An entry in a glossary of Bakhtin's terms.
[Note: Due to a misunderstanding in the editing proces... more An entry in a glossary of Bakhtin's terms. [Note: Due to a misunderstanding in the editing process, the title of the entry is not the one intended. The intended title was "Event (sobytie)"]
A brief introduction to a glossary of Mikhail Bakhtin's terms
[Note: This is the proofs version.... more A brief introduction to a glossary of Mikhail Bakhtin's terms
[Note: This is the proofs version. The title of the piece as published is "Introduction to the Glossary"]
In a way, late Bakhtin is the Bakhtin that we all know and love. Bakhtin wrote few of his works e... more In a way, late Bakhtin is the Bakhtin that we all know and love. Bakhtin wrote few of his works entirely in the last twenty-or-so years of his life, but throughout these years he has worked a lot on preparing his earlier writings for publication. As a result, practically every text that has been published between his emergence from obscurity in the early 1960s to his death in 1975, and even shortly afterwards, has undergone at least some level of revision in the 1960s and 1970s. Some of these revisions were more substantial than others, but even where the revisions were minor, they were often strategic. Bakhtin did a lot to alter the framing of his earlier works and modify the accents of particular passages so as to make the published texts relevant to his newly found audience. For Bakhtin’s readers in the West, the resulting effect has been even more pronounced, as practically all the major texts by Bakhtin published in translation were based on the revised Russian manuscripts. Thus, English readers only got their first taste of early Bakhtin in 1990, by which time the main contours of Bakhtin’s reception have mostly solidified; the reception of Bakhtin’s earlier writings in English-language scholarship did not begin in earnest until the 2010s. So, up to this day, we mostly read all of Bakhtin through the lens of late Bakhtin. This is perhaps most clearly illustrated by the centrality of the concept of dialogue in the standard interpretation of Bakhtin’s thought as a whole, together with a few related notions, such as major (or “great”) time. These are accents that are typical of Bakhtin’s late period. Now, I do not want to suggest that this reading of all of Bakhtin through late Bakhtin is mistaken; far from it. Bakhtin himself clearly thought there was some unity to his thought in different periods, and his own interpretation of this unity in his later years is surely a good place to start understanding what he had to say. However, in the process we do miss a lot of historical context, and with it also a lot of philosophical depth. Yes, dialogue, for instance, is a very central notion for Bakhtin, but we usually only see in that metaphor some layers of Bakhtin’s thought, while remaining oblivious to others. It is this historical context and philosophical depth that my paper aims to start recovering. In this paper, I will offer a reading of late Bakhtin through the lens of earlier Bakhtin, tell a story of how Bakhtin’s late philosophy emerged, in correct chronological order, from the earlier phases of his intellectual development. This emergence, as we shall see, also involves many modernist (especially existentialist) themes. My gateway for this exploration will be a concept that, to the best of my knowledge, received no attention from Bakhtin scholars to date, despite it being a very central concept in Bakhtin’s middle and late periods (perhaps partly due to the fact it has been inconsistently rendered into English). The concept in question is smena (which I translate as “succession”). It is significant in that it appears both in Bakhtin’s theory of carnival and in his later linguistic works. It bridges those two realms of his thought in not quite obvious ways, and it allows drawing links and connections to other stages in Bakhtin’s work in a very perspicuous way. At the end of this exploration of the notion of succession, we will be coming back to Bakhtin’s metaphor of dialogue to find it has been enriched with new tones (including some unexpectedly dark ones) that we were not aware of earlier, tying together many loose threads in our understanding of the unity of Bakhtin’s thought across different periods.
Boris Groys' article, " Between Stalin and Dionysos " , offers a provocative reading of Mikhail B... more Boris Groys' article, " Between Stalin and Dionysos " , offers a provocative reading of Mikhail Bakhtin's works, and especially of his notion of carnival, as an " aesthetic justification " of totalitarianism. In this paper I look at that article's weaknesses (as an actual interpretation of Bakhtin) and strengths (in the form of problems in Bakhtin scholarship it helped pose), and respond to it with a more detailed account of the place carnival assumes within Bakhtin's overall philosophical conception and its development over time.
The role that Mikhail Bakhtin’s book on Rabelais, and the carnival theme more generally, plays in... more The role that Mikhail Bakhtin’s book on Rabelais, and the carnival theme more generally, plays in Bakhtin’s philosophy is a perennial concern in Bakhtin studies. Indeed, how would one reconcile such ideas as the carnival crowd, the unclear boundaries of the human body in grotesque imagery, or the notion of a collective ancestral body, with Bakhtin’s personalism, his emphasis on the impossibility of merging self and other into one? However, Bakhtin himself did not find these notions to be incompatible. We find them not only separately, in works from different periods, but also adjacently, for example in the 2nd edition of his book on Dostoevsky. In this paper, I attempt to reconstruct the philosophical context, in which carnival appears in Bakhtin’s work and to place carnival within the development of Bakhtin’s aesthetics. I follow the process in which Bakhtin’s aesthetics and theory of the novel developed from an early focus on the human image examined from another’s point of view, to the carnivalesque image, dominated by the perspective of the I-for-myself. At the heart of this process stands Bakhtin’s study of how the image of a free and creative individual has been forged in world literature. When we compare the aesthetic views and evaluations espoused by Bakhtin in different periods, we sometimes find sharp reversals in his position. Nevertheless, these reversals are part of a continuous process of development in what can rightly be seen as essentially the same philosophical conception that informs Bakhtin’s work in all periods.
