James Cresswell

Bakhtin’s realism and embodiment: Towards a revision of the dialogical self

How can we understand socially constituted selfhood? H. Hermans has addressed this question with the notion of the Dialogical Self that he draws from the philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin. We focus on Bakhtin’s discussion of realism in relation to how he has been interpreted by Hermans. This notion of realism (which we coined ‘‘expressive realism’’) highlights how sociality is inseparably related to embodied experience, thus making way for a sociocultural psychology that takes into account life as it is experientially lived. We point out how Hermans’ vision of the Dialogical Self neglects such embodied experience. This discussion leads to the claim that Bakhtin sees the self as social insofar as our most primary embodied experience is social, where Hermans anchors the sociality of self in inter-subjective exchange. Accordingly, an extension of the Dialogical Self is offered through discussion of these points.

Being faithful: Bakhtin and a potential postmodern psychology of self:

Postmodern critique has found its way into the psychology of self largely by way of Gergen’s form of social constructionism. This view treats self as socially constructed and changeable, such that a notion like faithfulness to oneself, which is generally thought to belong in the domain of a true core self, is rendered futile. However, Mikhail Bakhtin offers a view of embodied and lived self that expands social constructionist work. It offers a way to think about faithfulness to oneself while not undermining the importance of sociality. This approach enables us to account for the experiential compellingness – which is currently missing in constructionist theorizing – that is bound up with self. The paper first discusses dialogue to show how Bakhtin inspires an understanding of how community shapes the embodied self in a way that calls for a return to the notion of faithfulness to oneself. Then the notion of authorship is addressed in order to show how he could inspire a way of thinking about self-creation (authoring individual self) and the concomitant struggle experienced in being faithful to one’s self.

Including social discourses and experience in research on refugees, race, and ethnicity

In Discourse & Society, there has been discussion of accounting practices involving refugees, racism, and ethnicity. Some of these articles note that discursive psychology’s emphasis on in-situ constructions leads to a situation where it does not allow us to fully grasp social discourses. This article addresses this critique by discussing conversation analysis and ethnomethodology. It then adds to this discussion by proposing that linguistically constituted phenomenological experience – a topic important in reference to refugees, racism, and ethnicity – is also bypassed by discourse analysis. It draws upon Mikhail Bakhtin’s early work and on how experience is bound to social discourse. By proposing how Bakhtin meshes with Garfinkel and conversation analysis, it is possible to approach experience using techniques put forward by these perspectives. The result is a proposed way to research social discourse and experience, thereby enhancing discursive analysis.

Embodying discourse analysis: Lessons learned about epistemic and ontological psychologies

Responding to critiques of ‘Including social discourses and experience in research on refugees, race, and ethnicity’, and providing suggestions for future work in discursive psychology, this article expands upon the complex and dynamic character of research in socioculturally informed social science. Through a better understanding of experience and an awareness of broader social discourse, one is able to consider verisimilar ontologies, which are fundamentally socio-linguistic phenomena. It is important to understand the value in using discursive psychology’s analytical practices; however, an awareness of the need to expand upon such practices is necessary in order to better understand how experience is cultivated in dynamic and rhythmic co-regulated social constitution. Future research should endeavor to develop techniques that are not necessarily formulaic, but are still examinable for the purposes of determining good versus bad work.

Experience and socio-cultural psychodynamics: Comment on Larrain and Haye’s “The discursive nature of inner speech”

Larrain and Haye propose that inner speech is a socially constituted phenomenon. I suggest they provide new directions for understanding inner speech but do not take the reader much beyond discursive psychology. In particular, the authors partially fall into the neglect of embodied experience (i.e., phenomenologically immediate experience) that is already a pitfall of discursive approaches. This commentary attempts to extend some of the ideas already embedded in Larrain and Haye’s article. It attempts to add an account of experience that includes lived tensions. Such an extension potentially takes readers beyond the boundaries of discursive psychology by enabling an approach to inner speech that addresses dynamic lived experiences of tension.

Discussing moral goods and confronting research fetish: Review of Chirkov’s (2016) “Fundamentals of research on culture and psychology: Theory and methods”:

We review Valery Chirkov’s “Fundamentals of research on culture and psychology: Theory and methods.” The book is written as a textbook, but clearly takes a position that work in culture and psychology should be “problem-oriented, realist, and case-based” (p. 299). It is an innovative piece that covers philosophical paradigms, planning research, and conducting research. Our review outlines main claims made by the book that are likely provocative to mainstream variable-based research and ones that will likely challenge cultural psychologists. Despite the provocations, we argue that the book is an excellent place to start because, as illustrated through the work of Charles Taylor, Chirkov insinuates generative conversations about moral goods. A complimentary discussion through the purview Slavoj Žižec shows how Chirkov promotes awareness of a potential fetish with research methods that are counter productive and unethical.

Cognition, Culture and Religion

Abstract The present paper is both a critical analysis of the reductive problems inherent in an evolutionary approach that surfaces in the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) and an appeal for an enactive turn that can enhance CSR by better accounting for religious experience – i.e. the phenomenologically experienced realities that are entailed in religious belief. First, we discuss CSR and a basic evolutionary presupposition: that religious experience is based on a universal architecture designed by natural selection, which includes the notion of domain-specific processing mechanisms. We then discuss how Cultural Psychologists conceive of the ontogenetic role of culture by arguing that religious cognition does not solely develop out of evolution. As we propose, CSR can be studied with a view to the evolution of cognition that can account for the ontogenetic role of culture and language constituting phenomenologically immediate realities. Finally, we discuss enactivism as an ideal alternative for such a shift. Enactivism conceives the relation between the evolution of cognition and the ontogenetic role of culture as embodied: a non-reductive relation in which cognition and culture shape each other. This approach allows for CSR that acknowledges the fact that religious experiences constitute non-representational but lived experiences.