Mikhail Bakhtin

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (Russian: Михаил Михайлович Бахти́н) (November 17, 1895 – March 7, 1975) was a Russian philosopher and literary scholar, who wrote influential works of literary and rhetorical theory and criticism. His works, dealing with a variety of subjects, have inspired groups of thinkers such as Neo-Marxists, Structuralists, and semioticians, who have all incorporated Bakhtinian ideas into theories of their own (Clark and Holquist 3).

Introduction

Despite the fact that Bakhtin’s career was fraught with difficulties and complications, impeding the publication of many of his manuscripts until after his death, Bakhtin is considered to be a significant thinker of the twentieth century. Bakhtin, whose primary concern was language, argued that a struggle between forces simultaneously working to separate and unite those things existing in both nature and culture was at the very center of existence. According to Bakhtin, examples of this struggle are best reflected in human language and best recorded in the novel, a subject to which Bakhtin devoted a significant amount of time (Holquist xv-xviii).

As a literary theorist, Bakhtin is associated with the Russian Formalists, and his work is often compared with that of Yuri Lotman. His career is frequently described as being broken into periods, but there is some discrepancy as to how those periods should be divided. During the 1920s, Bakhtin's work tended to focus on ethics and aesthetics in general. Early pieces such as Towards a Philosophy of the Act and Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity are indebted to the philosophical trends of the time – particularly the Marburg School Neo-Kantianism of Ernst Cassirer, Max Scheler and, to a lesser extent, Nicolai Hartmann. But it was only after Bakhtin’s death in 1975 that authors such as Julia Kristeva and Tzvetan Todorov brought Bakhtin to the attention of the Francophone world, and from there his popularity in the United States, the United Kingdom, and many other countries continued to grow. In the late 1980s, Bakhtin's work experienced a surge of popularity in the West, and he continues today to be regarded as one of the most important theorists of literature and culture.

Bakhtin’s primary works include, Toward a Philosophy of the Act, an unfinished portion of a philosophical essay; Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Art, to which Bakhtin later added a chapter on the concept of carnival and published with the title Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics; Rabelais and His World, which explores the openness of the Rabelaisian novel; The Dialogic Imagination, whereby the four essays that comprise the work introduce the concepts of dialogism (see dialogic), heteroglossia, and chronotope; and Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, a collection of essays in which Bakhtin concerns himself with method and culture.

Biography

Bakhtin was born in Orel, Russia, outside of Moscow, to an old family of the nobility. His father was the manager of a bank and worked in several cities. For this reason Bakhtin spent his early childhood years in Orel, Vilnius (Lithuania) and then Odessa where, in 1913, he allegedly joined the historical and philological faculty at the local university. He later transferred to Petersburg University to join his brother Nikolai. It is here that Bakhtin was greatly influenced by the classicist F. F. Zelinski whose works contain the beginnings of concepts elaborated by Bakhtin. Bakhtin completed his studies in 1918 and moved to Nevel, a city in western Russia where he worked as a school teacher for two years. It was at this time that the first “Bakhtin Circle” formed. The group comprised of intellectuals with varying interests, but all shared a love for the discussion of literary, religious, and political topics. Included in this group were Valentin Volosinov and, eventually, P. N. Medvedev who joined the group later in Vitebsk. German philosophy was the topic talked about most frequently and, from this point forward, Bakhtin considered himself more a philosopher than a literary scholar. It is in Nevel, also, that Bakhtin worked tirelessly on a large work concerning moral philosophy which was never published in its entirety. However, in 1919, a short section of this work was published and given the title “Art and Responsibility”. This piece constitutes Bakhtin’s first published work. Bakhtin relocated to Vitebsk 1920. It was here, in 1921, that Bakhtin married Elena Aleksandrovna Okolovič. Later, in 1923, Bakhtin was diagnosed with osteomyelitis, a bone disease that ultimately led to the amputation of his leg in 1938. This illness hampered his productivity and rendered him an invalid.