Место книги о Рабле, и вообще карнавальной темы, в философии М. М. Бахтина — одна из постоянных проблем бахтинистики. Действительно, как совмещаются такие темы, как толпа на карнавальной площади, размытые контуры индивидуального тела в гротескном образе, идея родового тела, с персонализмом Бахтина, с его подчёркиванием неслиянности я и другого? Но сам Бахтин не считал эти идеи несовместимыми. Мы находим их не только порознь, на страницах трудов разных периодов его творчества, но и вместе, например, во второй редакции книги Бахтина о Достоевском. Статья содержит попытку восстановить философский контекст, в котором возникает карнавальная тема у Бахтина и поставить карнавал на свое место в истории развития бахтинской эстетики словесного творчества. Реконструируется процесс развития эстетики и теории романа М. М. Бахтина от образа человека, видимого сугубо с позиции другого, в незаконченном трактате «Автор и герой в эстетической деятельности» к карнавальному образу, где доминирует точка зрения я-для-себя. В центре этого процесса стоит проблема создания образа свободного и творящего человека в мировой литературе. Сравнивая эстетические позиции и оценки М. М. Бахтина в работах разных лет, мы находим в них иногда резкие повороты и изменения. Но несмотря на эти повороты и изменения в бахтинской эстетике, можно все-же говорить о развитии единой базисной общефилософской концепции у М. М. Бахтина, от самых ранних до самых поздних его трудов.
Works of fiction have characters, who perform actions, which make up the plot of the story. In th... more Works of fiction have characters, who perform actions, which make up the plot of the story. In this chapter, following some recent work in cognitive linguistics, I develop a tentative qualitative analytical framework for using the categories of action, character, and plot to analyze the meaning of ordinary language utterances. I propose a preliminary list of action levels, character types, and plot functions, which can be used in analyzing discourse using this framework, and apply this apparatus to the analysis of two conversation transcripts. Examining ordinary talk in the terms proposed here helps substantiate a radically enactivist and dialogic conception of linguistic meaning by extending an action-based account of the meaning of full linguistic utterances to also cover utterances’ content.
Daphna Erdinast Vulcan and Sergeiy Sandler. 2015. "Bakhtin and his circle". In Marina Grishakova and Silvi Salupere (eds.), Theoretical Schools and Circles in the Twentieth-Century Humanities: Literary Theory, History, Philosophy (pp. 23–40). London: Routledge.
The chapter provides a broad overview of the historical context and the development of the “Bakht... more The chapter provides a broad overview of the historical context and the development of the “Bakhtin circle”—a group of young intellectuals associated with the Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin in the years 1918–1930. The particular circumstances and character of this intellectual phenomenon problematize the application of the term “circle” to the group. The authors respond to this challenge by tracing the lines leading from Bakhtin’s early phenomenological work—which centered on ethics and represented a break with then-dominant neo-Kantian philosophy—to the linguistic work of Voloshinov, one of Bakhtin's closest associates, in the late 1920s.
Forthcoming in: Esther Pascual and Sergeiy Sandler (eds), The conversation frame: Forms and functions of fictive interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins
One may distinguish between three broad conceptions of linguistic meaning. One conception, which ... more One may distinguish between three broad conceptions of linguistic meaning. One conception, which I will call “logical”, views meaning as given in reference (for words) and truth (for sentences). Another conception, the “monological” one, seeks meaning in the cognitive capacities of the single mind. A third, “dialogical”, conception attributes meaning to interaction between individuals and personal perspectives. In this chapter I directly contrast how well these three approaches deal with the evidence brought forth by fictive interaction. I examine instances of fictive interaction and argue that intersubjectivity in these instances cannot be reduced to either referential-logical or individual-cognitive semantic notions. It follows that intersubjectivity must belong to the essence of linguistic meaning.
Language Under Discussion, Vol. 1, Issue 1, pp. 30–33
In his paper “Small Model Languages as Tools for Reflection”, Paul Rastall proposes using deliber... more In his paper “Small Model Languages as Tools for Reflection”, Paul Rastall proposes using deliberately oversimplified and artificial model languages, making no grand claims for absolute truth, as heuristic and didactic tools in linguistic inquiry. While I find this approach both useful and commendable, I argue (echoing similar warnings in Wittgenstein’s late work) that such models can not only expand our horizons in thinking about language, but also limit them.
Language Under Discussion, Vol. 1, Issue 1 (2013), pp. 30–33, 2013
In his paper “Small Model Languages as Tools for Reflection”, Paul Rastall proposes using deliber... more In his paper “Small Model Languages as Tools for Reflection”, Paul Rastall proposes using deliberately oversimplified and artificial model languages, making no grand claims for absolute truth, as heuristic and didactic tools in linguistic inquiry. While I find this approach both useful and commendable, I argue (echoing similar warnings in Wittgenstein’s late work) that such models can not only expand our horizons in thinking about language, but also limit them.
Søren Kierkegaard’s influence on the thought of Mikhail Bakhtin has received relatively little at... more Søren Kierkegaard’s influence on the thought of Mikhail Bakhtin has received relatively little attention from Bakhtin scholars (and hardly any attention from Bakhtin scholars in the English-speaking world). Yet, as I argue in this paper, Kierkegaard was among the most important formative influences on Bakhtin's work. This influence is most evident in Bakhtin's early ethical philosophy, but remains highly relevant in later periods. Reading Bakhtin as a follower and developer of Kierkegaard's fundamental philosophical insights provides us with a key to the unity of Bakhtin's thought.
