Thu 24 July, 2014
Augusto Ponzio: Science, Art, Politics, and Praxis in Mikhail Bakhtin

Augusto Ponzio is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy of Language, at the University of Bari Aldo Moro. He is an outstanding Italian semiotician philosopher, and historian of science, dealing with the central problems of meaning, language, and ideology in historical-theoretical aspects. Professor Ponzio has made a significant contribution as author, editor, and translator to the dissemination of the ideas of Bakhtin in Italy and abroad. He has authored such important volumes as Michail Bachtin. Alle origini della semiotica sovietica (1980), Segni e contraddizioni. Fra Marx e Bachtin (1981), Tra semiotica e letteratura. Introduzione a Michail Bakhtin (1992), Signs, Dialogue and Ideology (1993), La rivoluzione bachtiniana. Il pensiero di Bachtin e l'ideologia contemporanea (1997). Ponzio has promoted the Italian translation of numerous works by Bakhtin and members of the Bakhtin Circle, including Valentin N. Voloshinov, Pavel N. Medvedev, and I. I. Kanaev. His lates work is a bilingual Russian-Italian volume of collected works by Bakhtin and his Circle (1919–1930).