Abstract Dialogism views the individual as emerging from,

operating within, and transacting with a complex set of social

relations in an ever-changing world. Mikhail Bakhtin, in his
assessment of the Bildungsroman, provides general schematic
frameworks for classifying various types of novelistic genres, and
explains how some genres present a static image of the hero and
the world around him, while others can account for the
emergence of the hero in historical time. In this paper, some
novelistic genres are applied to various theoretical models of
human development, in order to identify the image of the
developmental subject and his relationship to significant others.
Bakhtin identifies the nature of spatio-temporal relations
(chronotopic motifs) in various types of literary genres, and is
persistent in pointing out the limitations of monologic discourses,
as they are weak in temporal categories, and as such are
incapable of accounting for the hero’s development. Chronotopic
motifs are extended to theories of development for a critical
examination of cultural and historical processes in our discourses
on development. It is concluded that a dialogical approach can
offer a novel perspective on how cultural spaces and historical
times mediate developmental phenomena and the phenomenon
about development.
Key Words chronotope, culture and development, dialogue,
history

Lakshmi Bandlamudi
City University of New York, USA

Developmental Discourse as an
Author/Hero Relationship
Development as an idea is given flesh and blood in various forms—
reflected by genres the author/researcher uses to describe these. Genres
grow in historically evolving cultural landscapes. Developmental psy-
chologists, as in any other field of knowledge construction, choose
certain aspects of developmental events and convey their observations
through selected genres. The chosen genre creates a configuration of
events and presents a specific image of the ‘actors’ in those events to the
readers. It explicitly or implicitly conveys the author’s relationship to
the actors in those events. Thus, narratives are not neutral discursive

Culture & Psychology Copyright G 1999 SAGE Publications

(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Vol. 5(1): 41–65 [1354–067X(199903)5:1;41–65;006222]
Culture & Psychology 5(1)

forms that represent ‘real events’, but they carefully select and organize
events and even disclose the ontological status and world views of the
narrating individuals. Narratives can be viewed more as a ‘manner of
speaking about events’ than as mechanical signifiers of events (de
Certeau, 1988; Sarbin, 1986; Schafer, 1992; Spence, 1982; White, 1987).
In this paper, I argue that the study of development is to a
considerable extent a relationship between the developmental subject
(the hero) and the researcher (the author), both of whom are located in
a broader episteme, connected to and determined by various social,
historical and political forces. I want to suggest Mikhail Bakhtin’s
theory of dialogism, which is more holistic in its orientation, as a basis
for making sense of psychologists’ work. In particular, Bakhtin’s
discussion of the developing relationship between the author and hero
in aesthetic activity could be a model for looking at the discourse on
development.

Reality through Genres

According to Bakhtin (1986), genre is not only a linguistic device that
combines thematic content, style and compositional structure, but it is
also a specific way of visualizing a given reality. In order to under-
stand and create we must learn to see reality through the eyes of genre,
as Bakhtin and Medvedev (1985) explain:
Each genre possesses definite principles of selection, definite forms of seeing
and conceptualizing reality, and a definite scope and depth of penetration. (p.
131)

All areas of human activity entail the use of language, and therefore
Bakhtin and Medvedev explain that genres are not exclusive to
literature, but they govern human consciousness, serving as ‘mind’s
eyes’ for conceptualizing reality. Both our inner thought and outer
expression possess series of genres for comprehending and expressing
reality. Therefore, whether it be in literature, history or in daily speech,
our everyday beliefs and philosophical viewpoints are realized
through various genres. A genre can be understood as a ‘conceptual
lens’, irreducible to neither a pure linguistic ‘form’ nor a pure ‘ideo-
logy’, but which must be treated as ‘form-shaping ideology’ through
which authors embody various types of experiences (Morson &
Emerson, 1990). In other words, linguistic forms, that is, the choice of
lexical, phraseological and grammatical aspects of the language, and
ideological tones are organically interrelated. In various types of
novelistic genres, literary authors create unique psychological profiles

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of their heroes and construct a certain ensemble of social relations in

the world.

Bildungsroman and Its Relevance to Developmental Psychology

In much of the Bakhtinian oeuvre, the concentration has been on
various types of novelistic genres, and each type constructs a specific
image of the hero and presents a unique set of social relations and
establishes different kinds of relationships between the authors and
their created heroes.
Bakhtin (1981, 1984, 1986) classified various types of novelistic
genres. The first type consists of ‘novels without emergence’, in which
a static image of the hero and the world around him is presented, and
thus one does not see the development of the hero’s character. In the
second type, the hero’s development is visible against the backdrop of
a static world. The third type—with which Bakhtin was most pre-
occupied—was the ‘novel of historical emergence’, in which the hero
develops alongside an ever-changing world.
Bakhtin’s (1986) assessment of the Bildungsroman and his take on the
‘typology of the novel’ provides developmental psychology a unique
opportunity to assess and critique existing developmental paradigms
and create newer models. Although Bakhtin was not a psychologist,
there are valuable psychological issues in his writings. He was pre-
occupied with identifying ‘developmental’ potential in polyphonic
novels, and was persistent in pointing out the limitations of monologic
novels. Herein lies Bakhtin’s relevance and creative potential to
developmental psychology. In particular, Bakhtin’s discussion on the
developing relationship between the author and the hero in aesthetic
activity is germane to our discourses on development.
In his early philosophical essays, Bakhtin (1990) repeatedly pointed
out that the author cannot (and must not) have the final say on the
hero’s character and his growth, nor does the hero develop independ-
ently of the author and the world around him. At any given moment in
the aesthetic activity, Bakhtin was interested in the changing role of the
creating author, the created hero, the receiving audience, and their
struggle with ideas and ideals, and the eventual transformation of all
the parties involved. Bakhtin persistently pointed out that one cannot
speak of the hero without considering the author, as he wrote:
The artist’s struggle to achieve a determinate and stable image of the hero is
to a considerable extent a struggle with himself. (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 6)

In many ways the uneasy relationship of the author to his hero has a
striking resemblance to the relationship that researching developmen-