An entry in a glossary of Bakhtin's terms.
[Note: Due to a misunderstanding in the editing proces... more An entry in a glossary of Bakhtin's terms. [Note: Due to a misunderstanding in the editing process, the title of the entry is not the one intended. The intended title was "Event (sobytie)"]
A brief introduction to a glossary of Mikhail Bakhtin's terms
[Note: This is the proofs version.... more A brief introduction to a glossary of Mikhail Bakhtin's terms
[Note: This is the proofs version. The title of the piece as published is "Introduction to the Glossary"]
In a way, late Bakhtin is the Bakhtin that we all know and love. Bakhtin wrote few of his works e... more In a way, late Bakhtin is the Bakhtin that we all know and love. Bakhtin wrote few of his works entirely in the last twenty-or-so years of his life, but throughout these years he has worked a lot on preparing his earlier writings for publication. As a result, practically every text that has been published between his emergence from obscurity in the early 1960s to his death in 1975, and even shortly afterwards, has undergone at least some level of revision in the 1960s and 1970s. Some of these revisions were more substantial than others, but even where the revisions were minor, they were often strategic. Bakhtin did a lot to alter the framing of his earlier works and modify the accents of particular passages so as to make the published texts relevant to his newly found audience. For Bakhtin’s readers in the West, the resulting effect has been even more pronounced, as practically all the major texts by Bakhtin published in translation were based on the revised Russian manuscripts. Thus, English readers only got their first taste of early Bakhtin in 1990, by which time the main contours of Bakhtin’s reception have mostly solidified; the reception of Bakhtin’s earlier writings in English-language scholarship did not begin in earnest until the 2010s. So, up to this day, we mostly read all of Bakhtin through the lens of late Bakhtin. This is perhaps most clearly illustrated by the centrality of the concept of dialogue in the standard interpretation of Bakhtin’s thought as a whole, together with a few related notions, such as major (or “great”) time. These are accents that are typical of Bakhtin’s late period. Now, I do not want to suggest that this reading of all of Bakhtin through late Bakhtin is mistaken; far from it. Bakhtin himself clearly thought there was some unity to his thought in different periods, and his own interpretation of this unity in his later years is surely a good place to start understanding what he had to say. However, in the process we do miss a lot of historical context, and with it also a lot of philosophical depth. Yes, dialogue, for instance, is a very central notion for Bakhtin, but we usually only see in that metaphor some layers of Bakhtin’s thought, while remaining oblivious to others. It is this historical context and philosophical depth that my paper aims to start recovering. In this paper, I will offer a reading of late Bakhtin through the lens of earlier Bakhtin, tell a story of how Bakhtin’s late philosophy emerged, in correct chronological order, from the earlier phases of his intellectual development. This emergence, as we shall see, also involves many modernist (especially existentialist) themes. My gateway for this exploration will be a concept that, to the best of my knowledge, received no attention from Bakhtin scholars to date, despite it being a very central concept in Bakhtin’s middle and late periods (perhaps partly due to the fact it has been inconsistently rendered into English). The concept in question is smena (which I translate as “succession”). It is significant in that it appears both in Bakhtin’s theory of carnival and in his later linguistic works. It bridges those two realms of his thought in not quite obvious ways, and it allows drawing links and connections to other stages in Bakhtin’s work in a very perspicuous way. At the end of this exploration of the notion of succession, we will be coming back to Bakhtin’s metaphor of dialogue to find it has been enriched with new tones (including some unexpectedly dark ones) that we were not aware of earlier, tying together many loose threads in our understanding of the unity of Bakhtin’s thought across different periods.
Boris Groys' article, " Between Stalin and Dionysos " , offers a provocative reading of Mikhail B... more Boris Groys' article, " Between Stalin and Dionysos " , offers a provocative reading of Mikhail Bakhtin's works, and especially of his notion of carnival, as an " aesthetic justification " of totalitarianism. In this paper I look at that article's weaknesses (as an actual interpretation of Bakhtin) and strengths (in the form of problems in Bakhtin scholarship it helped pose), and respond to it with a more detailed account of the place carnival assumes within Bakhtin's overall philosophical conception and its development over time.
The role that Mikhail Bakhtin’s book on Rabelais, and the carnival theme more generally, plays in... more The role that Mikhail Bakhtin’s book on Rabelais, and the carnival theme more generally, plays in Bakhtin’s philosophy is a perennial concern in Bakhtin studies. Indeed, how would one reconcile such ideas as the carnival crowd, the unclear boundaries of the human body in grotesque imagery, or the notion of a collective ancestral body, with Bakhtin’s personalism, his emphasis on the impossibility of merging self and other into one? However, Bakhtin himself did not find these notions to be incompatible. We find them not only separately, in works from different periods, but also adjacently, for example in the 2nd edition of his book on Dostoevsky. In this paper, I attempt to reconstruct the philosophical context, in which carnival appears in Bakhtin’s work and to place carnival within the development of Bakhtin’s aesthetics. I follow the process in which Bakhtin’s aesthetics and theory of the novel developed from an early focus on the human image examined from another’s point of view, to the carnivalesque image, dominated by the perspective of the I-for-myself. At the heart of this process stands Bakhtin’s study of how the image of a free and creative individual has been forged in world literature. When we compare the aesthetic views and evaluations espoused by Bakhtin in different periods, we sometimes find sharp reversals in his position. Nevertheless, these reversals are part of a continuous process of development in what can rightly be seen as essentially the same philosophical conception that informs Bakhtin’s work in all periods.
