Personal chronotopes in the dialogical self: a developmental case study

Abstract

This collection on developmental themes contributes to a spate of recent books on the dialogical self (e.g., Aveling et al., 2010; Hermans and Gieser, 2012; Hermans and Hermans-Konopka, 2010). Their emergence confirms the growing importance of 'dialogism' for psychology and the social sciences (Holquist, 2002). In psychological traditions, 'dialogical self theory' (DST) has multiple roots: first, i nthe pragmatism of William James' (1890) notion of an extended (social) self; second, in the social psychology of George Herbert Mead's (1934") focus on 'otherness' as a source of self-reflection; and third (and above all), in an engagement with the concepts of 'dialogiue,' 'polyphony,' 'multio-voicedness' and 'mediation' emerging in the Russian work of Bakhtin (1981, 1984, 1990) and Vygotsky (1978). Bakhtin's dialogical epistemology, in particular, has made possible new linkages from literary and social theory to psychological studies of a more pluralist and relational self than the 'self-contained' one proposed by Enlightenment and individualism (Sampson, 1985). The growing literature spawned by these linkages suggest that the dialogical approach is an important new innovation. At the cultural level, postmodern shifts in the possibilities for the self brought about by global electronic communication and by mass migrations, converge with these recent innovations. In short, more challenging theoretical frameworks are demanded for the study of the self; frameworks which reach beyond traditional Western conceptions of integration, self-containment and sovereign agency (Gergen, 1991; Gregg, 1991).