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tal psychologists have with the children whom they often undertake to
study. The child/hero is a creation, albeit not finalized, of the adult/
author, always figuratively and occasionally literal, and therefore one
has to come to grips with the child both as an extension of the self and
as the other.
Interestingly, many pundits of developmental psychology claim to
have discovered the ‘principles’ of human behavior in their children.
Piaget found his daughter to be an emblem of an ‘epistemic subject’,
while Freud saw ‘desire’ in his daughter Anna. Darwin claimed to
have detected ‘emotions’ in his son Doddy, and Baldwin identified
‘thought’ in his daughter Polly, while Watson offered his son Billy as a
proof for classical conditioning and counseled parents as to how they
may shape their children’s behavior (Kessen, 1979). These theorists
argue that universal laws of thought and action are at work ‘in’ the
child and that developmental patterns or progression can be traced
through careful observation and controlled experiments. In practice, to
some extent the subjective experience of a parent–child relationship
within particular cultural systems at a specific historical time has
become universal objective ‘truth’ about children’s development. How
the parent and/or researcher is transformed into an author about
children and their development has not been an issue till recently in
our scholarly discussions.
That the developmental phenomenon with its own internal logic and
time-table operates within the subject, and that the researcher/theorist
can trace these developmental patterns through some neutral appara-
tus, is only one part of the story. This phenomenon is selected, high-
lighted and given a certain posturing and assessment by the observing,
researching and other-evaluating audience. From such a dialogical per-
spective, knowledge about development could be understood as a
mixture of voices. Neither is the researcher/theorist a neutral observer
who documents developmental events, nor is the account entirely sub-
jective. Instead, the researcher’s voice intermingles with other voices.
The researcher retains her subjectivity within intersubjectivity, and
locating knowledge between ‘voices’ is an immediate reality in a dialog-
ical approach. Bakhtin (1986) argued that unlike the ‘exact sciences’, in
which ‘the intellect contemplates a thing and expounds upon it’, in
human sciences we are dealing with fellow-subjects who have a voice of
their own, which must be given full weight, and, therefore, ‘cognition of
it can only be dialogic’ (p. 161). In this perspective, the researcher
(author) neither transcends her subjective position, nor is she entirely
bound by her positionality; instead she incorporates multiple voices of
the subjects involved in the developmental processes.

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In a dialogical approach towards knowledge, words are always

considered ‘half-ours and half-someone else’s’ (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 345).
Multiple voices do not exist in a fragmented form; instead they
‘interanimate’ each other and always leave ample ‘loopholes’ for
creating newer meanings. Bakhtin explains that in an authoritative
discourse the author assumes proprietorship and finalizes meanings,
and as a result the discourse becomes inert and calcified, leaving no
scope for further development. In an ‘internally persuasive discourse’,
meanwhile, several voices come in contact with each other and
produce dialogic tension that ‘awakens’ dormant meanings and cre-
ates other possibilities for future development. Dialogism considers
such a discourse as the raison d’être for development.
The dialogic approach has several other implications for the study of
psychological development. First, it recognizes the active, constructive
role of the developing subject in complex cultural matrices. The
subject’s voice and her uniqueness is not lost in the collective cultural
flux. Bakhtin (1993) placed a great deal of emphasis on the individual’s
‘unique’ and ‘never-repeatable acts’ in her ‘lived and experienced life’,
and such acts do not dissolve in the cultural flux, but retain their
personal character, even as they interact with various others. The
uniqueness of the individual could be either an active or a passive role
in relation to cultural forces. The developing subject may imbibe
cultural codes automatically or she may be selective and absorb some,
and consciously reject others (Bandlamudi, 1994). Such a bi-directional
model of self/culture relationship allows one to recognize ‘compensa-
tory processes’ and ‘redundant control’ in developmental systems. In
other words, if the cultural ‘input’ is insufficient or undesirable, the
developing person can compensate by personal construction, or if the
personal constructive process is inactive, then the cultural forces may
propel the individual in a socially desirable direction.
Second, dialogism considers an individual consciousness as being
awakened by and responding to various surrounding discourses.
Consequently, it allows for the reconciliation between the individualis-
tic and sociogenetic perspectives in developmental psychology.
Third, dialogism has beneficial methodological implications for the
study of development. For Heinz Werner and Lev Vygotsky, method
was a central issue in approaching the question of development.
Werner (1980) observed:
The concept of ‘developmental psychology’ is perfectly clear if this term is
understood to mean a science concerned with the development of mental
life, and determined by a specific method, i.e., the observation of psycho-
logical phenomena from the standpoint of development. (p. 3)

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Whereas, when the term is defined only by its content, Werner argues
that we are referring solely to the problems of ontogenesis. However, if
we approach mental processes from the vantage point of development,
ontogeny becomes one aspect of the developmental study of larger
social entities. From this standpoint, development is not a linear
account of how a given function organizes itself at various levels in
ontogenetic processes, but it could be viewed instead as a ‘set of
qualitatively distinct states marked by varying levels of intrafunctional
organization at varying levels of interfunctional organization’ (Glick,
1992, p. 560).
Similarly, for Lev Vygotsky (Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1994) the
method was a central issue, because it must be suited to study
psychological activity in the processes of change. In other words, the
method must encompass the transition and transformation of interper-
sonal functions into intrapersonal functions. Dialogism, with its
emphasis on multiplicity and simultaneity, aligns well with the meth-
odological concerns of Werner and Vygotsky.
Finally, dialogism allows us to consider developmental discourse as
a creative act which speaks equally about the researcher and the
phenomena she undertakes to study. The developing subject (the hero)
operates in complex cultural systems, and this ‘tale’ is conveyed
selectively by the researcher. Like the novelist, the researcher also
observes the world around her, selects a plot and identifies its
principal characters and draws the parameters within which these
characters operate. She then draws from cultural discourses and
intellectual histories to construct a storyline within which she creates a
characterological profile of the ‘developmental subject’—the hero/
heroine.