In 1924, Bakhtin moved to Leningrad where he assumed a position at the Historical Institute and provided consulting services for the State Publishing House. It is at this time that Bakhtin decided to share his work with the public, but just before “On the Question of the Methodology of Aesthetics in Written Works” was to be published, the journal in which it was to appear stopped publication. This work was eventually published fifty-one years later. The repression and misplacement of his manuscripts was something that would plague Bakhtin throughout his career. In 1929, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Art, Bakhtin’s first major work, was published. It is here that Bakhtin introduces the concept of “dialogism.” However, just as this revolutionary book was introduced, Bakhtin was accused of participating in the Russian Orthodox Church's underground movement. The veracity of this charge is not known, even today. Consequently, during one of the many purges of artists and intellectuals that Stalin conducted during the early years of his rule, Bakhtin was sentenced to exile in Siberia but appealed on the grounds that, in his weakened state, it would kill him. Instead, he was sentenced to six years of 'internal exile' in Kazakhstan.

Bakhtin spent these six years working as a bookkeeper in the town of Kustanai, during which time Bakhtin wrote several important essays, including “Discourse in the Novel”. In 1936, he taught courses at the Mordovian Pedagogical Institute in Saransk. An obscure figure in a provincial college, he dropped out of view and taught only occasionally. In 1937, Bakhtin moved to Kimry, a town located a couple hundred kilometers from Moscow. Here, Bakhtin completed work on a book concerning the eighteenth-century German novel which was subsequently accepted by the Sovetski Pisatel’(Soviet Writers') Publishing House. However, the only copy of the manuscript disappeared during the upheaval caused by the German invasion.

After the amputation of his leg in 1938, Bakhtin’s health improved and he became a more prolific writer. In 1940, until the end of World War II, Bakhtin lived in Moscow where he submitted a dissertation on Rabelais which could not be defended until the war ended. In 1946 and 1949, the defense of this dissertation divided the scholars of Moscow into two groups: those official opponents guiding the defense who accepted the original and unorthodox manuscript, and those other professors who were against the manuscript’s acceptance. The book's depiction of the role of the carnival, the temporary suspension of social order and licentious behavior, was the cause of many arguments which ceased only when the government intervened. Bakhtin was denied a doctorate and granted a lesser degree by the State Accrediting Bureau. Later, Bakhtin was invited back to Saransk where he took on the position of chairman of the General Literature Department at the Mordovian Pedagogical Institute. When, in 1957, the Mordovian Pedagogical Institute made the transition from a teachers college to a university, Bakhtin became head of the Department of Russian and World Literature. In 1961, Bakhtin’s deteriorating health forced him to retire, and in 1969, in search of medical attention, Bakhtin moved back to Moscow where he resided until his death in 1975 (Holquist xxi-xxvi).

Due to the fact that Bakhtin’s works and ideas gained such enormous popularity only after his death, the details of Bakhtin’s life have been reconstructed and their accuracy is in question. Access to Russian archival information during Bakhtin’s life is limited. It is only after the archives became public that scholars realized that much of what they thought they knew about the details of Bakhtin’s life was false or skewed largely by Bakhtin himself (Hirschkop 2).

Works and Ideas

Toward a Philosophy of the Act: -for-

Toward a Philosophy of the Act was first published in Russia in 1986 with the title K filosofii postupka. The manuscript of this early work was found in bad condition with pages missing and sections of text that were illegible. It is for this reason that this philosophical essay appears today as a fragment of an unfinished work. The extant version of Toward a Philosophy of the Act consists of only an introduction, of which the first few pages are missing, and part one of the full text. However, Bakhtin’s intentions for the work were not altogether lost, for he provided an outline in the introduction in which he stated that the essay was to contain four parts (Liapunov xvii). The first part of the essay, deals with the analysis of the performed acts or deeds that comprise the actual world; “the world actually experienced, and not the merely thinkable world.” For the three subsequent and unfinished sections, Bakhtin lays out the topics he intends to discuss. Part two was to deal with aesthetic activity and the ethics of artistic creation; the third with the ethics of politics; and the fourth with religion (Bakhtin 54).

Toward a Philosophy of the Act is one of Bakhtin’s early works concerning ethics and aesthetics and it is here that Bakhtin lays out three claims regarding the acknowledgment of the uniqueness of one’s participation in Being: 1) I both actively and passively participate in Being 2) my uniqueness is given but it simultaneously exists only to the degree to which I actualize this uniqueness (in other words, it is in the performed act and deed that has yet to be achieved) 3) Because I am actual and irreplaceable I must actualize my uniqueness. Bakhtin further states: “It is in relation to the whole actual unity that my unique ought arises from my unique place in Being” (Bakhtin 41). Bakhtin deals with the concept of morality whereby he attributes the predominating legalistic notion of morality to human moral action. According to Bakhtin, the I cannot maintain neutrality toward moral and ethical demands which manifest themselves as one’s voice of consciousness (Hirschkop 12-14).

