Pursuing Controversy: Kristeva's Split Subject, Bakhtin's Many-Tongued World

Abstract

This essay pursues a theory of controversy as a generative phase of public discourse, in which difference and disagreement are constitutive. It compares the work of Julia Kristeva and Mikhail Bakhtin, two theorists who traffic in controversy, in terms of their potential for reinvigorating a public voice. While Kristeva's “split subject” is an apparently more radical theory of difference, it is found that Bakhtin's “many-tongued world” provides better grounds f or an active public voice.