Development and Childhood as an Idea and a Metaphor

The history of childhood offers us ample exemplars of the creation of
the ‘child’ to suit cultural and historical processes (Henriques, Hollo-
way, Urwin, Venn, & Walkerdine, 1984; Kessel & Siegel, 1983; Kessen,
1965; Singer, 1992). Throughout history the status of ‘the child’ has
been changing, from a self-contained homunculus that grows accord-
ing to a fixed pre-formed configuration, to a Lockian subject that has
absolutely no pre-formed or essential traits, but comes into the world
as a tabula rasa. There is, furthermore, the Rousseauian subject, who
develops according to some romantic plan of nature, and, later, the
Freudian subject, who is driven by the pleasure principle. Finally,
there is the Piagetian ‘epistemic subject’, who is endlessly inquisitive

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about lawful relationships that exist in the world and becomes an

active architect of his mind.
These models of subject can be seen in research on human infancy.
Over the years research on infancy has virtually become a ‘high-tech’
enterprise in which one microscopically examines various gestures
and emotions of infants (e.g. Bower, 1974, 1977; Cohen & Strauss, 1979;
Gesell, 1929), and the analysis extends to sub-atomic levels, such that
accuracy and precision become key words. The introduction of the
video camera in research endeavors has radically changed the way we
‘view’ children—literally and figuratively. Thus, the narratives we
produce about the child and childhood are mediated by and grounded
in the materialistic reality and ideological environment, and therefore
these narratives are parts of culture in contention.
Definitions of innocence, ignorance, spontaneity, are all parts of
contentious traditions that sanction some traits as desirable and
prohibit others as undesirable. Those that ‘fit’ adult definitions of the
child become ‘childlike’ and are valued, and those that deviate from
that definition are seen as ‘childishness’, and the former is valued even
among adults, and the latter is admonished even in children (Nandy,
1987). Thus, the ‘naturalness’ of childhood is constructed, and this is as
much a reflection of adult ideology as it is about the essence of
childhood. Narratives on ‘childhood’ are only in part about children,
and the rest include narratives on those who undertake such studies—
their personal and professional lives included—about those who
made such studies possible, and about why, where and how such
studies take place. Children are or come to be what they are considered
to be by others, and how they consider themselves to be in relation to
their guiding, protecting and evaluating others. Out of this complex
interaction the ‘idea’ of childhood is born.
The conception of the child and childhood as an idea and metaphor
is found in abundance before Bakhtin in the philosophical writings of
Nietzsche. The image of ‘higher forms of consciousness’ has been used.
This is consciousness determined not by a linear movement from a
baser ‘body principle’ to a ‘rational state’, but by one that makes
sundered connections between visceral and rational principles. The
loose connection creates many ambiguous zones, and such zones for
Bakhtin function as ‘loopholes’ to trigger new meanings (Morson &
Emerson, 1990) and for Nietzsche facilitate ‘transvaluation of values’
(Schrift, 1990).
We must bear in mind that neither Bakhtin nor Nietzsche had any
interest in children or childhood, and nor were they addressing
‘developmental’ issues in the traditional psychological sense. Yet, in

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discussing ‘aesthetic consciousness’ or ‘evolution of consciousness’

they seem to speak tangentially about the psychology of development
and in the process create a unique image of the child.
Consider how Nietzsche views ‘maturity’ in his writings in Beyond
Good and Evil: ‘A man’s maturity consists in having found again the
seriousness one had as a child at play’ (Nietzsche, 1966, p. 94). For
Nietzsche, child play and childlikeness are full of ambiguities for it is
never clear whether the child is playfully serious or seriously playful.
The need for childlikeness in defining one’s consciousness becomes
clearer in Zarathustra’s discussion on the metamorphoses of the
spirit—the transformation of the spirit from a camel to a lion and
finally to a child (Nietzsche, 1961). The camel is only a recipient of the
given values and accepts the burden unconditionally, hence its con-
sciousness is passively nihilistic. The lion, on the other hand, affirms
itself by devaluing the given values, and as such is reactively nihilistic,
whereas the child is capable of revaluing the given values, and hence
its consciousness is actively nihilistic (Schrift, 1990). The camel endures
the hardships inflicted upon it by the world, whereas the lion estab-
lishes its supremacy by terrorizing the world, yet both are incapable of
re-creating the ‘given’ world and establishing multiple and newer
worlds.
For both Nietzsche and Bakhtin, multiplicity, indeterminacy and
elusiveness are aspects of interpretation and essential ingredients for
growth and development. Nietzsche (1967) wrote in The Will to Power:
‘Inertia needs unity (monism); plurality of interpretations a sign of
strength’ (600 [1885–1886]). For Nietzsche, multiplicity is the ‘will to
power’ and any scholarly pursuit requires a tremendous amount of
self-examination and reflection and a willingness to take various
highways and byways in culture and history. In a similar light
consider what Bakhtin (1984) wrote about Dostoevsky’s polyphonic
novel and its ‘developmental’ potential:
Subjectively Dostoevsky participated in the contradictory multi-leveledness
of his own time; he changed camps, moved from one to another, and in this
respect the planes existing in objective social life were for him stages along
the path of his own life, stages of his own spiritual evolution. (p. 27)

The idea of ‘development’ finds its best expression in Bakhtin’s

writings on the novelistic genre, which to him is a radical break from
the epic genre. He was intensely preoccupied with the novel as a
genre, because this genre continues to ‘develop’ and is always full of
various ‘potentials’. We cannot thoroughly foresee all its ‘plastic
possibilities’ because there are various social, cultural, economic,

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political and historical forces that define it, and as a result, ‘the birth
and development of the novel as a genre takes place in the full light of
the historical day’ (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 3). Unlike the epic hero, whose
struggles are over and whose character is forever finalized, the hero of
the novel is like a growing child who is struggling to find his niche in
society even as his life story is co-authored by a variety of social,
political and historical forces. The novel, Bakhtin asserts, is distinctly a
heteroglot text; it embraces a variety of ‘social voices’, ‘political
slogans’, ‘social dialects’, ‘authoritative pronouncements’, ‘contesting
voices’, ‘voices of the past and present’, all forming a variety of links
and interrelationships in a dialogized form.
The history of the novel symbolizes the history of consciousness in
Bakhtin’s scheme, because only the novel with its competing voices is
capable of generating dialogic energy and in turn serves as a driving
force for further development of all the parties involved in and
concerned with the novel. This ‘developmental’ potential is unavail-
able to the epic genre because ‘it lacks any relativity, that is, any
gradual, purely temporal progressions that might connect it with the
present’ (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 15).
While Bakhtin did not specifically have a theory of the mind, he did
occasionally write about ‘understanding’ in the context of interpreting
literary texts. Understanding entails at least four steps for Bakhtin
(1986): (1) one must perceive the ‘sign’ psycho-physiologically; (2) one
has to recognize it, (3) understand its significance in the given context
and (4) engage in active evaluation. Understanding is not only a matter
of ‘decoding’ but it also entails recoding and reaccentuating the given
information. The knower must understand not only the literal meaning
of an utterance, but also the purpose of the utterance in the given
context, establish a relationship with the ‘uttering’ subject, evaluate
and relate it to his personal interests and also guess how potential
others may interpret it. Understanding itself in many ways is a drama
that involves many actors and various conceptual frameworks:
. . . an active understanding, one that assimilates the word under consideration
into a new conceptual system, that of the one striving to understand, estab-
lishes a series of complex interrelationships, consonances and dissonances
with the word and enriches it with new elements. (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 282)

