Bakhtinian ideas about text and dialogism provide important tools for bringing order to the otherwise chaotic and fragmented field of collective memory studies. While the definition of collective remembering may remain unsettled at this point, some appreciation of the range of options can be derived by situating discussions in terms of the contrast between strong and distributed versions of collective remembering. Building on the notion of semiotic mediation and associated claims about a distributed version of collective remembering, Bakhtin's notion of dialogically organized text is invoked. The fact that the "language system" envisioned by Bakhtin includes the dialogical orientations of generalized collective dialogue as well as standard grammatical elements means that it introduces an essential element of dynamism into collective remembering.
Dialogic; Collective memory; Semiotic mediation; Bakhtin; Text