Hearing Voices: Heteroglossia in the Era of Podcasting

In this project, I will explore how podcasting functions as a final outpost for democratic voices in the digital age.  Contrary to initial hopes, social media and website trade are places of corporate sponsorship and privacy being sacrificed to data-mining and monetization.  Podcasting, however, remains a place where non-professional and non-sponsored voices find a wide audience.  To explain these qualities of podcasting, I plan to use the literary ideas of Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, specifically his idea of heteroglossic storytelling.  Heteroglossia, Bakhtin contends, is a storytelling of layered voices, and where contradicting voices can occupy the same place.