Bakhtin was not alone in viewing ‘understanding’ in a dramatic

fashion; Lev Vygotsky also borrowed the concept of drama from
Politzer and utilized it in various areas in psychology (Yaroshevsky,
1989). In his writings on the Psychology of Art, Vygotsky (1971) pointed
out that the reception of art involves a dramatic interplay between

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sensory perception, emotions, imagination and fantasy; these elements

do not necessarily correspond, but the incongruities among them and
the oscillation between them are necessary for development. The model
of drama allowed Vygotsky to detect theatrical elements in the transi-
tion and transformation of personal meanings (thought) to public
expression (speaking). These could also be found in the interplay
between informal knowledge (everyday concept) and formal instruc-
tion (scientific concept), in the analysis of neuro-mechanisms in the
regulation of behavior, and finally in the history of psychology (Kozu-
lin, 1990; Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1994; Vygotsky, 1987; Yaroshevsky,
1989). Being sharply aware of the partial fusion and the tension between
the individual and the social, Vygotsky (1989) asserted that ‘psychology
5 drama’, and that is the only way that ‘concrete human psychology’
gets ‘humanized’. Vygotsky pointed out that the individual for Hegel is
a ‘logical subject’ and for Pavlov an ‘organism’ or ‘soma’, whereas for
him the individual is ‘an aggregate of social relations’ and the social
environment is ‘full of internal struggles and contradictions’. Vygotsky
avers that a ‘drama cannot be otherwise, i.e., it is a clash of systems’ (p.
67). The clash is intrinsic even to the understanding of ‘self’, as
Vygotsky pointed out: ‘I am a social relation of me to myself’ (p. 67). The
drama that Vygotsky is arguing for is not the kind in which each
individual has a definite role to play: ‘A drama with fixed roles 5 the
idea of old psychology’ (p. 69). In the new psychology, instead,
Vygotsky directs our attention to the variation in roles.
Thus, we have a clear mandate to see ‘development’ as a drama with
several actors, including those behind the scenes, and the ones in the
audience, who collectively contribute to the play. In the following
section, we will examine how various types of drama (developmental
discourses) are constructed—some with fixed and others with chang-
ing roles.

The Author/Hero Relationship in Novelistic Genres and

Developmental Discourses
In order to investigate and classify various types of genres in devel-
opmental discourses, I am adapting, extending and perhaps even
slightly altering Bakhtin’s take on the Bildungsroman or the ‘Historical
Typology of the Novel’. Bakhtin in his earlier writings, specifically in
‘Forms of Time and the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes Toward a
Historical Poetics’ (in Bakhtin, 1981), and in his later writings (the
Bildungsroman essay in Bakhtin, 1986) provided a complex classifica-
tion system of novels based on the construction of hero’s image, plot

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construction, specific world view and the unique composition of the

novel. A very sharp and tight analytical tool that he offered for
classifying novelistic discourse is ‘chronotope’ (‘time space’). Bakhtin
argued that spatio-temporal relations are intrinsic to narratives that we
construct about human beings, history and culture (Bakhtin, 1981, p.
85). He pointed out that chronotopes define specific genres, and those
genres that are constructed purely on ‘spatial’ terms present an image
of the hero who lacks development and give a very static view of the
world. Thus, temporal categories are crucial for Bakhtin in ‘chrono-
topic motifs’ to understand the ‘true’ emergence of the hero—that is,
his development alongside social and historical changes.
Like Kant, Bakhtin also believed that time and space are indis-
pensable categories in understanding and representing reality. How-
ever, for Bakhtin they are not mathematical abstractions; rather space
is always cultural and time is historical, and these categories are
not only intrinsic to narratives, but the very foundation for grounding
the narrative. Thus, individuals experience and represent the world
from a unique position that they occupy at a particular time in a
specific place. Unlike Kant’s ‘transcendental’ subject, who needs to
overcome perspectivistic restraints, Bakhtin’s subjects accept their
unique position in culture and history as an immediate reality and
incorporate the ‘transgredient’ elements of multiple voices of the
society. What type of novels incorporate multi-voicedness? The issue
can be examined in conjunction with Bakhtin’s typology of novels
(described above).

Novels without Emergence

Psychological Research Narratives as Travel Novels
The first type—novels without emergence—operate in a descriptive
mode, that is, naming and informing with a great deal of precision and
accuracy, and they present a static view of both the hero and the world
around him. In this category, Bakhtin discussed the ‘travel novel’, in
which the story is not about the hero at all. The image of the hero is
that of a minuscule and insignificant being against the backdrop of the
world’s vastness and diversity:
The hero is a point moving in space. He has no essential distinguishing
characteristics, and he himself is not at the center of the novelist’s artistic
attention. His movement in space—wanderings and occasionally escapade
adventures (mainly of the ordeal type)—enables the artist to develop and
demonstrate the spatial and static social diversity of the world (country, city,
culture, nationality, various social groups and the specific conditions of their
lives). (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 10)

