Harry Kempen
In the 1990s, Kempen and Hubert Hermans developed a new approach in cultural psychology around the concept of the dialogical self. In 1993, they published the seminal work "The dialogical self: Meaning as movement", and published several articles in "American Psychologist", "Journal of Personality" and "Theory & Psychology". Despite their success Kempen suffered from depression. In 2000, he died in Nijmegen four days before his retirement from the Radboud University. At the university he is remembered by as the "personification of cultural psychology."Articles, a selection:
Mikhail Bakhtin
“Bakhtin’s life work can be understood as a critique of the monologization of the human experience that he perceived in the dominant linguistic, literary, philosophical, and political theories of his time." True to his roots of social constructionism and post-modernism Bakhtin “was critical of efforts to reduce the unfinalizable, open, and multivocal process of meaning-making in determinate, closed, totalizing ways." According to Bakhtin, the meaning found in any dialogue is unique to the sender and recipient based upon their personal understanding of the world as influenced by the socio-cultural background. “Bakhtin’s dialogism opens up space for communication scholars to conceive of difference in new ways” meaning they must take the background of a subject into consideration when conducting research into their understanding of any text as “a dialogic perspective argues that difference (of all kinds) is basic to the human experience." Kim argues that “his ideas of art as a vehicle oriented towards interaction with its audience in order to express or communicate any sort of intention is reminiscent of Clifford Geertz’s theories on culture." Culture and communication become inextricably linked to one another as one's understanding, according to Bakhtin, of a given utterance, text, or message, is contingent upon their culture background and experience.