Feminist Criticism and Bakhtin's Dialogic Principle: Making the Transition from Theory to Textual Analysis

Following a brief introduction to the Russian linguist and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, this article reviews recent publications that combine Bakhtin's theories and feminist criticism. The article moves from a discussion of theory and "feminist dialogics" to its application in the analysis of specific literary works and then concludes with a Bakhtinian reading of two stories by Lou Andreas-Salomé. My assessment of the often uncritical appropriation of Bakhtinian notions—in particular the frequent references to "dialogue"—seeks to recover Bakhtin's "dialogic principle" as a category of critical analysis. Drawing on Bakhtin's socio-linguistic approach to literature, I maintain, can be most productive in making the often difficult transition from feminist theory to the analysis of individual texts. (FE)