Место книги о Рабле, и вообще карнавальной темы, в философии М. М. Бахтина — одна из постоянных проблем бахтинистики. Действительно, как совмещаются такие темы, как толпа на карнавальной площади, размытые контуры индивидуального тела в гротескном образе, идея родового тела, с персонализмом Бахтина, с его подчёркиванием неслиянности я и другого? Но сам Бахтин не считал эти идеи несовместимыми. Мы находим их не только порознь, на страницах трудов разных периодов его творчества, но и вместе, например, во второй редакции книги Бахтина о Достоевском. Статья содержит попытку восстановить философский контекст, в котором возникает карнавальная тема у Бахтина и поставить карнавал на свое место в истории развития бахтинской эстетики словесного творчества. Реконструируется процесс развития эстетики и теории романа М. М. Бахтина от образа человека, видимого сугубо с позиции другого, в незаконченном трактате «Автор и герой в эстетической деятельности» к карнавальному образу, где доминирует точка зрения я-для-себя. В центре этого процесса стоит проблема создания образа свободного и творящего человека в мировой литературе. Сравнивая эстетические позиции и оценки М. М. Бахтина в работах разных лет, мы находим в них иногда резкие повороты и изменения. Но несмотря на эти повороты и изменения в бахтинской эстетике, можно все-же говорить о развитии единой базисной общефилософской концепции у М. М. Бахтина, от самых ранних до самых поздних его трудов.
Works of fiction have characters, who perform actions, which make up the plot of the story. In th... more Works of fiction have characters, who perform actions, which make up the plot of the story. In this chapter, following some recent work in cognitive linguistics, I develop a tentative qualitative analytical framework for using the categories of action, character, and plot to analyze the meaning of ordinary language utterances. I propose a preliminary list of action levels, character types, and plot functions, which can be used in analyzing discourse using this framework, and apply this apparatus to the analysis of two conversation transcripts. Examining ordinary talk in the terms proposed here helps substantiate a radically enactivist and dialogic conception of linguistic meaning by extending an action-based account of the meaning of full linguistic utterances to also cover utterances’ content.
Daphna Erdinast Vulcan and Sergeiy Sandler. 2015. "Bakhtin and his circle". In Marina Grishakova and Silvi Salupere (eds.), Theoretical Schools and Circles in the Twentieth-Century Humanities: Literary Theory, History, Philosophy (pp. 23–40). London: Routledge.
The chapter provides a broad overview of the historical context and the development of the “Bakht... more The chapter provides a broad overview of the historical context and the development of the “Bakhtin circle”—a group of young intellectuals associated with the Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin in the years 1918–1930. The particular circumstances and character of this intellectual phenomenon problematize the application of the term “circle” to the group. The authors respond to this challenge by tracing the lines leading from Bakhtin’s early phenomenological work—which centered on ethics and represented a break with then-dominant neo-Kantian philosophy—to the linguistic work of Voloshinov, one of Bakhtin's closest associates, in the late 1920s.
Forthcoming in: Esther Pascual and Sergeiy Sandler (eds), The conversation frame: Forms and functions of fictive interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins
One may distinguish between three broad conceptions of linguistic meaning. One conception, which ... more One may distinguish between three broad conceptions of linguistic meaning. One conception, which I will call “logical”, views meaning as given in reference (for words) and truth (for sentences). Another conception, the “monological” one, seeks meaning in the cognitive capacities of the single mind. A third, “dialogical”, conception attributes meaning to interaction between individuals and personal perspectives. In this chapter I directly contrast how well these three approaches deal with the evidence brought forth by fictive interaction. I examine instances of fictive interaction and argue that intersubjectivity in these instances cannot be reduced to either referential-logical or individual-cognitive semantic notions. It follows that intersubjectivity must belong to the essence of linguistic meaning.
Language Under Discussion, Vol. 1, Issue 1, pp. 30–33
In his paper “Small Model Languages as Tools for Reflection”, Paul Rastall proposes using deliber... more In his paper “Small Model Languages as Tools for Reflection”, Paul Rastall proposes using deliberately oversimplified and artificial model languages, making no grand claims for absolute truth, as heuristic and didactic tools in linguistic inquiry. While I find this approach both useful and commendable, I argue (echoing similar warnings in Wittgenstein’s late work) that such models can not only expand our horizons in thinking about language, but also limit them.
Language Under Discussion, Vol. 1, Issue 1 (2013), pp. 30–33, 2013
In his paper “Small Model Languages as Tools for Reflection”, Paul Rastall proposes using deliber... more In his paper “Small Model Languages as Tools for Reflection”, Paul Rastall proposes using deliberately oversimplified and artificial model languages, making no grand claims for absolute truth, as heuristic and didactic tools in linguistic inquiry. While I find this approach both useful and commendable, I argue (echoing similar warnings in Wittgenstein’s late work) that such models can not only expand our horizons in thinking about language, but also limit them.