It is here also that Bakhtin introduces an architectonic model of the human psyche which consists of three components: “I-for-myself”, “I-for-the-other”, and “other-for-me”. The I-for-myself is an unreliable source of self-identity, and Bakhtin argues that it is the I-for-the-other through which human beings develop a sense of self-identity because it serves as an amalgamation of the way in which others view me. Conversely, other-for-me describes the way in which others incorporate my perceptions of them into their own self-identity. Identity, as Bakhtin describes it here, does not belong merely to the individual, rather it is shared by all (Emerson and Morson).

Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Art: polyphony and unfinalizability

During his time in Leningrad Bakhtin shifted his focus away from the philosophy characteristic of his early works and towards the notion of dialogue. It is at this time that he began his engagement with the work of Dostoevsky. Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Art is considered to be Bakhtin’s seminal work, and it is here that Bakhtin introduces three important concepts.

First, is the concept of the unfinalizable self: individual people cannot be finalized, completely understood, known, or labeled. Though it is possible to understand people and to treat them as if they are completely known, Bakhtin’s conception of unfinalizability respects the possibility that a person can change, and that a person is never fully revealed or fully known in the world. Readers may find that this conception reflects the idea of the soul; Bakhtin had strong roots in Christianity and in the Neo-Kantian school led by Hermann Cohen, both of which emphasized the importance of an individual's potentially infinite capability, worth, and the hidden soul.

Second, is the idea of the relationship between the self and others, or other groups. According to Bakhtin, every person is influenced by others in an inescapably intertwined way, and consequently no voice can be said to be isolated. In an interview, Bakhtin once explained that, "In order to understand, it is immensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understanding—in time, in space, in culture. For one cannot even really see one's own exterior and comprehend it as a whole, and no mirrors or photographs can help; our real exterior can be seen and understood only by other people, because they are located outside us in space, and because they are others" (New York Review of Books, June 10, 1993). As such, Bakhtin's philosophy greatly respected the influences of others on the self, not merely in terms of how a person comes to be, but also in how a person thinks and how a person sees oneself truthfully.

Third, Bakhtin found in Dostoevsky's work a true representation of polyphony, that is, many voices. Each character in Dostoevsky's work represents a voice that represents an individual self, distinct from others. This idea of polyphony is related to the concepts of unfinalizability and self and other, since it is the unfinalizability of individuals that creates true polyphony.

When, in subsequent years, Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Art was to be translated into English and published in the West, Bakhtin added a chapter on the concept of carnival and the book was published with the slightly different title, Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics. According to Bakhtin, carnival is the concept in which distinct individual voices are heard, flourish, and interact together. The carnival was Bakhtin's way of describing Dostoevsky's polyphonic style: each individual character is strongly defined, and at the same time the reader witnesses the critical influence of each character upon the other. That is, the voices of others are heard by each individual, and each inescapably shapes the character of the other.

Rabelais and His World: carnival and grotesque

During World War II Bakhtin submitted a dissertation on the French renaissance poet François Rabelais which was not defended until some years later. The controversial ideas discussed within the work caused much disagreement, and it was consequently decided that Bakhtin be denied his doctorate. Thus, due to its content, Rabelais and Folk Culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance was not published until 1965, at which time it was given the title, Rabelais and His World (Holquist xxv).

Now a classic of Renaissance studies, Rabelais and His World is considered one of Bakhtin’s most important texts, and it is here that Bakhtin explores Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel (Clark and Holquist 295). Bakhtin declares that, for centuries, Rabelais’ book had been misunderstood, and claimed that Rabelais and His World clarified Rabelais’ intentions. In Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin concerns himself with the openness of Gargantua and Pantagruel; however, the book itself also serves as an example of such openness. Throughout the text, Bakhtin attempts two things: he seeks to recover sections of Gargantua and Pantagruel that, in the past, were either ignored or suppressed, and conducts an analysis of the Renaissance social system in order to discover the balance between language that was permitted and language which was not. It is by means of this analysis that Bakhtin pinpoints two important subtexts: the first is carnival which Bakhtin describes as a social institution, and the second is grotesque realism which is defined as a literary mode. Thus, in Rabelais and His World Bakhtin studies the interaction between the social and the literary, as well as the meaning of the body (Clark and Holquist 297-299).

