialectic to an identity of difference.
DIALOGIC: Dialogic is fully embodied multi-perspectivity, a generative
possibility that some unknown, as yet unannounced direction will emerge, and yet it is
not as volatile a deliberation as debate. In the various dialogisms, there is a “zone of
dialogical contact” and “intersecting planes” and a “fullness of heteroglossia” (Bakhtin,
1981: 45, 48, 60). It’s about finding arbitrariness in the social order, a plurivocality, and
multi-perspectivity. It is something that Kafka, Dostoevsky, and sometimes Pirandello,
Cervantes, Dante, and Shakespeare could manage. Dialogism refuses coherence,
consistency, conciliation, consensus, conformity, compliance, commonality, command,
and control. Story is dialogical, a living, human heat fullness.
In sum, the deliberation opportunities of social interaction are different for
dialogue, debate, dialectic, and dialogisms.
Collective memory occurs in stylistic dialogism, in textuality, orality, and
visuality. It’s the topic of chapter 3.
27