Søren Kierkegaard’s influence on the thought of Mikhail Bakhtin has received relatively little at... more Søren Kierkegaard’s influence on the thought of Mikhail Bakhtin has received relatively little attention from Bakhtin scholars (and hardly any attention from Bakhtin scholars in the English-speaking world). Yet, as I argue in this paper, Kierkegaard was among the most important formative influences on Bakhtin's work. This influence is most evident in Bakhtin's early ethical philosophy, but remains highly relevant in later periods. Reading Bakhtin as a follower and developer of Kierkegaard's fundamental philosophical insights provides us with a key to the unity of Bakhtin's thought.
Международная конференция: «Уличный театр против театра военных действий», 2019
Лингвистические идеи Круга Бахтина оказались на редкость живучими и влиятельными в современном яз... more Лингвистические идеи Круга Бахтина оказались на редкость живучими и влиятельными в современном языкознании и в примыкающих к нему научных дисциплинах. Труды М. М. Бахтина и В. Н. Волошинова часто привлекают и активно используют в самых но-ваторских работах. Как объяснить этот феномен? Для выяснения этого вопроса необходимо обратить внимание на то, как этика и эстетика раннего Бахтина повлияла на его более позднюю философию языка. Как мы покажем, ранняя философия Бахтина требовала радикального пересмотра некоторых из самых древних и стойких постулатов философии языка. В результате этого пересмотра язык понимается совершенно по-новому, делиться на новые единицы, определенные по новым принципам. Теоретическую само-тождественность общего значения слова заменяет единственность и неповторимость смысла высказывания (поступка-слова) прелом-ленную через отвечающие на него высказывания и поступки. Именно это полное переосмысление и делает философию языка Круга Бахтина столь богатым источником новых подходов в науках, исследующих язык и общение.
Международная конференция: «Уличный театр против театра военных действий», 2019
Лингвистические идеи Круга Бахтина оказались на редкость живучими и влиятельными в современном яз... more Лингвистические идеи Круга Бахтина оказались на редкость живучими и влиятельными в современном языкознании и в примыкающих к нему научных дисциплинах. Труды М. М. Бахтина и В. Н. Волошинова часто привлекают и активно используют в самых но-ваторских работах. Как объяснить этот феномен? Для выяснения этого вопроса необходимо обратить внимание на то, как этика и эстетика раннего Бахтина повлияла на его более позднюю философию языка. Как мы покажем, ранняя философия Бахтина требовала радикального пересмотра некоторых из самых древних и стойких постулатов философии языка. В результате этого пересмотра язык понимается совершенно по-новому, делиться на новые единицы, определенные по новым принципам. Теоретическую само-тождественность общего значения слова заменяет единственность и неповторимость смысла высказывания (поступка-слова) прелом-ленную через отвечающие на него высказывания и поступки. Именно это полное переосмысление и делает философию языка Круга Бахтина столь богатым источником новых подходов в науках, исследующих язык и общение.
A long-standing problem in Bakhtin scholarship has to do with the unity, or disunity, of Bakhtin'... more A long-standing problem in Bakhtin scholarship has to do with the unity, or disunity, of Bakhtin's thought over time. On one view, Bakhtin was above all a philosopher, and his philosophical views, as expounded in his earliest surviving works, are the constant essence behind the veneer of shifting formulations in later texts. On the other view, Bakhtin's ideas in different periods conflict with one another too much to cohere into a single body of thought. In this paper, I argue for an integration of these two rival views. Yes, Bakhtin was primarily a philosopher. Yes, his philosophy underlies the rest of his work. But no, it did not remain static throughout his life. It also did not change abruptly. Rather, it evolved, as thinkers' ideas are prone to evolve. But—as I will demonstrate—Bakhtin's notes and drafts show a constant conscious effort to place the ideas he was working on throughout his life within the philosophical framework he developed in his youth.
Место книги о Рабле, и вообще карнавальной темы, в философии М.М. Бахтина—одна из постоянных проб... more Место книги о Рабле, и вообще карнавальной темы, в философии М.М. Бахтина—одна из постоянных проблем бахтинистики. Как совмещаются толпа на карнавальной площади, размытые контуры индивидуального тела в гротескном образе, идея родового тела, с персонализмом Бахтина, с его подчёркиванием несовместимости я и другого? А ведь сам Бахтин не считал эти идеи несовместимыми, чему лучшее свидетельство—глава о карнавале, которую он добавил ко второй редакции своей книги о Достоевском. Этот доклад пытается поставить книг о Рабле в контекст развития эстетики Бахтина. Центральную роль в этом контексте играет вопрос истории развития образа человека, как свободного, а не как данного. Для Бахтина, образ «человека в человеке» не может быть внешне обособленным, наивно совпадающим с самим собой, образом классического эстетического канона. Незавершённая история создания такого образа проходит через стихию карнавала.
Studies of the origins of Mikhail Bakhtin’s thought have tended to either follow a traditional in... more Studies of the origins of Mikhail Bakhtin’s thought have tended to either follow a traditional intellectual history paradigm—where establishing the presence of an influence is taken to be a sign of Bakhtin’s identity as a thinker—or to view terminological and conceptual borrowings in Bakhtin’s work as mere veneer in which he dressed his own ideas to make them publishable or acceptable to his peers in a hostile political and intellectual environment. And while Bakhtin did absorb some genuine formative influences, and did use some terms and ideas as mere masks, a much more interesting and unusual pattern of appropriating others’ voices is evident in, and typical of, Bakhtin’s writings.