For Bakhtin, carnival is associated with the collectivity; for those attending a carnival do not merely constitute a crowd; rather the people are seen as a whole, organized in a way that defies socioeconomic and political organization (Clark and Holquist 302). According to Bakhtin, “[A]ll were considered equal during carnival. Here, in the town square, a special form of free and familiar contact reigned among people who were usually divided by the barriers of caste, property, profession, and age” (Bakhtin 10). At carnival time, the unique sense of time and space causes the individual to feel he is a part of the collectivity, at which point he ceases to be himself. It is at this point that, through costume and mask, an individual exchanges bodies and is renewed. At the same time there arises a heightened awareness of one’s sensual, material, bodily unity and community (Clark and Holquist 302).

Bakhtin’s notion of carnival is connected with that of the grotesque. The collectivity partaking in the carnival is aware of its unity in time as well as its historic immorality associated with its continual death and renewal. According to Bakhtin, the body is in need of a type of clock if it to be aware of its timelessness. The grotesque is the term used by Bakhtin to describe the emphasis of bodily changes through eating, evacuation, and sex: it is used as a measuring device (Clark and Holquist 303).

The Dialogic Imagination chronotope, heteroglossia

The Dialogic Imagination is a compilation of four essays concerning language and the novel: “Epic and Novel”, “From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse”, “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel”, and “Discourse in the Novel”. In the nineteenth century the novel as a literary genre became increasingly popular, but for most of its history it has been an area of study often disregarded. It is through the essays contained within The Dialogic Imagination that Bakhtin introduces the concepts of heteroglossia and chronotope, making a significant contribution to the realm of literary scholarship (Holquist xxvi).

In “Epic and Novel”, Bakhtin demonstrates the novel’s distinct nature by contrasting it with the epic. By doing so, Bakhtin shows that the novel is well suited to the post-industrial civilization in which we live because it flourishes on diversity. It is this same diversity that the epic attempts to eliminate from the world. According to Bakhtin, the novel as a genre is unique in that it is able to embrace, ingest, and devour other genres while still maintaining its status as a novel. Other genres, however, cannot emulate the novel without damaging their own distinct identity (Holquist xxxii).

“From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse” is a less traditional essay in which Bakhtin reveals how various different texts from the past have ultimately come together to form the modern novel (Holquist xxxiii).

“Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel” introduces Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope. This essay applies the concept in order to further demonstrate the distinctive quality of the novel (Holquist xxxiii). The word “chronotope” literally means “time space” and, in the essay, Bakhtin defines it as “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature” (Bakhtin 84). For the purpose of his writing, an author must create entire worlds and, in doing so, is forced to make use of the organizing categories of the real world in which he lives. For this reason chronotope is a concept that engages reality (Clark and Holquist 278).

The final essay, “Discourse in the Novel”, is considered one of Bakhtin’s most complete statements concerning his philosophy of language. It is here that Bakhtin provides a model for a history of discourse and introduces the concept of heteroglossia (Holquist xxxiii). The term heteroglossia refers to the qualities of a language that are extralinguistic, but common to all languages. These include qualities such as perspective, evaluation, and ideological positioning. In this way most languages are incapable of neutrality, for every word is inextricably bound to the context in which it lives (Farmer xviii).

Speech Genres and Other Late Essays

In Speech Genres and Other Late Essays Bakhtin moves away from the novel and concerns himself with the problems of method and the nature of culture. There are six essays that comprise this compilation: “Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff”, “The Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Realism”, “The Problem of Speech Genres”, “The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis”, “From Notes Made in 1970-71”, and “Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences”.

“Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff” is a transcript of comments made by Bakhtin to a reporter from a monthly journal called Novy Mir that was widely read by Soviet intellectuals. The transcript expresses Bakhtin’s opinion of literary scholarship whereby he highlights some of its shortcomings and makes suggestions for improvement (Holquist xi).

