MIKHAIL BAKHTIN Jennifer Allen Simons B.A., Antioch University

258 Pages·2006·4.12 MB·English

by  Simons, Jennifer Allen.

MIKHAIL BAKHTIN
MAN AND HIS PENULTIMATE WORD
A RADICAL HUMANISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNFINALIZABLE WHOLE
Jennifer Allen Simons
B.A., Antioch University, 1978
MA., Simon Fraser University, 1983
THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF -
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
in the Department
English
OJennifer Allen Simons 1988
SIMON FRASER UNIVE'RSITY
October 1988
All rights reserved. This work may not be
reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or
other means, without the permission of the author
APPROVAL
NAME: Jennifer Allen Simons
DEGREE: Doctor sf Philosophy (English)
TITLE OF THESIS: Mikhail Bakhtin: Man and his Penultimate Word
A Radical Humanistic Philosophy of the
Unfinalizable Whole
EXAMINING COMMITTEE:, Chairperson: Rob Dunham
Jerry Ldslove
Senior Supervisor
Associate Professor of English
- . -
,
- 1-
Michael Steig
I
Professor of English
Mason Harris
Associate Profcqo.r of English
~hirhxerjee
Internal External Examiner
Associate Professor of English
Simon Fraser University
Graham Good
External Examiner
Associate Professor of English
University of British Columbia
Date Approved: March 28, 1989
(ii)
PARTIAL COF'YI<ICIiT LICENSE
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Mikhail Bakhtinr Elan and His Penultimate Word: A Radical Humanistic
-
Philosophy of the Unfinalizable Whole
C
Jennifer Allen Simons
April 29th' 1989
Abstract
Mikhail Bakhtin's work is often misunderstood by contemporary critics and
elucidators. It is abstracted, fragmented and reinterpreted in order to conform with
contemporary literary theories. Bakhtin is claimed by some as a follower of the Russian
Formalist school, by others as a serniotician, and by still others as a deconstructionist. As
well, his work is hailed as a political attack on Stalinist authority, and moreover is seen to
be a rejection of official cultural forms in literature. My position is that Bakhtin is a
humanistic and holistic philosopher who creates a humanistic and holistic philosophy of
language and literature. This philosophy acknowledges the unity and continuity of human
experience and its representation in language and artistic works throughout- the centuries-
long history of man's cultural development.
This study seeks to differentiate Bakhtin's work from current critical thought and
practice, primarily through an expository elucidation and discussion of his writings, and
secondarily through comparison and contrast with aspects of current theory. In Chapter I
Bakhtin's disagreement with the Russian Formalists and Marxist contemporaries of the
1920s and 1930s is outlined as a means of defining his position. In Chapters I1 and I11
Bakhtin's philosophy of the word is presented in order to show how he constructs a theory
of dialogism and discourse within a radical humanistic framework. These chapters
introduce problems taken up in Chapter IV where the central thesis of this study, Bakhtin's
exploration of the problem of presenting real-life discourse in artistic creation and his
understanding of the development of the novel in culture and history, is elaborated upon in
terms of his ideas about the novel in history which culminates in his study of the work of
Franqois Rabelais. The final Chapter V is an interpretation of Bakhtin's work in the light
of the problem of his reception in the English-speaking realm by some of his major
commentators and translators.
In this study I substantiate that Bakhtin's work is fuller, more comprehensive than
contemporary critical positions allow and moreover that Bakhtin's task is not one of
simplistic notions of opposition, but rather is a radical aesthetic endeavour of revolution
which does not elevate the low at the expense of the destruction of high and official forms.
Rather, it reintegrates, reunifies what has been isolated, fragmented and made abstract, or
has been lost and repressed in history. His work is a basic reorientation and reorganization
of approaches to linguistic and literary theory which restores man's integral connection to
his works, thus emphasizing change and generation. Bakhtin's approach to- language and
literature is a humanistic, philosophical-anthropological approach which seeks the essence
of man and his creations within mankind itself. This reorientation and reorganization of
aesthetic perception defines the holistic and humanistic nature of Bakhtin's work which is
denied or implicitly negated in the fragmented and abstracted absorption of Bakhtin into
contemporary literary theory.
Research becomes inquiry and conversation, that is,
dialogue. We do not address inquiries to nature and she
does not answer us. We put questions to ourselves and
we organize observation or experiment in such a way as to
obtain an answer. When studying man, we search for and
find signs everywhere and we try to grasp the meaning.
Mikhail Bakhtin, "The Problem of the Text."
The text is the primary given (reality) and the point of
departure for ciny discipline in the human sciences. It is
the aggregate of various kinds of knowledge and methods
called philology, linguistics, literary scholarship, scientific
scholarship, and so forth. Proceeding from the text they
wander in various directions, grasp various bits of nature,
social life, states of mind, and history, and combine them -
sometimes with causal, sometimes with semantic, ties -
and intermix statements with evaluations. From
indications of the real object one must proceed to a clear-
cut delineation of the objects of scientific research. The
real object is social (public) man, who speaks and
expresses himself through other means. Is it possible to
find any other approach to him and his life (work,
struggle, and so forth) than through the signifiing text that
he has created or is creating? Is it possible to observe and
study him as a phenomenon of nature, as a thing? Man's
physical action should be understood as a deed, but it is
impossible to understand the deed outside its potential (that
