Dialogic Materialism: Bakhtin, Embodiment and Moving Image Art argues for the relevance of Mikhail Bakhtin¿s theories of dialogism as a means of examining the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary moving image art forms. The volume comprises six chapters divided into two sections. The first section, Part I, illustrates the key concepts in Bakhtin¿s multifaceted dialogism and develops these ideas in relation to moving image art. The main focus of this first part is the proposal of what the author terms dialogic materialism, which builds upon the Marxism inherent in Bakhtin, examining the material processes of cultural exchange with a particular emphasis on multi-perspective subjective relations. Part II consists of case studies that apply dialogic materialism to the moving image artwork of three artists: Stan Douglas, Jamelie Hassan and Chris Marker. Applying Bakhtinian theory to the field of the visual arts provides a means of examining the fundamentally dialogic nature of moving image art making and viewing, a perspective that is not fully developed within the existing literature.

Miriam Jordan-Haladyn is a First Nations writer and artist. She received her PhD in art and visual culture from The University of Western Ontario and is currently a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art and Visual Studies Department at Cornell University. Her writings on art, film and culture have appeared in numerous publications, including the collections Visual Representations of Native Americans: Transnational Contexts and Perspectives (2012), Cultivating Canada: Reconciliation through the Lens of Cultural Diversity (2011) and Stanley Kubrick: Essays on His Films and Legacy (2007). With Julian Haladyn she co-authored The Films and Videos of Jamelie Hassan, a publication that accompanied their curated project that brings together for the first time the moving image works of Hassan, a prominent Canadian artist of Arabic background.

Contents: Bakhtin and Moving Image Art ¿ Dialogism and Its Material Context ¿ Dialogic Materialism: Artist - Artwork - Observer ¿ Given and Created: Stan Douglas Subject To A Different Response ¿ Chronotopic Bodies and the We of Aesthetic Discourse: Jamelie Hassan¿s Films and Videos ¿ Polyphonic Screens: Chris Marker and Embodied Memory ¿ Dialogic Materialism: Aesthetic Language and Its Multi-medial Forms.