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The travel novel is details-oriented and highly reductionist, so much so

that typical temporal descriptions are ‘at the same time’, ‘the next
moment’, ‘a second earlier’, and so forth.
The travel novel genre manifests itself in various forms in both
theoretical orientations and empirical approaches in developmental
psychology. In most APA-accredited journals on developmental psy-
chology, the positivist paradigm dominates, and therefore a tightly
controlled experimental method is preferred and only those with
‘significant’ results are publishable (Danziger, 1990; Parker, 1989).
What counts as admissible evidence is statistical significance achieved
through various computer-generated statistical packages or programs.
Kurt Danziger (1990) discusses in a detailed manner how psychology
has been relentless in ‘numerizing’ and ‘serializing’ behavior. By
legitimizing quantitative psychological knowledge, the discipline has
prided itself on being an ‘exact science’, and the gatekeepers of such
knowledge, Danziger observes, ‘constitute a new kind of priesthood’,
sharply different from traditional theologians or philosophers. Unlike
the theologian who openly lays out his philosophical leanings and
expresses concern over human conduct, the researcher assumes a
neutral position and ‘reports’ the results, very much akin to the way
the travel novel author reports about the ‘world’ through the hero he
creates. The researcher also reports, for instance, on how various social
groups fare in particular developmental tests or scales and so on.
Various stratifying factors in the society are reduced to a set of
‘variables’—race, class, gender, ethnicity, age, and so forth—and
emphasis is placed on differences and contrasts.
Bakhtin (1986) observed that the travel novel also tabulates differ-
ences and contrasts in a mechanical fashion and the genre is com-
pletely devoid of ‘historical time’; therefore ‘there is no understanding
of the wholeness of such sociocultural phenomena as nationalities,
countries, cities, social groups and occupations’ (p. 11). The manner in
which the statistical significance of differences among aggregate
variables is achieved in psychological research points out the lack of
intrinsic ties in sociocultural phenomena. For instance, the ‘variables’
that are isolated for research purposes are not necessarily separable in
human beings. A ‘wealthy white woman’ is a unit in and of herself
and not an aggregate of class, race and gender. Bakhtin pointed out
that in the travel genre ‘the world disintegrates into individual things,
phenomena and events that are simply contiguous or alternating’
(p. 11).
The travel novel genre in a literal sense can also be identified in
cross-cultural psychological studies. The Piagetian project, especially

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in the 1960s and 1970s, set many developmental psychologists off on a

voyage to several ‘far-away and exotic lands’ to see if developmental
trends that Piaget postulated existed among children in other cultures
(Berry & Dasen, 1974; Dasen, 1972, 1975, 1976; Price-Williams, 1975;
Rogoff & Gauvain, 1984; Steinberg & Dunn, 1976). The assumptions in
these studies are that psychological constructs exist and the task of the
researcher is to detect them in various ‘other’ groups and state clearly
any developmental delays, stagnation or violations in sequence. Since
researchers in this paradigm position themselves as ‘reporters’ or as
‘neutral observers’, there is no need to discuss the social and political
settings of their experimentation and reflect on the research process.
The author of the travel novel does not discuss how his hero’s
encounters with various ‘exotic groups’ have raised any questions
about himself, but through his hero he simply describes the lives and
behavior patterns of the ‘others’. Similarly in many cross-cultural
studies the story is about the ‘other’, especially the ‘exotic other’—
whether Australian Aborigines or the Chiapas of Mexico possess the
capacity to conserve, and if so in what manner do they display such
competence and how do they fail ‘standard’ western tests. The story is
about the ‘other’—their peculiarities, contrasts and habits—and the
self is defined only in contradistinction to the other.
Another feature of the travel novel is that it describes the hero’s
movement in a very mechanistic fashion; while it gives a detailed
account of the movement, the explanation is rather superficial. There is
no metamorphosis between the hero and the world. Therefore the
school of ‘behaviorism’ falls under this category. Like the travel novel,
behaviorism focuses on the observables and places its faith in the
world for shaping and conditioning the subject (Skinner, 1978; Watson,
1970). The ‘subject’ of behaviorism, like the travel hero, is passive and
insignificant, and neither possesses any unique characteristics. Thus,
there is a mechanistic formulation of the subject and the world, and
internal contradictions among them and the cultural history that has
mediated such behavioral patterns are not part of the discourse.
Therefore, temporal categories are virtually absent, and chronotopic
motifs are spatial in nature.
The travel novel operates through a ‘direct and unmediated object-
oriented discourse’ and the author’s task is to accurately name, inform
and represent the information in a very detailed manner intended for
an equally ‘unmediated object-oriented understanding’ (Bakhtin, 1984,
p. 186). The author neither reflects on the travel, nor does he invite his
reader to reflect about his travel. The author maintains a clear-cut
boundary between himself and his subjects and presents the informa-

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tion with a great deal of systematicity, as Volosinov (1973) observed

about reported speech:
The basic tendency of linear style is to construct clear-cut external contours for
reported speech, whose own internal individuality is minimized. (p. 120)

The boundary between the author and his subjects gives the author
absolute semantic authority, according to Bakhtin, and this is the
authority that Danziger (1990) refers to as a ‘new priesthood’ in
psychology. This kind of authorial authority, as Bakhtin pointed out,
can entertain only one dominant voice, which either affirms or repudi-
ates an idea. Since this single-voiced discourse is devoid of any
indeterminacy or multiplicity, there is no scope for development.

Humanistic Psychological Narratives as Biographical Novels

Another type of novel without emergence that Bakhtin (1981, 1984,
1986) identifies is the biographical novel, which is composed of an
individual’s passage through various normative phases of life—birth,
childhood, school years, adolescence, marriage, career, accomplish-
ments, failures, and finally death. The movement through the typical
course of life is not necessarily developmental; the story does not
indicate the emergence of the hero. Unlike the travel novel, which is
devoid of ‘time’, the chronotope in the biographical novel is built on
‘biographical time’—that is, on the normative aspects of the social
clock, and the changes in the hero’s life are related to his age. The
hero’s character is given at the outset and he must meet and resolve the
challenges that each stage presents. The author has a definitive
‘conception of life’, and through that fixed idea creates his hero’s
objectives in life—his works, relationships, deeds, feats, and so on—
and assesses them through the category of happiness/unhappiness,
success/failure, and so on (Bakhtin, 1986). Unlike the travel novel, in
which the character is almost invisible, the biographical novel ‘relies
wholly on the characterological definitiveness of the hero’ (Bakhtin,
1984, p. 101). While the travel novel is built on the hero’s wanderings
in the world, the biographical novel is structured on the hero’s passage
through the phases of life.
This type of genre can be identified in the ‘humanist’ tradition in
psychology, which attempts to trace life-span development, and is
deeply concerned with fulfilling life’s tasks while adhering to some
‘time-honored’ virtues. Humanism’s emphasis is on strong familial
relationships, moral principles, and a steadfast determination to reach
one’s goals. This kind of resoluteness in values can be identified in
Abraham Maslow’s (1976) discussion on personal growth, in which the