is, re-created by us) signifying expression (motives, goals,
stimuli, degree of awareness, and so forth). It is as
though we are causing man to speak (we construct his
important testimonies, explanations, confessions,
admissions, and we complete the development of possible
or acwl inner speech, and so forth).
Mikhail Bakhtin, "The Problem of the Text."
Table of Contents
Chapter I Towards an Understanding of Artistic Creation
.........................................
as a Whole
......
Chapter 11 Mikhail Baktin's Philosophy of the Word
Chapter I11 The Aesthetics of the Novel: The Problem
.........................
of the Word in the Novel
Chapter IV Towards a Philosophy for a History -
.......................................
of the Novel
Chapter V Towards a Philosophy of Man in the Culture:
The Problem of Reception of Man in
....
Great Time in the English-Speaking World.
......................................................
Notes
Chapter I
Towards an Understanding of Artistic Creation
as a Whole
As a working hypothesis material aesthetics [Formalism] is harmless,
and with a methodologically clear recognition of the limits of its
applicability, it can even be productive in studying technique in artistic
creation. But it becomes unmitigatedly harmful and unacceptable
whenever an effort is made on this basis to study and understand artistic
creativity as a whole, in all its aesthetic uniqueness and significance.
Mikhail Bakhtin, 'Toward the Aesthetics of the Word."
There is a disturbing trend in the English-speaking worG on the part of
contemporary, linguistic and literary theoreticians to ignore, to dismiss or to not
comprehend the philosophical, anthropological, contextual, thematic understanding of the
word, of discourse, of life in its meaning-filled wholeness and continuity interwoven
throughout Mikhail Bakhtin's writings. Instead, these theoreticians select aspects or
fragments of his work and claim them for their particular positions and, as a consequence,
distort the meaning (and in some instances radically so), and moreover, deny the coherence
and the complexity of Bakhtin's discourse. There is a danger in the plethora of recent
scholarship on Bakhtin and his work to disregard or to discount the essential nature of his
position which is one of perspective rather than of frame.
In my view Bakhtin is an important figure, his thought and work are an essential
contribution to linguistic and literary studies, a necessary amelioration to the predilection in
contemporary literary theory towards isolation, fragmentation and abstraction, a readiness
to banish history and to deny meaning and relevance to life, to the human and to human
creations. His work, his understanding of the novel and of the "novelness" of life is of
crucial importance to literary studies. And it is my opinion that it is impossible to approach
the study of Bakhtin and the relation of his thought to a particular novel (a study beyond
the scope of this work) until one understands that Bakhtin's work is not theory in the sense
of a scientific application of concepts and principles. Rather it is a philosophical
perspective (a way of understanding) which he brings to bear in his study of the genre of
the novel, a perspective which views the novel in a larger sense as the vehicle most able to
reveal the essential nature of the life experience of man and of the "powerful deep currents"
-
of changing cultural and historical forces which "determine the creativity of writers" and
which shape our understanding of these writers and their works.1
Bakhtin has gained a worldwide reputation in the humanities, in the fields of
linguistics, literary theory and cultural studies. And with little exaggeration it can be stated
that he has been universally acclaimed for his contributions to the fields of linguistic,
literary and cultural studies. The importance of his brilliant, complex, multifaceted and
controversial work is sometimes disputed. However, of more concern, it is more
frequently misunderstood by contemporary critics and elucidators. Aspects of his thought
are selectively acclaimed and claimed by literary theorists as diverse, for example, as
formalists, structuralists, semioticians, deconstructionists, neo-Aristotelians, and diverse
Marxists. Furthermore, his work is hailed by some as a mere political attack on Stalinist
authority and, moreover, as a rejection of official forms in opposition to classical or official
ideology and forms in literature and culture. While it is true that Bakhtin experienced
hardship, imprisonment, exile, and difficulty in disseminating his ideas during the Stalinist
era, his thought and work are fuller, more comprehensive than mere political tracts and,
furthermore, fuller, more complex and comprehensive than any of the above contemporary,
critical positions allow.2
Bakhtin (1895-1975) was born in Orel, a provincial town, south of Moscow, into
an old noble but landless family which had "always been prominent in intellectual circles."
He entered the historical and philological faculty of the university of Odessa in 19 13, and in
191 4 transferred to Petrograd University (19 14-1 91 8) into an exhilarating, stimulating,
intellectual climate filled with debates between the Symbolists, Acmeists, Futurists and
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Formalists. In 1918, amid an atmosphere of political and social upheaval, and the
revolutionary excitement of creating a new society following the First World War and the
Bolshevik Revolution, Bakhtin moved to ~evel'.A nd from 1918 until the end of the
1920s Bakhtin was the intellectual leader of an informal "tightly knit group of friends and
intellectual equals who met regularly for intensive philosophical discussions," first "in the
cities of Nevel' and Vitebsk, later in Leningrad, to reflect on cultural problems and
principally on matters of aesthetics and literary theory." The Bakhtin circle, as it became
known, according to Michael Holquist "dominated the intellectual and cultural life of
Nevel"' and "felt a sense of mission to enlighten the masses."3