The pioneering and hugely influential work of Mikhail Bakhtin has led scholars in recent decades to see all discourse and social life as inherently "dialogical." No speaker speaks alone, because our words are always partly shaped by our interactions with others, past and future. Moreover, we never fashion ourselves entirely by ourselves, but always do so in concert with others. Bakhtin thus decisively reshaped modern understandings of language and subjectivity. And yet, the contributors to this volume argue that something is potentially overlooked with too close a focus on dialogism: many speakers, especially in charged political and religious contexts, work energetically at crafting monologues, single-voiced statements to which the only expected response is agreement or faithful replication. Drawing on ethnographic case studies from the United States, Iran, Cuba, Indonesia, Algeria, and Papua New Guinea, the authors argue that a focus on "the monologic imagination" gives us new insights into languages' political design and religious force, and deepens our understandings of the necessary interplay between monological and dialogical tendencies.

ContributorsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction - Imagining the Monologic - Matt TomlinsonChapter 1Cultural Replication: The Source of Monological and Dialogical Models of CultureGreg UrbanChapter 2Dialogic Prophecies and Monologic VisionJon BialeckiChapter 3Monologue and Dialogism in Highland New Guinea Verbal ArtAlan RumseyDiscussionIs It Monologic? Is It Dialogic? What Difference Does It Make?Don KulickChapter 4"With Unity We Will Be Victorious!": A Monological Poetics of Political "Conscientization" within the Cuban Revolution.Kristina WirtzChapter 5From Neighborhood Talk to Talking for the NeighborhoodZane GoebelChapter 6Monologue and Authority in Iran: Ethnic and Religious Heteroglossia in the Islamic RepublicJames BarryDiscussionDiving into the Gap: "Words," "Voices," and the Ethnographic Implications of Linguistic Disjuncture.Krista E. Van VleetChapter 7Acting with One Voice: Producing Unanimism in Algerian Reformist TheaterJane E. GoodmanChapter 8Creedal Monologism and Theological Articulation in the Mennonite Central CommitteePhilip FountainChapter 9The Public Metaculture of Islamic PreachingJulian MillieDiscussionThe Monologic Imagination of Social GroupsCourtney HandmanConclusionReligious and Political Terrain of the Monologic Imagination