7 - The Marion motif: the whisper of the precursor

Summary

In the preceding chapters I have attempted to explore certain lines of enquiry suggested by Bakhtin beyond the limits which he himself observes. I have tried to demonstrate how dialogue with the other is linked with emotional polarities and reversals of the kind which we have come to recognize in Dostoyevsky's text and that these are linked to ideological polarities and reversals.

I have also tried to show that the emotional dimensions of dialogue involve narrator—reader as well as character—character and narrator—character relationships. In the course of my examination of the nature of these relationships I have discussed the way in which each participant in the dialogue is drawn into the process of positing norms which are then subverted as the (reading of the) text proceeds. This positing and subversion can be examined on the level of interpersonal emotional relationships, on the philosophical level and on the level of discourse, and result in the undoing of equations which have been made in the original acts of positing, to the point where the possibility that this process is in principle endless imposes itself on the reader's consciousness. And not only on the reader's. Some of Dostoyevsky's characters, notably the Man from Underground, are caught up in similar terrifying possibilities.