Landmark Essays on Bakhtin, Rhetoric, and Writing

Book excerpt: The essays in this collection give voice to the plurality of approaches that scholars in the field of rhetoric and composition have when they set forth to assimilate Bakhtin for their varied purposes. The collection is arranged in three major sections. The first attempts to capture the most important theoretical extensions of Bakhtin's ideas, and does so with an emphasis on what Bakhtin might contribute to the present understanding of language and rhetoric. The next section explores the implications of Bakhtin's work for both disciplinary identity and writing pedagogy. The final section looks at how Bakhtinian thought can be used to bring new light to concerns that his work either does not address or could not have imagined addressing concerns ranging from writing across the curriculum to feminism, and from computer discourse to the writing of a corporation annual report. Together, these essays demonstrate how fruitfully and imaginatively Bakhtin's ideas can be appropriated for a context that he could not have anticipated. They also serve as an invitation to sustain the dialogue with Bakhtin in the future, so that researchers may yet come to realize the fortuitous ways that Bakhtin will continue to mean more than he said.