Any true understanding is dialogic in nature.
V. N. Vološinov
Thus, understanding supplements the text: it is active and also creative by nature.
Mikhail Bakhtin
Not always has scientific production had the visibility it currently has, when we await diagnoses, treatments and a vaccine against the COVID-19 pandemics affecting humanity. Despite negationists (and also flat-earthers!), there is tacit social acknowledgement about the importance of Science in our lives. Still: the acknowledgement of the need for social access to knowledge has been growing, and we can underscore the importance of Open Science. However, scientific production process is not simple. From the outside, perhaps some may think that scientists perform solitary work. Nothing is more contrary to reality: scientific work requires the other, other’s gaze; it requires the reading of, the understanding of and dialogue with the other. In all fields of knowledge! Especially in our field, the sphere of language studies, essential to communication and comprehension among men.
This dialogue of texts and discourses belongs to the process of elaboration of an academic article. The article research and writing is only the first step of its production, since Science must be proven, its quality must be tested by peers. That is, without the many and tireless peer-reviewers (ad hoc or from the Editorial Board) who were available to review articles submitted to Bakhtiniana (as well as to other quality journals), sacrificing their time in favor of knowledge divulging - and aiming at a better world -, a journal of excellence would not exist.
In the vast work of the Circle we may find several excerpts dealing with dialogue among texts, as in the interaction among articles and reviews. Throughout this process, the scientist/peer-reviewer promotes, with the academic article he/she receives to review, a dialogue in special: the encounter between two subjects, the text to be read - expressive and speaking being (cf. Bakhtin, 1986, p.161) - with the reviewer. This dialogue takes place around that article for which a review was requested (the Circle would say he is the “hero” or “character” of the statement). In the interaction with those subjects - article and author, the reviewer carries out a responsive-active comprehension: he/she questions, makes objections, suggests additions, agrees, denies or rejects statements... His/her understanding is active and creative. Thus, when, in a possible second round of reviews, the article, revised by the author, returns to the reviewer sometimes the latter responds to the former not only in the text, complementing and/or correcting what was appointed/suggested, but also justifying his/her not having accepted a suggestion or two. There are those who, in the final version of the text, thank anonymous reviewers for the reading and presented suggestions. This dialogue between authors and reviewers is extremely productive, even when the article is not accepted for publication, that is, when there is an active disagreement. Bakhtin teaches us:
Only when the position is dogmatically inert is there nothing new revealed in the work (the dogmatist gains nothing, he cannot be enriched). The person who understands must not reject the possibility of changing or even abandoning his already prepared viewpoints and positions. In the act of understanding, a struggle occurs that results in mutual change and enrichment (1986, p.142).
Thus, this important aspect of scientific production enables the development of Science as well as the existence of quality journals, in which group Bakhtiniana may be found, when publishing articles in its four annual issues. Thanks to this active dialogic process among peers, in this issue we have the presence of 09 articles and a review, which we now present.
Our first article - M. M. Bakhtin’s Concept of the Word in the Context of Modern Literary Criticism - is signed by Elina Sventsitskaya (Таврическии национальныи университет, Учебно-научныи институт филологии и журналистики, Кафедра славянскои филологии и журналистики, Киев, Украина [Tavria National University named after V.I. Vernadsky, Teaching and Scientific Institute of Philology and Journalism, Department of Slavic Philology and Journalism, Kiev, Ukraine]). The author dedicates herself to a dense theoretical reflection around the artistic word, at the intersection between literary criticism and linguistics, setting characteristics in each of the approaches, and strongly relying on concepts from Mikhail Bakhtin’s and the Circle’s works. From Ukraine we go to Cordoba, Argentina, with Ariel Gómez Ponce (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba - UNC, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Córdoba, Argentina), in a text titled Who’s Afraid of Lotman and Bakhtin? Two Semiotic Readings of Fear. His objective is to think about the materialization of fear in the explanation of cultural phenomena. To do so, he addresses the late production of two important Russian philosophers, Mikhail Bakhtin and Yuri Lotman, articulating principles and motives which would systematically be updated in the relation between social bonds and fear, an extremely current issue.
Coming from Brazil, the next article is by Anderson Salvaterra Magalhães and Daniel Eduardo Candido, (both from the Universidade Federal de São Paulo - UNIFESP, Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Guarulhos, São Paulo, Brazil). In The Clinking of Christ’s, Chico/Gil’s and Criolo’s Cups: The Issue of Ethics in a Dialogic Toast, we once again have a dense theoretical reflection on Bakhtinian concepts - great time and the semantic sector of existence, for us to understand new meanings and the ethical-semantic accentuation of two Brazilian songs which dialogue through time and which stem from the “Let this cup pass from me” Biblical expression.
Two important educational themes are dealt with: literacy and literary readings in the new Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC) do Ensino Médio [High School National Common Core]. Cecília Maria Aldigueri Goulart (Universidade Federal Fluminense- UFF, Faculdade de Educação, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Maria Cristina Corais (Instituto Superior de Educação do Rio de Janeiro- ISERJ, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro Brazil) sign Literacy, Discourse and the Production of Social Senses: Dimensions and Guidelines for Research and for Teaching Writing. The article brings results from research aiming at understanding how literacy methodologies may be conceived from a discursive perspective. Stories from literacy teachers and examples of works carried out with children make the text especially savory, while they point toward the importance of the fact that children’s own lives, in the social interaction of subjects and language, should prevail over the work traditionally conducted in writing acquisition.