“The Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Realism” is a fragment from one of Bakhtin’s lost books. The publishing house to which Bakhtin had submitted the full manuscript was blown up during the German invasion and Bakhtin was in possession of only the prospectus. However, due to a shortage of paper, Bakhtin began using this remaining section to roll cigarettes. It is for this reason that only a portion of the opening section remains. This remaining section deals primarily with Goethe (Holquist xiii).

“The Problem of Speech Genres” deals with the difference between Saussurean linguistics and language as a living dialogue (translinguistics). In a relatively short space, this essay takes up a topic about which Bakhtin had planned to write a book, making the essay a rather dense and complex read. It is here that Bakhtin distinguishes between literary and everyday language. According to Bakhtin, genres exist not merely in language, but rather in communication. In dealing with genres, Bakhtin indicates that they have been studied only within the realm of rhetoric and literature, but each discipline draws largely on genres that exist outside both rhetoric and literature. These extraliterary genres have remained largely unexplored. Bakhtin makes the distinction between primary genres and secondary genres, whereby primary genres legislate those words, phrases, and expressions that are acceptable in everyday life, and secondary genres are characterized by various types of text such as legal, scientific, etc. (Holquist xv).

“The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis” is a compilation of the thoughts Bakhtin recorded in his notebooks. These notes focus mostly on the problems of the text, but various other sections of the paper discuss topics he has taken up elsewhere, such as speech genres, the status of the author, and the distinct nature of the human sciences. However, “The Problem of the Text” deals primarily with dialogue and the way in which a text relates to its context. Speakers, Bakhtin claims, shape an utterance according to three variables: the object of discourse, the immediate addressee, and a superaddressee. This is what Bakhtin describes as the tertiary nature of dialogue. (Holquist xvii-xviii).

“From Notes Made in 1970-71” appears also as a collection of fragments extracted from notebooks Bakhtin kept during the years of 1970 and 1971. It is here that Bakhtin discusses interpretation and its endless possibilities. According to Bakhtin, humans have a habit of making narrow interpretations, but such limited interpretations only serve to weaken the richness of the past (Holquist xix).

The final essay, “Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences”, originates from notes Bakhtin wrote during the mid-seventies and is the last piece of writing Bakhtin produced before he died. In this essay he makes a distinction between dialectic and dialogics and comments on the difference between the text and the aesthetic object. It is here also, that Bakhtin differentiates himself from the Formalists, who, he felt, underestimated the importance of content while oversimplifying change, and the Structuralists, who too rigidly adhered to the concept of “code” (Holquist xx-xxi).

Disputed Texts

Famously, some of the works which bear the names of Bakhtin's close friends V. N. Vološinov and P. N. Medvedev have been attributed to Bakhtin – particularly The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship and Marxism and Philosophy of Language. These claims originated in the early 1970s and received their earliest full articulation in English in Clark and Holquist's 1984 biography of Bakhtin. In the years since then, however, most scholars have come to agree that Vološinov and Medvedev ought to be considered the true authors of these works. Although Bakhtin undoubtedly influenced these scholars and may even have had a hand in composing the works attributed to them, it now seems clear that if it was necessary to attribute authorship of these works to one person, Vološinov and Medvedev respectively should receive credit.

Influence

Throughout his lifetime Bakhtin made a significant contribution to the world of literary and rhetorical theory and criticism. He is known today for his interest in a wide variety of subjects, ideas, vocabularies, and periods, as well as his use of authorial disguises. As a result of the breadth of topics with which Bakhtin dealt, he was able to influence groups of theorists in the West including Neo-Marxists, Structuralists, and semioticians. However, his influence on such groups has, somewhat paradoxically, resulted in narrowing the scope of Bakhtin’s work. Rarely do those who incorporate Bakhtin’s ideas into theories of their own appreciate his work in its entirety (Clark and Holquist 3).

While Bakhtin is traditionally seen as a literary critic, there can be no denying his impact on the realm of rhetorical theory. Among his many theories and ideas Bakhtin indicates that style is a developmental process, occurring both within the user of language and language itself. His work instills in the reader an awareness of tone and expression that arise from the careful formation of verbal phrasing. By means of his writing, Bakhtin has enriched the experience of verbal and written expression which ultimately aids the formal teaching of writing (Schuster 1-2). Some even suggest that Bakhtin introduces a new meaning to rhetoric because of his tendency to reject the separation of language and ideology (Klancher 24).

