The Rebirth of Dialogue: Bakhtin, Socrates, and the Rhetorical Tradition by James P. Zappen. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004. 229 + viii pp.

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The Rebirth of Dialogue: Bakhtin, Socrates, and the Rhetorical Tradition by James P. Zappen. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004. 229 + viii pp.

Plato wrote dialogues. Mikhail Bakthin constructed a literary theory based on dialogue. And as part of this theoretical work, Bakhtin interpreted the dialogues of Plato. Rhetorical scholars have always been interested in Plato; recently, they have shown considerable interest in Bakhtin as well. Surely, then, someone has already undertaken a systematic study of Plato and Bakhtin. No. Not until now.

James P. Zappen's The Rebirth of Dialogue: Bakhtin, Socrates, and the Rhetorical Tradition is the first book-length analysis, and synthesis, of the work of Plato and Bakhtin. More, Zappen's book extrapolates two conjectures from Bakhtin's theories and Plato's dialogues: first, while recognizing the difficulties involved, Zappen reviews Bakhtin's attempts to retrieve something of Socrates' original work, and second, in his concluding epilogue, Zappen tries to apply the insights and techniques of Socrates, Plato, and Bakhtin to the task of revitalizing the role of dialogue in rhetorical theory and within the rhetoric classroom. This ambitious program is economically achieved in 160 pages of text and a further 60 pages of notes and references.

Zappen's rhetorical task in this study is formidable. He must explain two very different bodies of work for two nearly exclusive sets of scholars. Zappen devotes the first three chapters of his book to this task. In his "Introduction" (1-15), he provides an overview of the problem and of his book. He next surveys the literature on Socrates and Plato in "The Traditional Socrates: Dialogue, Rhetoric, and Dialectic" (17-36). And then he reviews the life, thought, and interpretation of Bakhtin in "Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Dialogical Rhetoric, and the Socratic Dialogue" (3

Reviewing these chapters from the standpoint of a Plato scholar, I can say that Zappen translates Bakhtin's work into terms that are intelligible to me and applicable to the texts I study. And Zappen brings appropriate scholars-Don Bialostosky, Caryl Emerson, Michael Holquist, Gary Morson, and Peter Stallybrass-into his discussions of the secondary literature. Whether scholars of Bakhtin will find the converse true is beyond my judgment. But here, too, Zappen consults the right scholars, interpreters who have shaped the contemporary conversation about Plato's work in the context of ancient rhetorical theory: Thomas G. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, Richard Leo Enos, Erie Havelock, Charles Kahn, George Kennedy, Andrea Nightingale, Edward Sehiappa, Gregory Vlastos, and Harvey Yunis. The one somewhat unexpected voice in this chorus is that of Arthur W. II. Adkins, in whose Merit and Responsibility Zappen finds a note he sounds repeatedly: Plato's Socrates, through his constant questioning, uncovers the inherent contradiction between the Homeric cultural values of courage and cunning and the civic virtues of justice and temperance (33, 71).

The thrust of Zappen's argument in these first three chapters is that Socrates embodies aspects of Bakhtin's concept of dialogue and that Plato, as the author of Socratic dialogues, prefigures the work of the polyphonic novelist. The essential foundation for these claims is that Bakhtin himself engaged the work of Plato in his Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. In explicating this work, Zappen points to the work of engaged listening, which can manifest itself in anacrisis, the critical testing of one's views, and/or syncrisis, the critical comparison of opposing views (46). But critically judging discourse together can also lead to synthesis. And this synthesis can occur within a cultural discourse or across cultural discourses, two or more voices jointly creating a hybrid discourse (56). But even when it encounters resistance to this mixing, however, dialogue can still disrupt monologue, the effort to impose authority, through the "carnivalesque intermingling of the lofty and the serious with the lowly and the mundane" (118). This can be done within a conversation. Or it can be done in the representation of a conversation, as when an author frames a dialogue in such a way as to remind the reader of facts or factors that undermine or refract the meanings of the speakers within the dialogue. It is the principal claim of Zappen's The Rebirth of Dialogue that we can see each of these aspects of Bakhtin's theory at work in Plato's dialogues.
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Zappen warrants this claim in the three chapters that make up the bulk of his book, interpretations of Plato's Laches, Protagoras, and Gorgias. In "Cultural Conflict and the Testing of Persons and Ideas in the Laches" (67-93), Zappen highlights the dialogical techniques of anacrisis and syncrisis, the testing and comparing of personal convictions, but at the same time he calls our attention to the surplus of meaning that Plato wields as author. Within the dialogue, Laches and Nicias, two Athenian generals who figure prominently in Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War, are questioned by Socrates with regard to ...

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