Журнал научных разысканий о биографии, теоретическом наследии и эпохе М. М. Бахтина

ISSN 0136-0132   






Диалог. Карнавал. Хронотоп








Диалог. Карнавал. Хронотоп.19962

JAIRETH
Диалог. Карнавал. Хронотоп, 1996, № 2
82   83
Dialogue. Carnival. Chronotope, 1996, № 2

ОБЗОРЫ И РЕЦЕНЗИИ

Subhash Jaireth (Spence, Australia)

Making and Remaking of Bakhtin: Reading the Readers

(Pam Morris, ed. The Bakhtin Reader:
Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, Voloshinov.
London: Edward Arnold, 1994.

Simon Dentith, ed. Bakhtinian Thought: An Introductory Reader.
London: Routledge, 1995)

I have to admit this but it is true that my book shelf contains several "readers". I have a "reader" in Marxist philosophy which I bought in the seventies in Moscow and I also have the Foucault Reader edited by Paul Rabinow and two critical "readers", one on Heidegger and the other on Derrida. Some of these "readers" are thematic, focusing on disciplines whereas the others are author-centred.

In this article I am going to discuss the latter variety of "readers". Like all "readers" they select texts, re-arrange them and put them once again in circulation. However, in this process they give new currency to some texts and make other texts secondary and marginal. By using extracts from books and long essays and by combining them with other extracts they disturb the "original" unity of these texts, redefining and reconstituting them. But as the textual field is reconstituted so is the author, who is displaced as well re-placed in relation to the texts.

Recently I bought two "readers" on Bakhtin, an author for whom author, not the author-person but the author in the work, was central to his literary and philosophical discourse yet who was quite ambivalent, relaxed even careless about his own status of an author. It is well known that Bakhtin sent a lengthy work on Goet
he to a publisher whose archives along with this manuscript were destroyed by a German bomb1. A substantial part of his own copy of the manuscript was used by Bakhtin as cigarette paper. What remained of this work has been published in two separate book-size essays2.

Why did he "smoke" the manuscript? Was it negligence or a strange indifference towards the fate of his own work? Or it might well be that he knew that this book like his other works will never be published in the Soviet Union . If it is hard to guess what prompted him to "burn" his own manuscript, it is harder to solve the mystery that surrounds the so-called disputed texts, commonly attributed to the Bakhtin circle.

An extensive body of literature has emerged on the authorship of these texts in both Russian and non-Russian scholarship of Bakhtin's thought. Michael Holquist cites a number of papers published outside Russia on this topic3. Recently S. G. Bocharov, the Russian editor of several of Bakhtin's books and essays, has published his last conversation with Bakhtin before Bakhtin died. Bocharov notes that Bakhtin did not like to talk about the "disputed" texts and avoided any discussion about them, but when probed more seriously about them he confessed that the three books (Freudism, The Formal Method in Literary Studies, and Marxism and the Philosophy of Language) and an essay Discourse in Life and in Poetry published in 1926, were written by him from beginning to the end but were written in the names of his friends who were also given the copyright4.

When Bakhtin was asked about the motives he explained that "they were his friends and needed books to their names and that he was getting ready to write his own" (Bocharov, 73). However, as Bocharov rightly notes, there is more to it than what Bakhtin readily reveals, because Bakhtin, commenting on the cultural and political situation in which these books were written, also remarked that "publishing under some one else's name was more suitable, and that the right time had not come" (Bocharov, 73). I am not sure whether Bocharov's article resolves the dispute completely but it does provide important evidence in support of those who have suggested that Bakhtin was the "real" author of these disputed texts.