See also

• Pavel Medvedev
• Valentin Voloshinov
• Russian Formalism
• Nikolai Marr
• Lev Vygotsky
• Voskresenie

External links

• The Bakhtin Circle, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• The Bakhtin Centre (University of Sheffield)
• A Bakhtin profile (James P. Zappen)
• Another Bakhtin profile (Vincent Hevern)
• Bakhtin Timeline
• "INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY - The Battle over Mikhail Bakhtin" By Matt Steinglass, in Lingua Franca, (April 1998).

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
• Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1981.
• Bakhtin, Mikhail. Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Ed. Vadim Liapunov and Michael Holquist. Trans. Vadim Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993.
• Clark, Katerina, and Michael Holquist. Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.
• Emerson, Caryl, and Gary Saul Morson. “Mikhail Bakhtin.” The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Eds. Michael Groden, Martin Kreiswirth and Imre Szeman. Second Edition 2005. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 25 Jan. 2006 [1].
• Farmer, Frank. “Introduction.” Landmark Essays on Bakhtin, Rhetoric, and Writing. Ed. Frank Farmer. Mahwah: Hermagoras Press, 1998. xi-xxiii.
• Hirschkop, Ken. “Bakhtin in the sober light of day.” Bakhtin and Cultural Theory. Eds. Ken Hirschkop and David Shepherd. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2001. 1-25.
• Hirschkop, Ken. Mikhail Bakhtin: An Aesthetic for Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Holquist, Michael. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World, Second Edition. Routledge, 2002.
• Holquist, Michael. “Introduction.” Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. By Mikhail Bakhtin. Eds. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986. ix-xxiii.
• Holquist, Michael. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. By Mikhail Bakhtin. Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1981.
• Klancher, Jon. “Bakhtin’s Rhetoric.” Landmark Essays on Bakhtin, Rhetoric, and Writing. Ed. Frank Farmer. Mahwah: Hermagoras Press, 1998. 23-32.
• Liapunov, Vadim. Toward a Philosophy of the Act. By Mikhail Bakhtin. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993.
• Morson, Gary Saul, and Caryl Emerson. Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford University Press, 1990.
• Schuster, Charles I. “Mikhail Bakhtin as Rhetorical Theorist.” Landmark Essays on Bakhtin, Rhetoric, and Writing. Ed. Frank Farmer. Mahwah: Hermagoras Press, 1998. 1-14.
• Vice, Sue. Introducing Bakhtin. Manchester University Press, 1997

de:Michail Michailowitsch Bachtin es:Mijail Bajtín fr:Mikhaïl Bakhtine he:מיכאל בכטין lv:Mihails Bahtins hu:Mihail Mihajlovics Bahtyin ja:ミハイル・バフチン no:Mikhail Bakhtin pt:Mikhail Bakhtin ru:Бахтин, Михаил Михайлович zh:米哈伊尔·巴赫汀

In the post-Stalinist period of the late 1950s, Russian scholars rediscovered Bakhtin's work, and his fame quickly grew. Even more surprising to them was the fact that he was still alive. In his later life Bakhtin was lionized by Soviet intellectuals and he continued to write. After his death in 1975 authors such as Julia Kristeva and Tzvetan Todorov brought Bakhtin to the attention of the Francophone world, and from there his popularity in the United States, the United Kingdom, and many other countries continued to grow. In the late 1980s Bakhtin's work experienced a surge of popularity in the West, in part due to the championing of his ideas by critics like Katarina Clark and Michael Holquist. He continues to be regarded as one of the most important theorists of literature and culture of the twentieth century.

Bakhtin's work and ideas

Early Work

As a literary theorist, Bakhtin is usefully compared with Russian Formalists, as well as with the work of Yuri Lotman. During the 1920s, Bakhtin's work tended to focus on ethics and aesthetics in general. Early pieces such as Towards a Philosophy of the Act and Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity are indebted to the philosophical trends of the time that Bakhtin followed as a student — particularly the Marburg School Neo-Kantianism of Max Scheler and, to a lesser extent, Nicolai Hartmann.

