Sustainable Consciousness Promoting Dialogue With Alien Others

Abstract

Today, people live in a culturally diverse world and often face criticisms of their ideas by outsiders who have alien perspectives. Russian literary researcher M. M. Bakhtin valued such criticisms, which may bring forth unprecedented perspectives that bridge gaps between different viewpoints. In this paper, I investigate Bakhtin’s notions concerning ‘laughter’, which describe the mental functions involved in productive dialogue. Greek tragic dramatist Euripides is the main figure of my analysis as an influence on Bakhtin’s notions of the value of laughter and dialogue, although Bakhtin did not employ systemic citations of Euripides’ works. I focus on speaker consciousness, which is described as occurring when negotiating with others who have alien viewpoints in Greek tragedies. I then propose sustainable models of consciousness that may promote communication in current contexts of ideological diversity.