However, apart from these disputed texts there is an interesting category of books which Bakhtin's English translators and edi



ОБЗОРЫ И РЕЦЕНЗИИ   Subhash Jaireth
Making and Remaking of Bakhtin: Reading the Readers

Диалог. Карнавал. Хронотоп, 1996, № 2
84   85
Dialogue. Carnival. Chronotope, 1996, № 2

tors have knowingly or unknowingly created for him. There is an important difference in the attitude of Russian and non-Russian editors of Bakhtin's works. Most Russian collections of Bakhtin's works have simple and relatively neutral or unloaded titles such as Literary and Critical Essays, Aesthetics of the Verbal Art and Problems of Literature and Aesthetics. This is in stark contrast to the American translators and editors who seem to be more imaginative in their enterprise. For instance, a collection of Bakhtin's four essays is published under the title The Dialogic Imagination. Similarly Bakhtin's so-called early philosophical essays are published in a book entitled Art and Answerability. It needs to be emphasised that although the essays collected in the Dialogic Imagination are written by Bakhtin, he never wrote a book of this title and perhaps that is why I become uncomfortable when I read phrases such as, "Bakhtin in his book The Dialogic Imagination…" or "in The Dialogic Imagination, Bakhtin suggests…"

If the title The Dialogic Imagination is purely the product of its editor's imagination the title Art and Answerability comes from the title of a less than one and half page long essay which Bakhtin is known to have published in 1919. Thus the title of a short essay becomes the title of the whole collection containing more than three hundred pages. It is not very hard to guess that in this way Bakhtin's one particular essay is not only made to look more significant than the other but the readers are directed to negotiate his other essays in the book from within the text of this shortest of his essays. Art and Answerability and the ethical dimension of Bakhtinian discourse are thus conferred the status and position of centrality. A similar status is granted to the concept of dialogism by giving the tilte The Dialogic Imagination to a collection of Bakhtin's four essays on the novel.

The role of editors and translators was recently discussed by Kevin Brophy in an article in which he drew attention to Harrari's introduction to a book Textual Strategies which includes Foucault's essay What is an author? Commenting on the status of Foucault as an author, Brophy quotes from Harrari's introduction in which Harrari "is grateful to Deleuze and Foucault for giving him a free hand to edit their text with an American readership in mind"5. It seems that the editing and publishing of Bakhtin's works in America have also been influenced to some extent by similar considerations. There is little doubt that a title such as The Dialogic Imaginati
on
is more attractive than the Russian title Problems of Literature and Aesthetics, the four essays from which make the book The Dialogic Imagination. If the above Russian title is simple, lengthy and unattractive and needs to be changed, the Russian title of Bakhtin's book on Rabelais, The Creativity of Francois Rabelais and the Popular Culture of the Medieval Centuries and the Renaissance is no doubt lengthy but interesting and needs to be retained. It's English replacement Rabelais and his World is short and less revealing. It needs to be mentioned that I am not questioning the authority of Bakhtin's editors and translators to rename the collection nor do I wish to argue in favour of the textual integrity of the so-called "original text" which needs to be preserved at any cost. What concerns me most is the fact that lengthy introductions to these English translations fail to foreground this practice of renaming and recasting of texts. They fail to underline the situatedness of their editorial and translatory readings and interventions.

It is pleasing in this regard to note that the introductions to the two new Bakhtin "readers" painstakingly define the situatedness of their projects. In Simon Dentith's Bakhtinian Thought: An Introductory Reader there are five different types of introductory texts: two prefaces, an introductory part called An Overview of the Writings of Bakhtin and His Circle, which includes a lengthy introduction of its own and short commentaries preceeding each extract of the "primary" text. In addition to these there are two "promotional" type of texts on the back cover and the front inside cover. The Bakhtin Reader edited by Pam Morris also has an introduction and short commentaries before each extract. Pam Morris' "reader" is thematic and presents extracts under four sections with specific titles such as Dialogic Discourse, The Heteroglot Novel, Literature and Ideological Form and Carnival Ambivalence. Simon Dentith's "reader" is also thematic although extracts are not grouped under specific titles. He has "chosen extracts that demonstrate Bakhtin's actual analytical practice" (Dentith, XI). In reading and re-assembling these texts Dentith has chosen to situate himself within the "socially and historically grounded account of language and writing" that is so characteristic of "the writings of the 1930s and in Voloshinov's book on language" (Dentith, X). This has resulted in reinforcing the Marxian intonations of Bakhtinian literary and philosophical discourse. Pam Morris also opts for a similar vantage point without stating it explicitly although her Althusserian bias