The text by Marcel Alvaro Amorim (Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Rio de Janeiro - IFRJ, São João de Meriti, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro - UFRJ, Faculdade de Letras, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Victor Alexandre Garcia Souto (Curso Superação, PCS, online, Brazil) is titled BNCC’s Re-Signification of Literary Reading and of the Reader-in-fruition: A Dialogical Approach. Under a dialogic discourse analysis perspective developed from Bakhtin’s and the Circle’s works, the article questions the notions of fruition and reader-in-fruition in the BNCC [National Common Core]. It aims at understanding how literary reading is proposed in this official document and suggesting responsive, historical, social, cultural and ideological attitudes in relation to the work with literature at school.
The next articles examine social issues related to power, women and racism. Rusanil dos Santos Moreira Júnior and Rita de Cássia Souto Maior (both from Universidade Federal de Alagoas -UFAL, Faculdade de Letras, Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil) address The Dialogic Relationships and the Involving Discourse on the Social-historical Condition of a Mistress. The authors show how dialogic relations and the responsive-active comprehension present in the discourse of a woman-lover, “subservient, dependent, guilty, and a homewrecker,” rename and ressignify an involving discourse on that love relationship. Critical discourse analysis is the theoretical-methodological framework from the article by Daniele de Oliveira (Universidade Federal da Bahia -UFBA, Instituto de Letras, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil) and Viviane de Melo Resende (Universidade Nacional de Brasília - UNB, Instituto de Letras, Brasília, Brazil), titled Whiteness, Discourse and Representation of Black Women in the Academic Environment of the Federal University of Bahia; this is also the case in the article by Cecilia Molinari de Rennie (Universidad de la República, Departamento de Historia y Filosofía de la Ciencia, Montevideo, Uruguay), Advertising Capitalism: A Critical Analysis of Early 20th Century LEMCO Trading Cards. In the former, the authors present important forms of the perpetuation of racism by symbolic elites, analyzing discourse from white students from the Universidade Federal da Bahia. In the latter, the Uruguayan author resumes business cards from a marketing campaign from the turn of the 20th century, showing through her analysis how the discourses from those cards contributed to the hegemony of bourgeois capitalism.
Finally, Gabriel Dvoskin, Universidad de Buenos Aires - UBA (Universidad de Buenos Aires - UBA, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Instituto de Lingüística, Buenos Aires, Argentina) signs Reported Speech and Ideological Positions: the Social Distribution of Knowledge and Power in Media Discourse. In the article, the author analyzes discourses from two Argentinian journals which covered the social conflict generated by school occupation by high school students, which took place in the city of Buenos Aires, in September 2017. And Fatima Bianchi (Universidade de São Paulo - USP, Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas - FFLCH, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil) authors Dostoevsky’s Seemingly Carelessness Towards Language. This last article reveals how the Russian writer transcends the established literary rules, in terms of language and style of his time. And, by doing that, he shows a great innovation in literary form in his debut novel, Poor People.
The review in this issue presents our readers with Adail Sobral’s important work, A filosofia primeira de Bakhtin: roteiro de leitura comentado [Bakhtin’s Prima Philosophia: Reading Guide with Comments]. Campinas, SP: Mercado das Letras, 2019, and is written by Vera Lúcia Pires (Universidade Federal da Paraíba - UFPB, Centro de Ciências Humanas, Letras e Artes, João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brasil).
Our habitual overview closes this Editorial. This issue presents 11 texts by 16 authors, coming from 14 different institutions, four of which foreign (Universidade de Tavria, Kiev/Ukraine; Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina; Universidad de la República, UDELAR, Uruguay; Universidad de Buenos Aires, UBA, Argentina) and nine of which Brazilian (UNIFESP, UFF, ISERJ, IFRJ - São João de Meriti, UFRJ, UFAL, UFBA, UNB, UFPB and USP). We invite, therefore, readers to savor and include in their research this set which, once again, grants Bakhtiniana the opportunity of actively engaging in the cultural and academic lives, both from Brazil and abroad. The number of submissions, as well as their rigorous selection, carried out by competent and collaborative Editorial Board and ad hoc peer-reviewers, has allowed for this excellent result to be achieved: Bakhtiniana remains steadfast in its commitment to always promoting dialogical possibilities among research devoted to language studies. In this sense, we thank, once again, the invaluable and constant support, assistance and recognition from MCTI [Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation]/CNPq [Brazilian National Research Council]/MEC [The Brazilian Ministry of Education]/ CAPES [Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education] - CNPq Note 19/2019 - Programa Editorial / Editoração Proc. 441854/2019 [Editorial Program] - and PUC-SP, through their Plano de Incentivo à Pesquisa (PIPE’q) [Research Incentive Plan] (PIPE’q) / Publicação de Periódicos [Journal Publication] (PubPer-PUCSP) - 2020, Request 14663.
REFERÊNCIAS
- BAKHTIN, M. Apontamentos 1970-1971. In: BAKHTIN, M. Estética da criação verbal Introdução e tradução do russo de Paulo Bezerra. Prefácio à edição francesa de Tzvetan Todorov. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2010. p.337-358.
- BAKHTIN, M. Por uma metodologia das ciências humanas. In: BAKHTIN, M. Notas sobre literatura, cultura e ciências humanas Organização, tradução, posfácio e notas Paulo Bezerra. Notas da edição russa Serguei Botcharov. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2017. p.57-79.
- VOLÓCHINOV, V. (Círculo de Bakhtin). Marxismo e filosofia da linguagem Problemas fundamentais do método sociológico na ciência da linguagem. Tradução, Notas e Glossário Sheila Grillo; Ekaterina V. Américo. Ensaio introdutório Sheila Grillo. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2017.
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
07 Dec 2020 -
Date of issue
Oct-Dec 2020
