Vision of the Other: Word and Image in Mikhail Bakhtin

This article describes how the pathways and modalities through which self-consciousness and selfvaluation are reached are closely interdependent with the vision of others. But the vision of the other can never be known directly by any one of us, not even in the other’s presence: even when I am in front of the gaze of the other, the other is always the other-for-me. Neither studies of the psychological or psychoanalytical orders, nor those conducted in the sphere of philosophical reflection oriented autonomously from other spheres can contribute to a semiotics of the image of self as this is construed interpreting the signs of the vision of the other. Literary writing above all can contribute in this sense. The Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin resorts to literature, verbal art for his semiotics and philosophy of language and is often interpreted mistakenly as a literary critic precisely because of this. In this framework, he analyses the signs forming one’s own image of self for each one of us, in the interlacement between I-for-myself, the other-for-me, I-for-the-other.