CONCEPT
Monologism
The false picture of meaning as
originating in a single authoritative consciousness — the opposite of dialogism, and the target of
Bakhtin's lifelong critique.
Monologism is Bakhtin's term for discourse that presents itself as complete, self-sufficient, and sealed against genuine response. The monologic text claims to contain truth independently of dialogue; it speaks
at rather than
with, proclaims rather than converses, demands assent rather than inviting engagement. Authoritarian regimes prefer monologism because it suppresses the polyphony of social voices under a single official line. Scientific and philosophical systems tend toward monologism when they claim to have arrived at final truths that subsequent thinkers can only elaborate, never genuinely challenge. The Romantic myth of the solitary genius is monologic: it pictures the author as the sole origin of meaning, concealing the constitutive role of dialogue, tradition, and collaborative process. Bakhtin spent his career demonstrating that monologism is always a fiction — that even the most apparently univocal text is actually multi-voiced, carrying within it suppressed or unacknowledged responses to prior utterances.
The polyphonic novel is the antidote: a form that makes
dialogism explicit, granting independence to voices that monologism would subordinate.