In this talk I illustrate this pattern of appropriation by looking at three examples, all related to Bakhtin’s early philosophy (where the use of “masked” writing was not yet necessary), and both involving Kantianism and neo-Kantianism (cited by many as major influences, in the traditional sense, on Bakhtin). The first of these examples is the way in which Bakhtin reinterprets Kant’s “Copernican revolution”. The second is the way in which Herman Cohen’s account of God’s uniqueness in monotheism is reflected in Bakhtin’s early ethics. The third involves a passage in Paul Natorp’s book Sozial-Idealismus as anticipating Bakhtin’s views on language and dialogue, but within a philosophical context Bakhtin rejected.
All these examples (and many others) demonstrate the way Bakhtin, from the outset, works with the voices and ideas of others. Bakhtin’s approach—I shall argue—is not so much that of a scholar examining the claims made by his predecessors, accepting some and rejecting others, but rather, is akin to that of a composer, who integrates and combines motifs and passages adopted from others’ works into the fabric of his symphony, where they acquire new meaning in a new context.
There are several linguistic phenomena that, when examined closely, give evidence that people spe... more There are several linguistic phenomena that, when examined closely, give evidence that people speak through characters, much like authors of literary works do, in everyday discourse. However, most approaches in linguistics and in the philosophy of language leave little theoretical room for the appearance of characters in discourse. In particular, there is no linguistic criterion found to date, which can mark precisely what stretch of discourse within an utterance belongs to a character, and to which character. And yet, without at least tentatively marking the division of labor between the different characters in an utterance, it is absolutely impossible to arrive at an acceptable interpretation of it. As an alternative, I propose to take character use seriously, as an essential feature of discourse in general, a feature speakers and listeners actively seek out in utterances. I offer a simple typology of actions in discourse that draws on this understanding, and demonstrate its usefulness for the analysis of a conversation transcript.
Mikhail Bakhtin has gained a reputation of a thinker and literary theorist somehow hostile to poe... more Mikhail Bakhtin has gained a reputation of a thinker and literary theorist somehow hostile to poetry, and more specifically to the epic. This view is based on texts, in which Bakhtin creates and develops a conceptual contrast between poetry and the novel (in "Discourse in the Novel") or between epic and the novel (in "Epic and Novel"). However, as I will show, such perceptions of Bakhtin's position are grounded in a misunderstanding of Bakhtin's writing strategy and philosophical approach. Bakhtin often draws such conceptual contrasts as the ones between epic and novel, but does so not in order to characterize pre-given phenomena (in this case, the epic and the novel as two groups of literary works), but to construct a conceptual space which he in turn uses to explicate elements of his philosophy.
We know that in his youth Bakhtin was among the first in Russia to read and admire the works of K... more We know that in his youth Bakhtin was among the first in Russia to read and admire the works of Kierkegaard, and that he continued to keep Kierkegaard in high esteem in the last years of his life. Still, Bakhtin scholarship has not focused much on the influence Kierkegaard’s though has had on Bakhtin. Indeed, we will be hard-pressed to find in Bakhtin’s writings more than a few sphoradic references to Kierkegaard’s work, but nevertheless, so I shall argue, Kierkegaard’s influence goes to the very heart of Bakhtin’s thought – his philosophical motivation. Like Kierkegaard, Bakhtin’s philosophy seeks to be relevant to the person, “to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know … to find the idea for which I can live and die”, rather than discover the truth about the world or follow other, more traditional, philosophical pursuits. In this lecture I shall first try to substantiate my claims about the influence of Kierkegaard on Bakhtin by examining the work in which it is most clearly evident – Towards the Philosophy of the Act. But this influence, I would like to claim, does not end in Bakhtin’s earliest writings, but rather continues throughout his life.
Is there, according to Bakhtin, such a thing as nobody’s or neutral words? Going over Bakhtin’s w... more Is there, according to Bakhtin, such a thing as nobody’s or neutral words? Going over Bakhtin’s writings we might encounter an intriguing variety of answers to this question, ranging from a clear negative – there is no such thing – to a radical positive – all words are neutral, are “nobody’s” – and with a few other variants in between. This paper examines this puzzle both in its own right and from the perspective of what it can teach us about reading Bakhtin’s texts. I propose that Bakhtin’s conception of language has remained stable (even if not quite unchanged) in works from all periods, and link this conception to his early ethical philosophy (with an emphasis on the influence of Søren Kierkegaard on it). Bakhtin is firmly committed to the position that nobody’s words exist only in the abstract world of theory, and not in language as we speak it. This description also pertains to his own writing, which I maintain should be approached with a view to how other people’s voices are manipulated in it, rather than in the more literal fashion, in which scholarly works are usually studied.
Who said translation involves just two languages?
This talk takes off from my practical experienc... more Who said translation involves just two languages? This talk takes off from my practical experience in translating a collection of Mikhail Bakhtin’s essays and notes from Russian into Hebrew. My focus will be on just two terms: «речь» (involving also its counterpart, «язык») and «другой». Now, these words are, to use Bakhtin’s own description, populated by other people’s intentions. Specifically, they have histories of scholarly use, against the backdrop of which Bakhtin himself had to manipulate his position, and which also affect the way a present-day Hebrew reader is liable to understand them. This scholarly history brings into play the languages in which other scholars worked (in this case, French would be especially relevant, and to some degree also German), with the extant Hebrew translations of their works, and a host of other considerations, ranging from the lexical all the way to the political. Along the way we’ll be getting a glimpse at Bakhtin’s theory of discourse and tactics of writing in action. To make matters even more interesting, I will be speaking in yet another language – English.