ОБЗОРЫ И РЕЦЕНЗИИ   Subhash Jaireth
Making and Remaking of Bakhtin: Reading the Readers

Диалог. Карнавал. Хронотоп, 1996, № 2
86   87
Dialogue. Carnival. Chronotope, 1996, № 2

can be guessed from her summary of her own reading: "As I have argued, the notion of discourse as dialogic, developed from text to text, derives from an oppositional, specifically social and ideological interaction. It takes into account the interplay of power, class relations and social hierarchy as determining the form of interaction between self and other" (Morris, 23). Commenting on the multiacentuality of the sign discussed by Voloshinov, Morris notes that "any ruling class will attempt to monologize the word, imposing an eternal single meaning upon it, but a living ideological sign is always dialogic" (Morris, 13). Thus both Dentith and Morris foreground the Marxian intonations of Bakhtin's literary discourse. Perhaps that is why they also spend some time in discussing the problem of the disputed texts and come to a similar resolution. For Morris "until any incontrovertible evidence is produced, it seems only right to acknowledge the uncertainty of authorship of the disputed texts. For this reason, despite its cumbersomeness" she "follows the practice of referring texts originally imputed to Voloshinov or Medvedev by their name followed by Bakhtin's"(Morris, 4). Thus extracts from Voloshinov's book are attributed to "Voloshinov/Bakhtin". However in referring to Medvedev's book she decides to put Bakhtin's name first — "Bakhtin/Medvedev".

Dentith clearly formulates the importance of the debate surrounding the disputed texts when he suggests that what is at stake is "first and most evidently …. the highly charged question of Bakhtin's relationship to Marxism" (Dentith, 9) However, like Morris he decides that "… while the resolution of the attribution remains unsettled, and is likely to remain so, the sensible course seems to be to continue to refer to the authors of the various writings by the names which originally appeared over their writing" (Dentith, 10). Thus Voloshinov's book is attributed to him but in referring to the book by Medvedev, Dentith changes his own convention and puts Bakhtin as the first aut
hor with Medvedev becoming the second. Both Morris and Dentith fail to explain this selective bias in favour of Voloshinov.

By stressing the Marxian streak of Bakhtinian discourse, Morris and Dentith create a Bakhtin who begins to look different from the Bakhtin constituted in and by the celebrated and to a large extent celebratory biography of Bakhtin by Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist. This is the Bakhtin which has remained in circulation in the English scholarship and is also in consonance with the Bakhtin accepted by a majority of Bakhtin's Russian scholars, for whom he was a true representative of pre-Revolutionary Russian intelligentsia, who kept his faith in traditional Russian values and freedom, and was inspired by early twentieth-century Russian religious mysticism6. For such a Bakhtin, as Clark and Holquist have argued, Marxian rhetoric seen in his more sociologically orientated writing was a necessary window-dressing. Bakhtin thus seems to have employed the Marxian speech genre to mask his real speech.

Discussing a number of different books on Bakhtin, Morson and Emerson, in my opinion very correctly, point out that Clark and Holquist construct their Bakhtin using the "embryonic" model because they present his work as a variant of an initial idea or problem which was the architectonics of answerability7. In their own book Morson and Emerson employ Bakhtin's model of a hero who is in the process of "becoming", "developing" or living through his life. Perhaps that is why they, inspite of denying it, present a chronological account of Bakhtin's work taking their readers on a journey along the life-path of Bakhtin, stopping at every significant stage8.