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peak experience is the self-actualization of deepest potentials in human

beings. To reach the ‘peak’ of this ‘human need’, Maslow suggests that
perseverance, tenacity, making right choices, honesty, self-awareness
and the capacity to sacrifice are the necessary steps. How the social and
political climate may enhance or inhibit these ideals is beyond the scope
of Maslow’s theorizing. For that matter, the ‘world’ as an entity ceases
to exist in the humanist tradition; instead the human being and the
world are amalgamated into one unit and an ‘ideal’ is abstracted out of
it and is universalized. In humanism, as in the biographical novel, ‘life’
presents its conflicts, and the individual’s ‘character’ is built by meeting
these challenges. Maslow argues that neurosis results from failure in
personal growth. Similarly, Erik Erikson (1959) charts out the whole life
course and suggests that each stage presents a unique set of conflicts,
and in the process of resolving them, one’s identity develops and a
‘healthy personality’ evolves.
In humanism, as in the biographical novel, life itself is a ‘track’ with
its own desired stations and destination and the individual’s task is to
stay on the ‘right track’ and take all precautionary steps to avoid
derailment. If ‘real life’ does not synchronize with the ‘ideal life’, then
the therapeutic task, according to another humanist, Carl Rogers
(1969), is to close the gap between the real and the ideal self. Thus life,
in this school of thinking, is cyclical and has its own seasons (Levinson,
1978), and the individual must be able to weather all its seasons in
order to mature.
What, then, is the developmental potential that is lacking in this
‘idealism’? First of all, this genre does not recognize individual human
beings in all their complexities and contradictions; instead some
phantom ethics and ideals dictate and evaluate individual lives, and as
such there is either an affirmation or repudiation of concrete lives. For
Bakhtin (1993), when the uniqueness of actually lived and experienced
life in complex cultural systems is subordinated to an ‘abstract idea of
life’, it leaves no scope for a genuine dialogue between ‘what ought to
be in life’ and ‘what has been in life’. In other words, there is only one
consciousness that maps out a ‘desirable ought to be’ and actual lives
are measured accordingly.
Bakhtin did not necessarily suggest that we discard all notions of
‘ought to be’, but such notions must gain validity only within con-
sciously lived lives:
There is no aesthetic ought, scientific ought, and—beside them—an ethical
ought; there is only that which is aesthetically, theoretically, socially valid,
and these validities may be joined by the ought, for which all of them are
instrumental. (Bakhtin, 1993, p. 5)

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For Bakhtin, while the ‘ought to be’ has the right to judge life, life
also has equal right to assess the ‘ought’. The abstract and the concrete,
in his view, are ‘answerable’ to each other. While Maslow contended
that creative people essentially have certain needs, attitudes and
approaches, Bakhtin points out that social conditions validate or
discredit notions of creativity. Of course, the humanist psychologists
did study lives of ‘exceptional’ individuals and have provided a very
clear image of their heroes. Yet it is a clear and a fixed image, so much
so that the author speaks about the hero and not with the hero.
Monologism, whether it comes in the form of philosophical realism
or idealism, creates a fixed image of the hero, and the author shapes his
hero to suit his ideas and world view (Bakhtin, 1984). Bakhtin
throughout his writings cautioned against such possession and inva-
sion of the hero by his author. Such a proprietory attitude can only
present a socially fixed ‘truth’ with no room for ambiguities and
subsequently no scope for development.

Novels of Emergence
Epistemic Subject as Platonic Seeker
Moving on to the novels of emergence, Bakhtin (1981, 1986) pointed
out that in ancient biographical and autobiographical narratives, such
as Plato’s works on the Apology of Socrates and the Phaedo and others,
we can detect the emergence of the hero. In this type of genre, the
world itself is a school and the individual is forever seeking analytical
tools to comprehend lawful and logical relationships that exist in the
world around him. Even if the world is forever changing, the task is to
discover stable forms. Thus, this is the story of a ‘seeker’ whose
consciousness progresses systematically from an ignorant state to an
‘enlightened’ state. The journey is not smooth; it is full of upheavals,
self-doubt and constant experimentation with various schools of
thought, which ultimately leads to ‘true’ forms of knowledge that
facilitate the understanding of both the self and the world alike. In this
type of novelistic genre, the seeker’s life is based on a ‘specific
pedagogical ideal’ achieved in the ‘process of education’, and therefore
development is viewed as being teleological and universal:
This kind of novel of emergence typically depicts the world and life as
experience, as a school, through which every person must pass and derive one
and the same result. (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 22)

The movement here is through the intellectual stages; as Bakhtin

(1981) observed, the tale is about ‘the course of the soul’s ascent
toward perception of Forms’ (p. 131).

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In developmental discourses, Jean Piaget traced this kind of intellec-

tual ascent, taking the genetic baggage as the starting point. Piaget
explained how the child (the seeker) explores and constructs ‘struc-
tures’ of knowledge in her mind through alternating processes of
assimilation and accommodation. These structures are not static;
instead they are defined by wholeness, transformation and self-
regulation (Gruber & Vonèche, 1977). The transformation of structure
is the result of intellectual crisis, that is, when the child faces new
challenges from the world she is disequilibrated, and in order to regain
intellectual balance, it is necessary for her to construct superior
structures (Piaget, 1963).
The seeker’s path is full of moments of crisis, and the resolution leads
to subsequent rebirth and elevates the individual to a higher level of
consciousness (Bakhtin, 1981). Likewise, cognitive dissonance and dis-
equilibration are necessary for Piaget’s epistemic child to develop. The
progression is not gradual; it is marked by qualitatively distinct stages,
and the progression through these stages is an indication of the child’s
construction of logico-mathematical structures. Through these con-
structive processes, the child manages to reach the formal operational
stage marked by abstract and rational thinking (Piaget, 1972).
Knowledge must lend itself to scientific reasoning, and only then
does it qualify as ‘authentic’:
At its heart lies the chronotope of ‘the life course of one seeking true
knowledge’. The life of such a seeker is broken down into precise and well-
marked epochs or steps. His course passes from self-confident ignorance,
through self-critical skepticism, to self-knowledge and ultimately to authen-
tic knowing (mathematics and music). (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 130)
The parallel between the seeker’s tale and Piaget’s epistemic child is
clear. Piaget operated within the Kantian tradition and therefore
explained the growth of scientific knowledge, and such a growth
proceeds systematically in a step-wise sequential fashion without ever
reversing the forward movement. Piaget’s epistemic child proceeds
from sensory experience to concrete actions to abstract thinking—
increasingly becoming free of the body principle. The construction of
knowledge, in Piaget’s view, is the result of the mind’s ability to
process information through the universal categories of time and
space. In tune with the Kantian tradition, Piaget conceived time and
space as physical categories and was interested in the child’s growing
awareness of principles of geometry, movement, speed, number,
physical causality, and so on, strictly according to logico-mathematical
principles. Therefore, the child’s situatedness is cultural space and
historical time does not enter the picture.

