Social action, dialogism and the imaginary community: toward a dialogical critique of political economy

We view political economy through a lens of dialogical thought associated with the writings of the Bakhtin circle (1918–1929). The individual is understood to be a “social subject” who engages by necessity in self/other dialogue, in the medium of language, and whose actions are inscribed by an existential social unit. The latter cannot “communicate itself” as a unified object, for the very reason that meaning is always in it. This basic dialogical approach is then extended to the “social-as-community”, pointing toward a dialogical critique of political economy. The subject is understood to be oriented by its experience of an other individual as that which the subject is not, and as that which the subject is. Conceptually, then, the imaginary community is a transfiguration of the task each subject faces orienting self and other. It is a set of individuals, each individual inside the community being experienced by each other one as self, and individuals outside the set, as other.