The two "readers" are thematic and hence explicit chronological ordering of Bakhtin's works is absent in them although the introductions present a chronological account of Bakhtin's ideas. Morris wants to trace what she sees "… as a creative process of





ОБЗОРЫ И РЕЦЕНЗИИ   Subhash Jaireth
Making and Remaking of Bakhtin: Reading the Readers

Диалог. Карнавал. Хронотоп, 1996, № 2
88   89
Dialogue. Carnival. Chronotope, 1996, № 2

response from text to text, perceiving them as interactive dialogic utterances … by focusing upon the development of the key concepts…" (Morris, 5). Dentith also follows the same scheme without explicitly stating that. He traces Bakhtinian thought as it evolved and developed from his and Voloshinov's understanding about language as a social practice to that of the novel and carnival. Thus the two readers are quite similar although Morris opts for shorter extracts from several works whereas Dentith has gone for longer extracts from few works. Morris' explanation of her decision is interesting as well as alarming and underlines one more anomaly associated with the translation and printing of Bakhtin's works in the USA, where the copyright is held by the University of Texas Press who has the "… policy of allowing only 5 per cent of the text to be reproduced…" (Morris, 23). I agree with her that this is "… yet another irony that Bakhtin's works, after suffering the vicissitudes of Russian history and publishing, should still encounter difficulties of access to a wider readership" (Morris, 23-24).

One of the main limitations of Morris' "reader" is its failing to locate Bakhtin within contemporary literary and philosophical discourses. She places Bakhtin's voice into a landscape which seems to be populated only by Bakhtin and his friends. As a result Bakhtinian voice fails to resonate through a plethora of discourses such as feminist, poststructuralist, postcolonial and postmodernist. In his reader Dentith tries to fill this gap by writing a lengthy chapter entitled Bakhtin and Contemporary Criticism. However, even here the discussion is mostly centred around the notion of intertextuality developed by Kristeva. Dentith, like many other researchers, notes the profound influence of Bakhtin's work on Kristeva but criticises her for failing to understand the "real" Bakhtin and misreading him. Discussing Kristeva's intertextuality and comparing it with Bakhtin's heteroglossia, Dentith equates Kristeva's reading of Bakhtin to taking "… one possible emphasis from Bakhtin and drawing out its implications provocatively" (Dentith, 95). Dentith calls Kristeva's reading "enjoyably excessive" (Dentith, 96) and blames her for drawing "… upon what is genuinely there in Bakhtin but developing it in directions which are uncongenial to his thinking — or at least towards a terminus which is negative rather than positive" (Dentith, 96-97). I can appreciate a critical approach to Kristeva's reading of Bakhtin but to criticise her in the name of some true, real and genuine Bakhtin is to be un-Bakhtinian.

This brings me to the Concluding Remarks to Bakhtin's book-size essay on the forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel. The main text of the essay was written in 1937-38 but the concluding remarks were added by him in 1973 when it was published in a collection of essay called Problems of Literature and Aesthetics. In the concluding remarks Bakhtin discusses the problem of the "unity" and the "limits" of a text by treating it as sobytie, a Russian word which can be translated as "event" or "co-being". The completeness of this event (sobytiinaya polnota) is achieved through the co-being of its "external physical form, its textual form, the world re-presented in it, its author-creator and its reader-listener"9. However, this completeness is temporary, transient and momentary. The text is never complete because of its link with the reader-listener. If text is complete temporarily so is its meaning, understanding and evaluation. The text thus lives from one state of temporariness to another, from one sense of unity to another. Thus it seems that the criticism of Kristeva in the name of some permanent, fixed, true essence is not warranted.

Perhaps one of the interesting aspects of Dentith's explorations on the place of Bakhtin in contemporary criticism is a short discussion of Dale Bauer's "feminist dialogics" in which she tried to underline the failure of Bakhtinian dialogics to see power relations infused in the language and acts of speaking and to accommodate "the different languages of women" (Dentith, 100). According to Dentith however "it can be argued that the notion of heteroglossia is one that already invokes contestation and conflict" (Dentith, 101). Here once again Dentith reinforces Voloshinov's voice in Bakhtinian "speech".