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If we can see the emergence of the hero, why did Bakhtin (1986) then
refer to this genre as ‘Bildungsroman in the narrow sense’? First of all,
the narrowness comes from the fact that the seeker emerges against the
backdrop of an immobile world. Even if there are rapid changes
occurring in the world, Piaget was concerned with how the child
constructs the world through universal logico-mathematical princi-
ples. Bakhtin (1986), on the other hand, insisted that development is
not a private affair, for the individual develops ‘along with the world’
and his development ‘reflects the historical emergence of the world
itself’ (p. 23). The transaction between the individual and the world is
not a mechanical one, but they ‘interanimate’ each other and mutually
transform each other, and therefore Bakhtin (1986) insists that the
individual grows in ‘national historical time’ (p. 25). Piaget’s account
of development is devoid of this historical time.
Piaget’s focus on the de-centered epistemic subject with an emphasis
on cybernetic competence in cognitive development erases subjectivity
and history (Broughton, 1981), even though Piaget claims that his
focus on the structures of the mind has not brought about the death of
the subject (Piaget, 1970). We may observe two tendencies in his
epistemic subject. First, he is the grand hero who is endlessly inquis-
itive and unceasing in his activity to discover lawful relationships in
the objective world. Yet he is also a prisoner of his cognitive limitations
and as such goes through a period when he is incapable of approach-
ing arithmetical problems until he has mastered the task of conserva-
tion. External factors that mediate the transformation from the ‘under-
developed subject’ to the ‘developed subject’ (the grand hero) are not
within the scope of the theory.

The Issue of Time

In Piaget’s genetic epistemology, time assumes two forms. At an
ontogenetic level time operates in a linear manner, and at a universal
level time becomes cyclical, that is, every generation must pass
through the same sequence. The linear developmental trajectory unfor-
tunately does not match the coils and zigzags of developmental
processes in practice.
In criticizing Hegel’s narrative on the development of art forms,
Spivak (1991) has argued that Hegel’s theory is not ‘an epistemology’
at all, but ‘an epistemography, a graduated diagram of how knowl-
edge (an adequate fit between sign and varieties of meaning) comes
into being’ (p. 100). Thus, the graph lays out what is normative and
universal and any ‘misfits’ along the way lie outside the theoretical
focus. Piaget took chunks of time and formulated a stage theory,

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providing an account of the cognitive milestone reached in each stage.

Like all structural stage theories, there is a greater tendency to
spatialize time than to temporalize space. Derrida’s critique of struc-
turalism becomes useful here as he points out that this theoretical
tradition focuses on space and reduces time to a dimension of space
(Norris, 1987). Time in stage theory only serves as an anchoring
point—by this time x, y, z, ought to be accomplished. How the
individual gains knowledge ‘in’ and ‘through’ time and space has a
lower priority than the individual’s knowledge ‘about’ time and space.
Thus, the absence of historical time in these chronotopic motifs is a
significant limitation.

Novels of Historical Emergence

Development is genuine only if the author sees his hero’s emergence in
the changing world:
Man’s emergence is accomplished in real historical time with all its neces-
sity, its fullness, its future and its profoundly chronotopic nature. (Bakhtin,
1986, p. 23)
The emergence of the individual in ‘real historical time’ can be
identified in Vygotsky’s writings. Vygotsky argued that development
cannot be studied without considering the material and psychological
tools that culture provides. This does not mean that culture determines
individual development; instead cultural sign systems, tools and
language mediate development. The sign systems are not fixed; they
constantly face the contradictory forces of history, and therefore these
multiple layers of history are imbricated in developmental processes.
According to Scribner (1985), Vygotsky considered at least four levels
of history in any developmental event—that of the human species,
individual societies, the unique life history of the individual and a
particular psychological system. The perennial flux of histories pro-
duces heteroglossia and therefore always creates ‘loopholes’ for fresh
meanings to emerge. Bakhtin asserted that multiplicity, indeterminacy
and unfinalizability are key ingredients in a dialogic world view, and
we find such elements in Vygotsky’s theorizing. For instance, Piaget
saw the child’s capacity for abstraction as an accomplishment, whereas
for Vygotsky (1990) it is simultaneously an accomplishment and an
active tool for creating novel meanings.
Abstraction is not an end product, but it becomes an active tool for
tackling and transforming the given concrete. Bakhtin (1990) similarly
observed that an abstract thought provides ‘direction for seeing
something concrete’—the direction is not singular, but a ‘direction that
is infinite’ (p. 209). According to Bakhtin, abstract thought is capable of

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showing so many pathways of meanings because it contains abundant

