Bachelard, Besson and Bakhtin: A Dialogical Discourse on the Potential of Intimate Space

Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space ponders the image of the wardrobe. Fixated by the figurative nature of its inner space, for Bachelard, the wardrobe is intimate, secret, and ordered. It is a space of protected memories, accessed more through the imagination than the everyday. Besson’s The Fifth Element opens up intimate space. Its external envelope offers no impenetrable boundary but instead a permeable threshold. The Fifth Element suggests an alternative for intimate space, where the incongruous, even conflicting, come together. Such a possibility evokes Bakhtin’s construct of dialogism, which reveled in the potential of dialogue between one and other, across both literal and figurative thresholds. This article brings together disparate strands from philosophy, film, and architecture. Through their juxtaposition, it will consider the potential for a new perspective on intimate space as dialogical space, in which private and public might meet, interact and even embrace, and so see themselves anew.