Bakhtin suggests that the meaning of an utterance lies in the dialogic relations in which it part... more Bakhtin suggests that the meaning of an utterance lies in the dialogic relations in which it participates. We may distinguish three different levels of such relations: 1. immediate dialogic relations, that is the direct interaction between people and their complete utterances; 2. reenacted dialogic relations, between voices and characters that appear within the utterance; and 3. appropriating dialogic relations, where the speaker appropriates elements from the heteroglossia of others' utterances into her own context. My point is to demonstrate (on a particular example) how an account of meaning that is based on these notions can allow us to perform a detailed analysis of the meaning of actual utterances. Such an approach to meaning can account for both the function and the content of linguistic utterances within a dialogical philosophical framework, without relying on traditional grammatical and semantic categories.
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Papers by Sergeiy Sandler
[Note: Due to a misunderstanding in the editing process, the title of the entry is not the one intended. The intended title was "Event (sobytie)"]
[Note: This is the proofs version. The title of the piece as published is "Introduction to the Glossary"]
So, up to this day, we mostly read all of Bakhtin through the lens of late Bakhtin. This is perhaps most clearly illustrated by the centrality of the concept of dialogue in the standard interpretation of Bakhtin’s thought as a whole, together with a few related notions, such as major (or “great”) time. These are accents that are typical of Bakhtin’s late period.
Now, I do not want to suggest that this reading of all of Bakhtin through late Bakhtin is mistaken; far from it. Bakhtin himself clearly thought there was some unity to his thought in different periods, and his own interpretation of this unity in his later years is surely a good place to start understanding what he had to say. However, in the process we do miss a lot of historical context, and with it also a lot of philosophical depth. Yes, dialogue, for instance, is a very central notion for Bakhtin, but we usually only see in that metaphor some layers of Bakhtin’s thought, while remaining oblivious to others. It is this historical context and philosophical depth that my paper aims to start recovering.
In this paper, I will offer a reading of late Bakhtin through the lens of earlier Bakhtin, tell a story of how Bakhtin’s late philosophy emerged, in correct chronological order, from the earlier phases of his intellectual development. This emergence, as we shall see, also involves many modernist (especially existentialist) themes. My gateway for this exploration will be a concept that, to the best of my knowledge, received no attention from Bakhtin scholars to date, despite it being a very central concept in Bakhtin’s middle and late periods (perhaps partly due to the fact it has been inconsistently rendered into English). The concept in question is smena (which I translate as “succession”). It is significant in that it appears both in Bakhtin’s theory of carnival and in his later linguistic works. It bridges those two realms of his thought in not quite obvious ways, and it allows drawing links and connections to other stages in Bakhtin’s work in a very perspicuous way.
At the end of this exploration of the notion of succession, we will be coming back to Bakhtin’s metaphor of dialogue to find it has been enriched with new tones (including some unexpectedly dark ones) that we were not aware of earlier, tying together many loose threads in our understanding of the unity of Bakhtin’s thought across different periods.
Место книги о Рабле, и вообще карнавальной темы, в философии М. М. Бахтина — одна из постоянных проблем бахтинистики. Действительно, как совмещаются такие темы, как толпа на карнавальной площади, размытые контуры индивидуального тела в гротескном образе, идея родового тела, с персонализмом Бахтина, с его подчёркиванием неслиянности я и другого? Но сам Бахтин не считал эти идеи несовместимыми. Мы находим их не только порознь, на страницах трудов разных периодов его творчества, но и вместе, например, во второй редакции книги Бахтина о Достоевском. Статья содержит попытку восстановить философский контекст, в котором возникает карнавальная тема у Бахтина и поставить карнавал на свое место в истории развития бахтинской эстетики словесного творчества. Реконструируется процесс развития эстетики и теории романа М. М. Бахтина от образа человека, видимого сугубо с позиции другого, в незаконченном трактате «Автор и герой в эстетической деятельности» к карнавальному образу, где доминирует точка зрения я-для-себя. В центре этого процесса стоит проблема создания образа свободного и творящего человека в мировой литературе. Сравнивая эстетические позиции и оценки М. М. Бахтина в работах разных лет, мы находим в них иногда резкие повороты и изменения. Но несмотря на эти повороты и изменения в бахтинской эстетике, можно все-же говорить о развитии единой базисной общефилософской концепции у М. М. Бахтина, от самых ранних до самых поздних его трудов.
[Note: Due to a misunderstanding in the editing process, the title of the entry is not the one intended. The intended title was "Event (sobytie)"]
[Note: This is the proofs version. The title of the piece as published is "Introduction to the Glossary"]
So, up to this day, we mostly read all of Bakhtin through the lens of late Bakhtin. This is perhaps most clearly illustrated by the centrality of the concept of dialogue in the standard interpretation of Bakhtin’s thought as a whole, together with a few related notions, such as major (or “great”) time. These are accents that are typical of Bakhtin’s late period.