energy of ‘extraspatial and extratemporal infinitude’ (p. 209) and is
thus capable of activating dormant semiotic fields and generating
newer meanings.
In a dialogic world view, as Bakhtin (1984) pointed out, the author
neither composes a tight plot, nor does he draw a fixed psychological
profile of the hero. Instead, the hero is seen as a ‘particular point of
view on the world and on oneself‘ (p. 47). The hero’s shifting
axiological position enables one to engage in an ongoing dialogue with
oneself and one’s surrounding world. The author visualizes the world
with all these ‘accumulated points of view’ of his hero and constructs a
‘field of vision’ in which competing viewpoints enter into an active
dialogue. The polyphonic novels of Dostoevsky are a fitting example
of these characteristics.
Similarly, Vygotsky’s writings neither have a fixed theme (a plot),
nor does he achieve a characterological definitiveness of the devel-
opmental subject (the hero). Instead, he tried to address the question of
‘development’ from various vantage points. These ranged from aes-
thetic responses to art and literature, to thought in schizophrenia, to
the role of cultural tools and symbols in child development, to
pedagogical issues in educating the deaf and dumb, and so on (Van
der Veer & Valsiner, 1994).
Vygotsky was not looking for ‘the development’ in the child. Instead
he identified developmental moments often in ordinary everyday
functioning, ranging from a little girl trying to reach out for candy
from the cupboard, or an infant pointing at an object, to children trying
to accomplish memory tasks using cues provided by culture. In all
these gestures and tasks, Vygotsky (1978) pointed out the inter-
connections between physical actions and social meanings and avoids
reductionistic and essentializing tendencies. Since Vygotsky’s focus
was not on the product of development but on developmental events
and the potential for future development, neither time nor space is
subordinated to each other in this theoretical enterprise.
Bakhtin’s preoccupation with time in ‘chronotopic motifs’ was not as
an abstract category but as a visible process. He admired Goethe for his
capacity to ‘see’ time in both inanimate objects and human actions:
The ability to see time, to read time, in the spatial whole of the world and, on
the other hand, to perceive the filling of space not as an immobile back-
ground, a given that is completed once and for all, but as an emerging
whole, an event—that is the ability to read in everything signs that show time
in its course, beginning with nature and ending with human customs and
ideas (all the way to abstract concepts). (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 25)

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Objects, nature, human activity, all must bear the marks of the past,
present and future for Bakhtin, and we find such traces in Vygotsky’s
writings. Consider how Vygotsky (1989) articulated ‘developmental
potential’ in our interactions with ‘tools’:
The telephone operator plus the telephone is a special type of organization, a
primary concept in higher psychology. Not only the telephone but also the
telephone operator develops. The two together: the entire uniqueness of
child development. (p. 70)

Throughout his life, Vygotsky was interested in the microgenesis of

development, and therefore his Weltanschauung is saturated with time.
Vygotsky’s developmental subject is neither a sole constructor of
reality nor a passive recipient of reality, but a co-participant in receiving
and creating reality, and, like the Bakhtinian subject, recognizes and
appreciates the significance of the ‘other’ in developmental events.

Conclusions: Dialogism and Accounting for

Development
Dialogism is not a set of theoretical postulates about the world, but a
method for interrogating and understanding humans in an ever-
changing world. The dialogic method operates at every level of the
research activity, from the way we frame a question to the methods we
deploy and the style in which we communicate our observations.
Bakhtin (1986), in proposing a methodology for the human sciences,
clearly pointed out that ‘question’ and ‘answer’ are not fixed logical
categories; every response must not only give rise to new questions,
but it also reformulates the original question. Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1980) captured this complex relationship in a rather cryptic manner,
So you see it as if you knew that about it. And if that seems a foolish way of
putting it; then it must be kept in mind that the concept of seeing is modified
by it. (p. 71e, § 386)

Second, dialogism recognizes the limitation of ‘precision’ in the

human sciences. In other words, dialogism challenges the practice of
numerizing and serializing behavior or narrative. The units of analysis
for Bakhtin (1986) were ‘speech genres’, which combine thematic
content, linguistic style, compositional structure and ideological over-
tones. Thus, the method resists reductionism.
Furthermore, the dialogical approach treats the developing subject
as a central figure and not the development of mental phenomena
extracted out of its lived experience. For instance, in traditional

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practices of developmental psychology, the assumption is that various

mental processes such as language, memory, perception, cognition and
morality, and so on, have an independent existence with a unique
developmental path, and therefore the researcher takes the child as a
starting point for investigative purposes. In such practices, the child
becomes the site for constructing the discourse on the development of
disembodied and de-historicized concepts. Bakhtin (1993) argued that
when knowledge is built by subordinating actual life in all its fullness
to abstract theoretical concepts, it loses its validity and significance,
because ‘alien concepts’ guide and assess life. Bakhtin laments that the
theoretical world operates ‘as if I did not exist’ (p. 9). Nietzsche (1968)
in Twilight of the Idols referred to such knowledge that works with
petrified concepts as mummified Egyptian consciousness, and his
attack on such epistemology is vitriolic because conceptual mummies
bring about the death of the subject.
Third, dialogism recognizes development in both the cultural and
historical contexts. For Bakhtin, historical events are neither random,
nor are they completely ordered, but what is crucial in understanding
psychological and social phenomena is to recognize the ‘clustering’
and ‘unclustering’ of cultural entities at a given time and over a time
period (Morson & Emerson, 1990). It is only amidst these centripetal
and centrifugal forces that ‘development’ occurs.
Fourth, a dialogic approach towards development acknowledges
multi-linearity and multi-voicedness in the phenomena and appre-
ciates equally the ‘developmental subject’ (the hero) and other relevant
characters and the author’s struggle to find their niche and achieve
significance in the world of others. Development, when conceived as a
partnership between the author and the hero, allows ‘cognitive-ethical
moments’ to be incorporated in the discourse. Bakhtin (1993) pointed
out that there is no pure cognition, or judgment or discourse, but
everything that is understood must be connected to the world in which
the action is performed. Such a dialogized discourse concurrently
records, describes, explains and generates both the developmental
phenomena and the phenomenon of accounting for development.

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Acknowledgements
This research was supported (in part) by a grant (PSC-CUNY #667514) from
the City University of New York PSC-CUNY Research Award Program.
Many thanks to the reviewers of this article and to John Dore, Mark Zuss and
Minda Tessler for their suggestions.

Biography
LAKSHMI BANDLAMUDI received her doctoral degree in Developmental
Psychology and Women’s Studies. Her work is interdisciplinary and she is
interested in the area of semiotics, theories of the mind, critical cultural
theories and post-colonial theories. Her doctoral thesis explored the
interrelationships between interpreting self (autobiographical narratives) and
a cultural-historical text (the Indian epic Mahabharata), and currently she is
working towards converting the thesis into a book entitled The History of
Understanding and Understanding of History. Her earlier work focused on the
construction of self and culture in dialogic encounters. In her recent work she
has explored the points of convergence and divergence between Mikhail
Bakhtin and the Sanskrit grammarian Bhartrhari. She is currently an
Associate Professor at LaGuardia Community College, City University of
New York. address: Dr Lakshmi Bandlamudi, Social Science Department,
LaGuardia Community College, 31–10 Thomson Ave, Long Island City, New
York 11101, USA. [email: ballg@cunyvm.cuny.edu]

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