The two "readers" provide suitable introductions to Bakhtinian literary philosophy, although the Bakhtin constituted in and by them is painted in Marxian colours. This is also reflected in the extracts included in the "readers". Bakhtin's so-called early philosophical essays such as Art and Answerability and Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity are overlooked downgrading the ethical imperative in Bakhtin's writing which was central to the Bakhtin constituted by Holquist and Clark and Holquist.

Historically there seems to be two main sites of emergence of discourses about Bakhtin in the English speaking Western scholarship: the Slavist schools engaged in the study of Russian language and literature and the English departments. Bakhtin constituted in



ОБЗОРЫ И РЕЦЕНЗИИ   Subhash Jaireth
Making and Remaking of Bakhtin: Reading the Readers

Диалог. Карнавал. Хронотоп, 1996, № 2
90   91
Dialogue. Carnival. Chronotope, 1996, № 2

and by the Slavist scholarship usually appears as a true representative of pre-revolutionary Russian intelligentsia, an anti-Marxist and a liberal humanist who can not be and need not be grouped with either of the Foucauldian or Derridian varieties of poststructuralism10. The Bakhtin, emerging from the English departments on the other hand is more "fractured" and "fragmented" readily viewed through and assimilated into poststructuralist, neo-Marxist and postmodernist discourses. The two "readers" have emerged from the English departments and though Morris has included a glossary compiled by Graham Roberts lecturing in Russian, they have opted to foreground the sociological or the Marxian voices in Bakhtin.

1 Davies Joan, Writers in Prison (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1990), p.244. The dedication to Ioan Davies' book reads: "Dedicated to Mikhail Bakhtin's cigarette papers".

2 The two are: «The Novel of Upbringing and Its Significance in the History of Realism» // Aesthetics of the Verbal Art (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1986), pp.199-249 and «Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes on Historical Poetics» // Literary-Critical Essays (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya Literatura, 1986), pp.121-290.

3 Holquist Michael, Dialogism: Bakhtin and his World (London: Routledge, 1990), p.199.

4 Bocharov S.G., «About One Conversation And Around It», Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, No. 2 (1993), p.73

5 Brophy Kevin, «What is Foucault? A Note on Foucault's Essay "What is an Author"», Southern Reviews, 28 (1996), p.4.

6 The English collection of Bakhtin's "early philosophical essays" edited by Michael Holquist and Vadim Liapunov contains a dedication: "To the blessed memory of Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin". Thus Bakhtin's "own" book is dedicated to his "blessed memory". It seems the editors by including this dedication are either foregrounding their own authoring of Bakhtin's authorship or defining their as well as Bakhtin's status in terms of the teacher-pupil or the sage-follower relationship.

7 Morson Gary Saul and Emerson Caryl, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), p.6.

8 Morson and Emerson present "the shape of" Bakhtin's care
er in four distinct periods. Morson and Emerson (p.66).

9 Bakhtin M.M. Literary and Critical Essays…, p.287.

10 For instance, see articles in a special issue of the journal Russian Literature, XXVI, 1989. A notable exception to the above generalisation is the Bakhtin constructed in the book by Gary Morson and Caryl Emerson.

Данная статья представляет собой обзор двух подборок текстов и фрагментов М.М.Бахтина, подготовленных к печати и прокомментированных П.Моррис и С.Дентитом. Попутно автор размышляет о некоторых закономерностях и особенностях издания и исследования Бахтина на Западе. В частности, констатируется наличие там двух типов исследователей и издателей русского мыслителя: первые — преимущественно сотрудники университетских кафедр англистики, — склонны толковать его в марксистском либо постструктуралистском, постмодернистком духе; вторые — те, кто работает на кафедрах славистики, — считают Бахтина русским религиозным и либеральным мыслителем, антимарксистом. По мнению автора, и Моррис, и Дентит принадлежат к первому типу ученых.


ОБЗОРЫ И РЕЦЕНЗИИ   Subhash Jaireth
Making and Remaking of Bakhtin: Reading the Readers

 




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