Response —A Critical Response to “Discourse Communities and the Discourse of Experience”

AbstractIn their article Little, Jordens, and Sayers developed the notion of “discourse communities”—as groups of people who share an ideology and common “language”—with the support of seminal ideas from M.M. Bakhtin. Such communities provide benefits although they may also impose constraints. An ethical community would open to others’ discourse and be committe d to critique. Those commitments may counter the limitations of discourse communities. Since their paper was published in 2003, the notion of “discourse communities” has been widely adopted and applied in healthcare and beyond. Their ideas were influential in the founding of an ethics centre in Sydney and contributed to articulating the values which underpin this journal. This commentary notes that an ethical community is fragile in responding to current onslaughts on truth and meaning—potencies inherent in discourse communities. The essay takes Bakhtin’s ideas further to explore intri nsic forces at play in dialogue, language, and art. This leads to discussing the centrality of ethics in Bakhtin’s thought. For him, the essence of discourse is a dialogic exchange which comprises both art and ethics. It isart in thatself andother are created in the exchange. It isethical in that “I” amanswerable to the other, as a phenomenological reality, in the moment of intersubjectivity.

Source: Journal of Bioethical Inquiry - April 1, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research