Problems of Dostoeyvsky's Poetics

The succeeding period of his thought — most closely associated with his time in Leningrad — includes a shift towards the notion of dialogism and polyphony, especially at it relates to his engagement with the work of Dostoevsky. He compiled these notions in his Problems of Dostoevsky's Oeuvre (1929), later republished as Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (1963). This text had the effect of helping to rehabilitate the critical view of Dostoevsky as an author and artist. Dostoevsky had been considered many things: religious prophet, pre-Freudian psychologist and existentialist philosopher, but as a novelist, his style was considered messy, lacking any real artistic merit. Bakhtin gave the world a language for discussing the features of Dostoevsky's artistic vision.

Thus, no overarching plot design exists in Dostoevsky's text. Bakhtin calls Dostoevsky's novels polyphonic, or many-voiced, as opposed to homophonic, or single-voiced. In a homophonic novel, there is a single voice that prevails. That is the voice of the author, or the narrator, the implied author. There is a design, a plot imposed from without. Dostoevsky does not impose a plot. That is why his texts are generally criticized as "messy." The plot is messy in the same way that the characters are. The logic and direction of the story emerges from within, from the interactions between the characters.

Dostoevsky's novels are described as dialogical. In fact, they do rely on dialogue more than most novels. They have been compared to drama due to the presence of so much dialogue, so much interaction between characters. But dialogical is also contrasted with monological, or a single logic. Dostoevsky's novels are not monological, based on a single logic.

In a section on "Discourse in Dostoevsky," Bakhtin lays out the the difference between "direct, unmediated discourse directed toward a referential object" and "discourse with an orientation toward someone else's discourse." This second type of discourse is the one that is characteristic of Dostoevsky. It is the basis of his style of characterization and the reason why he has the reputation as a "psychological" novelist.

In most fiction, characters are set, fixed. They are either of function of the plot, as in folk tales and most short stories, or, as in the realist novel, they act in ways that are prescribed by their social class or milieu. They reveal their essential characteristics through the text. The characters reflect a grand design of the author. They serve as mouthpieces for the author intentions and interact according to a predetermined authorial design. Dostoevsky's characters are not bound by the conventions of realist fiction. They represent ideas, so that when they interact with other characters, which is to day come into contact with other ideas, they enter into a dialogue which acts upon them and changes them. In Bakhtin's language, they are "penetrated by the word of the other."

In Bakhtin's terminology, Dostoevsky's characters are always unfinished, unfinalizable, works in progress. His characters are always penetrated by the word of the other, which means that they are always uncertain, evaluating their ideas, or, what is ironically referred to as "self-conscious." Bakhtin demonstrates that this "self-consciousness" is really being conscious of the other and unsure of the self. Thus, the word of the other becomes an important component of what is traditionally understood as "the self."

Bakhtin addresses this point in an interview prior to his death: "In order to understand, it is immensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understanding—in time, in space, in culture. For one cannot even really see one's own exterior and comprehend it as a whole, and no mirrors or photographs can help; our real exterior can be seen and understood only by other people, because they are located outside us in space, and because they are others." (New York Review of Books, June 10, 1993) As such, Bakhtin's philosophy greatly respected the influences of others on a self: not just in terms of how a person comes to be, but even in how a person thinks and how a person sees oneself truthfully.

Another key element of his work on Dostoevsky, and later on Rabelais is the notion of the "carnival", and "carnivalization." Particularly important in his interpretation of Rabelais, this notion in which distinct individual voices are heard, flourish, and interact together. This concept is the dominant concept associated with Bakhtin as a literary theorist, whereas the above concepts relate more to an overall philosophy. The carnival was Bakhtin's way of describing

Third Period: Dialogism, Heteroglossia, Chronotope

Works from his third period during his exile include some of the key concepts associated with Bakhtin's works today, including dialogism, heteroglossia (многоязычие), and chronotope. His work on Rabelais, also associated with this period, focuses on the notion of the carnivalesque. Finally, his later work focuses not so much on the novel, but on problems of method and the nature of culture, concerns exemplified by the volume 'Speech Genres and Other Late Essays'.

