Gender monoglossia, gender heteroglossia: the potential of Bakhtin’s work for re-conceptualising gender

The development of an analysis of gender which avoids conflations with sex, but which also acknowledges the powerful role of embodiment in gender production, has tantalised gender theorists for some time. Many writers have critiqued the slippage back to sexed bodies underlying various apparently social constructionist analyses of gendered behaviour. Conversely, some poststructuralist and ‘Third Wave’ accounts of gender have been accused of paying insufficient attention to the role of the material in productions of gender. This article draws on Mikhail Bakhtin's work, particularly his concepts of monoglossia and heteroglossia, as offering an application to gender which addresses such tensions and binaries, recognising both the power and effects of (‘monoglossic’) binarised accounts of gender, but also the diverse heteroglossia at play in all such productions. It is argued that analysis of monoglossia and heteroglossia in gender performance facilitates the simultaneous ‘holding’ of recognition of (a) the impact of the material and the discursive in gender construction; and (b) the active work undertaken by dominant, traditional accounts of gender to author themselves as ‘real’ and total, while also identifying the contradictions and diversity within these productions. The article begins by outlining dilemmas facing contemporary gender theory, and then explaining Bakhtin's work on monoglossia and heteroglossia in language. These concepts are then applied to gender, elaborating how the monoglossic, binary account of gender operates to mask and pathologise heteroglossia; yet how heteroglossia nevertheless exists in all productions of gender. It is argued that Bakhtin's work, in application to gender, offers a sophisticated account that can address existing theoretical binaries, acknowledging the role of the material, and of social structures, while simultaneously identifying and celebrating heteroglossic disturbances integral to gender production.