The dialogism of the emotive-volitional dimension

a discussion of the Bakhtin’s Circle on human affects

Abstract

In order to highlight a dialogical dimension of the subjects’ affects, since they are constitutively situated historically, we discuss how emotional-volitional positions are constructed in an ethical, ideological and authorial context. From this perspective, we assume that the construction of individual sensations and interests are peculiar responses to the ways in which the subject interacts socially, and, therefore, contradictory authorial acts constructed in a situated social practice. To develop our considerations, we will resort to theoretical and methodological parameters from Bakhtin in “The Author and the Hero in Aesthetic Activity,” (2011) and in “Toward a Philosophy of the Act” (2010) in order to analyze various everyday situations portrayed in literature, especially those that appear in the work “Lavoura Arcaica”, by Raduan Nassar (1989), when affective states are thematized in a way that highlights their social axiological character. We emphasize that the emotional volitional constitution of the subject is dialogically activated in an arena of struggles between appreciative and depreciative positions of self-experiments, through the active problematization of the experienced self-sensations and the images of oneself projected by the author and others. Finally, we intend, with the debate, to suggest that affect is more than an individual issue; it is a tense social process.