Disputed texts

Famously, some of the works which bear the names of Bakhtin's close friends Valentin Voloshinov and Pavel Medvedev have been attributed to Bakhtin — particularly The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship and Marxism and Philosophy of Language. These claims originated in the early 1970s and received their earliest full articulation in English in Clark and Holquist's 1984 biography of Bakhtin. In the twenty years since then, however, most scholars have come to agree that Voloshinov and Medvedev ought to be considered the authors of these works. Although Bakhtin influenced these scholars and he (and others) may have had a hand in composing the works attributed to them, it now seems clear that if it was necessary to attribute authorship of these works to one person, Voloshinov and Medvedev respectively should receive credit.

Glossary of some key terms

Chronotope

Literally "time-space." A unit of analysis for studying texts according to the ratio and nature of the temporal and spatial categories represented. The distinctiveness of this concept as opposed to most other uses of time and space in literary analysis lies in the fact that neither category is privileged; they are utterly interdependent. The chronotope is an optic for reading texts as x-rays of the forces at work in the culture system from which they spring.

Dialogism

Dialogism is the characteristic epistemological mode of a world dominated by heteroglossia. Everything means, is understood, as a part of a greater whole — there is a constant interaction between meanings, all of which have the potential of conditioning others. Which will affect the other, how it will do so and in what degree is what is actually settled at the moment of utterance. This dialogic imperative, mandated by the pre-existence of the language world relative to any of its current inhabitants, insures that there can be no actual monologue. One may, like a primitive tribe that knows only its own limits, be deluded into thinking there is one language, or one may, as grammarians, certain political figures and normative framers of "literary languages" do, seek in a sophisticated way to achieve a unitary language. In both cases the unitariness is relative to the overpowering force of heteroglossia, and thus dialogism.

Dialogue

Dialogue and its various processes are central to Bakhtin's theory, and it is precisely as verbal process (participial modifiers) that theri force is most accurately sensed. A word, discourse, language or culture undergoes "dialogization" when it becomes relativized, de-privileged, aware of competing definitions for the same things. Undialogized language is authoritative or absolute. Dialogue may be external (between two different people) or internal (between an earlier and a later self). Yuri Lotman (in The Structure of the Artistic Text) distinguishes these two types of dialogue as respectively spatial and temporal communication acts.

Discourse

The Russian word (slovo) covers much more territory than its English equivalent, signifying both an individual word and a method of using words (cf. the Greek logos) that presumes a type of authority. ...what interests Bakhtin is the sort of talk novelistic environments make possible , and how this type of talking threatens other more closed systems. Bakhtin at times uses discourse as it is sometimes used in the West;mdashas a way to refer to the subdivisions determined by social and ideological differences within a single language (i.e., the discourse of American plumbers vs. that of American academics). But it is more often than not his diffuse way of insisting on the primacy of speech, utterance, all in praesentia aspects of language.

Heteroglossia

The base condition governing the operation of meaning in any utterance. It is that which insures the primacy of context over text. At any given time, in any given place, there will be a set of condition;mdashsocial, historical, meteorilogical, physiological;mdashthat will insure that a word uttered in that place and at that time will have a meaning different than it would have under any other conditions; all utterances are heteroglot in that they are functions of a matrix of forces practically impossible to resolve.

Voice

This is the speaking personality, the speaking consciousness. A voice always has a will or desire behind it, its own timbre and overtones. Single-voiced discourse is the dream of poets; double-voiced discourse the realm of the novel. At several points Bakhtin illustrates the difference between these categories by moving language-units from one plane to the other;mdashfor example, shifting a trope from the plane of poetry to the plane of prose: both poetic and prose tropes are ambiguous but a poetic trope, while meaning more than one thing, is always only single-voiced. Prose tropes by contrast always contain more than one voice, and are therefore dialogized.

Major works

• Toward a Philosophy of the Act
• Problems of Dostoyevsky's Poetics (1929)
• Rabelais and His World (1968)
• The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin
• Speech Genres and Other Late Essays

Sources and further reading

• Mikhail Bakhtin: A Biography. Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist. Harvard University Press, 1984
• Mikhail Bakhtin: An Aesthetic for Democracy. Ken Hirschkop. Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson. Stanford University Press, 1990.
• Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World, Second Edition. Michael Holquist. Routledge, 2002.

See also

Pavel Medvedev

Valentin Voloshinov

External links

• The Bakhtin Circle, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• The Bakhtin Centre (University of Sheffield)
• A Bakhtin profile (James P. Zappen)
• Another Bakhtin profile (Vincent Hevern)
• Bakhtin Timeline

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