Now, I do not want to suggest that this reading of all of Bakhtin through late Bakhtin is mistaken; far from it. Bakhtin himself clearly thought there was some unity to his thought in different periods, and his own interpretation of this unity in his later years is surely a good place to start understanding what he had to say. However, in the process we do miss a lot of historical context, and with it also a lot of philosophical depth. Yes, dialogue, for instance, is a very central notion for Bakhtin, but we usually only see in that metaphor some layers of Bakhtin’s thought, while remaining oblivious to others. It is this historical context and philosophical depth that my paper aims to start recovering.
In this paper, I will offer a reading of late Bakhtin through the lens of earlier Bakhtin, tell a story of how Bakhtin’s late philosophy emerged, in correct chronological order, from the earlier phases of his intellectual development. This emergence, as we shall see, also involves many modernist (especially existentialist) themes. My gateway for this exploration will be a concept that, to the best of my knowledge, received no attention from Bakhtin scholars to date, despite it being a very central concept in Bakhtin’s middle and late periods (perhaps partly due to the fact it has been inconsistently rendered into English). The concept in question is smena (which I translate as “succession”). It is significant in that it appears both in Bakhtin’s theory of carnival and in his later linguistic works. It bridges those two realms of his thought in not quite obvious ways, and it allows drawing links and connections to other stages in Bakhtin’s work in a very perspicuous way.
At the end of this exploration of the notion of succession, we will be coming back to Bakhtin’s metaphor of dialogue to find it has been enriched with new tones (including some unexpectedly dark ones) that we were not aware of earlier, tying together many loose threads in our understanding of the unity of Bakhtin’s thought across different periods.
Место книги о Рабле, и вообще карнавальной темы, в философии М. М. Бахтина — одна из постоянных проблем бахтинистики. Действительно, как совмещаются такие темы, как толпа на карнавальной площади, размытые контуры индивидуального тела в гротескном образе, идея родового тела, с персонализмом Бахтина, с его подчёркиванием неслиянности я и другого? Но сам Бахтин не считал эти идеи несовместимыми. Мы находим их не только порознь, на страницах трудов разных периодов его творчества, но и вместе, например, во второй редакции книги Бахтина о Достоевском. Статья содержит попытку восстановить философский контекст, в котором возникает карнавальная тема у Бахтина и поставить карнавал на свое место в истории развития бахтинской эстетики словесного творчества. Реконструируется процесс развития эстетики и теории романа М. М. Бахтина от образа человека, видимого сугубо с позиции другого, в незаконченном трактате «Автор и герой в эстетической деятельности» к карнавальному образу, где доминирует точка зрения я-для-себя. В центре этого процесса стоит проблема создания образа свободного и творящего человека в мировой литературе. Сравнивая эстетические позиции и оценки М. М. Бахтина в работах разных лет, мы находим в них иногда резкие повороты и изменения. Но несмотря на эти повороты и изменения в бахтинской эстетике, можно все-же говорить о развитии единой базисной общефилософской концепции у М. М. Бахтина, от самых ранних до самых поздних его трудов.
In this talk I illustrate this pattern of appropriation by looking at three examples, all related to Bakhtin’s early philosophy (where the use of “masked” writing was not yet necessary), and both involving Kantianism and neo-Kantianism (cited by many as major influences, in the traditional sense, on Bakhtin). The first of these examples is the way in which Bakhtin reinterprets Kant’s “Copernican revolution”. The second is the way in which Herman Cohen’s account of God’s uniqueness in monotheism is reflected in Bakhtin’s early ethics. The third involves a passage in Paul Natorp’s book Sozial-Idealismus as anticipating Bakhtin’s views on language and dialogue, but within a philosophical context Bakhtin rejected.
All these examples (and many others) demonstrate the way Bakhtin, from the outset, works with the voices and ideas of others. Bakhtin’s approach—I shall argue—is not so much that of a scholar examining the claims made by his predecessors, accepting some and rejecting others, but rather, is akin to that of a composer, who integrates and combines motifs and passages adopted from others’ works into the fabric of his symphony, where they acquire new meaning in a new context.
Indeed, we will be hard-pressed to find in Bakhtin’s writings more than a few sphoradic references to Kierkegaard’s work, but nevertheless, so I shall argue, Kierkegaard’s influence goes to the very heart of Bakhtin’s thought – his philosophical motivation. Like Kierkegaard, Bakhtin’s philosophy seeks to be relevant to the person, “to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know … to find the idea for which I can live and die”, rather than discover the truth about the world or follow other, more traditional, philosophical pursuits.
In this lecture I shall first try to substantiate my claims about the influence of Kierkegaard on Bakhtin by examining the work in which it is most clearly evident – Towards the Philosophy of the Act. But this influence, I would like to claim, does not end in Bakhtin’s earliest writings, but rather continues throughout his life.
This talk takes off from my practical experience in translating a collection of Mikhail Bakhtin’s essays and notes from Russian into Hebrew. My focus will be on just two terms: «речь» (involving also its counterpart, «язык») and «другой».
Now, these words are, to use Bakhtin’s own description, populated by other people’s intentions. Specifically, they have histories of scholarly use, against the backdrop of which Bakhtin himself had to manipulate his position, and which also affect the way a present-day Hebrew reader is liable to understand them.
This scholarly history brings into play the languages in which other scholars worked (in this case, French would be especially relevant, and to some degree also German), with the extant Hebrew translations of their works, and a host of other considerations, ranging from the lexical all the way to the political.
Along the way we’ll be getting a glimpse at Bakhtin’s theory of discourse and tactics of writing in action.
To make matters even more interesting, I will be speaking in yet another language – English.