In the (Mis/Re)Encounter of Voices: The Dialogical Construction of the Polemic in Utterances with a Political-Religious Theme

Abstract

In Bakhtin’s works on Dostoevsky’s polyphonic novel, there is a set of very relevant notions for the analysis of the functioning of the bivocal word, which is conceived as an utterance directed both toward its referential object and toward the discourse of others about that object. This object carries within it all the refractions of the voices that have already valued it in the discursive interactions of which it has been the theme. In this paper, I analyze the dialogic relationships that compose the speaker’s axiological positioning through the polemic (open/hidden) in Facebook posts with thematic content constituted through the dialogue between the political and religious spheres. Based on Bakhtinian studies, I demonstrate how the (mis/re)encounter of voices in a given utterance demands from the contemporary subject an attentive look at the sinuous movements of the forms of emergence, circulation and management of the voices that constitute/constituted certain historical discourses in Brazilian society, with all the enunciative procedures of reworking and re-accentuating involved in this process.