HANDOUT ON BAKHTIN AND VOLOSHINOV

What's here

• Reading assignments for this session
  
• Key dates for Bakhtin and the Bakhtin Circle
  
• Background information about the Bakhtin Circle
  
• Study questions on these readings
  
• What next?--suggestions about where to go from here

Assignment for next time

• V. N. Voloshinov, "Critique of Sausserian Linguistics," Bakhtin Reader, ed. Pam Morris (London: Edward Arnold, 1994): 25-37.

• V. N. Voloshinov, "Language as Dialogic Interaction," Bakhtin Reader: 48-61.

• M. M. Bakhtin, "Social Heteroglossia," Bakhtin Reader: 73-80.

Key dates for Bakhtin and the Bakhtin Circle

1895 Bakhtin is born into a comfortable, prosperous family.
1917 Soviet revolution.
1918 Bakhtin earns a degree in classics and philology. He meets Voloshinov and Medvedev, and the activities of the circle begin in earnest.
1924 Lenin dies, and Stalin begins to consolidate power.
1927 Voloshinov, Freudianism: A Critical Sketch
1928 Medvedev, Formal Method in Literary Scholarship
1929 Voloshinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language
1929 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Art
1929 Bakhtin arrested for alleged activity in underground Russian Orthodox Church. He's sentenced to six years exile in Kazakhstan. His exile brings an end to the activities of the circle.
1934 Communist Party purges begin in earnest.
1935 Bakhtin, "Discourse in the Novel"
1936 Voloshinov dies of tuberculosis. Bakhtin takes a job as professor of Russian and World Literature at the Mordovia Pedagogical Institute.
1937 Bakhtin, "Forms of Time and of the Chronotrope . . . "
1938 Medvedev is arrested and shot.
1940 Bakhtin submits his work on Rabelais as his thesis. He is not called to defend the thesis until 1947 and is not granted his doctorate until 1951.
1941 Bakhtin, "Epic and Novel"
1953 Stalin dies.
1950s Bakhtin becomes a cult figure in Soviet intellectual circles and is visited by adoring graduate students-- most of whom can't believe that he's still alive!
1963 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, a revision of the 1929 book on Dostoevsky's art.
1966 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World finally published.
1971 Conference on Bakhtin's work, at which one speaker claims that the works of Medvedev and Voloshinov were really "authored" by Bakhtin.
1975 Bakhtin dies. Large collections of his work begin to appear in Russian.

Background

Mikhail Bakhtin, who spent most of his life as a Soviet citizen, did his major work in the nineteen-twenties, -thirties, and -forties. He was part of a study group, now famous as the "Bakhtin circle," which included such figures as P. N. Medvedev (1891-1938), and V. N. Voloshinov (1884/5-1936). At one point, there was a bit of controversy surrounding the works of Medvedev and Voloshinov. Some scholars claimed that the works had really been authored by Bakhtin--but that controversy appears to have died down, with most people concluding that the so-called "disputed texts" were indeed authored by Medvedev and Voloshinov.

If you're wondering why we're reading Bakhtin after Derrida and Foucault, it might help to know that Bakhtin wasn't really "discovered" by Western European and U.S. readers until the nineteen-seventies and -eighties. Since then, he has often been regarded as a precursor to Derrida (not, mind you, that Derrida knew of Bakhtin's work) and as a kind of alternative to both Derrida and Foucault. I'll be very curious to see what you make of the similarities and differences among these figures.

Possible study questions

1. At the beginning of "Critique," Voloshinov distinguishes between two ways of thinking about language: "individualistic subjectivism" and "abstract objectivism" (26). Which approach is he identifying with Saussure, and why? What are his problems with "individualistic subjectivism"? Why does he think that it's so flawed and so dangerous?

2. As your editor notes, Voloshinov is trying to formulate a Marxist response to Saussurean linguistics. Were you surprised by his arguments? Did he say what you would have expected a Marxist to say in this situation? What, in addition, did you make of his comments on the concepts of base and superstructure (52-5)?

3. Bakhtin fans are often excited by the claim that every utterance "makes response to something and is calculated to be responded to in turn" (35). How does this claim resemble, and how does it differ from, Derrida's claims about the pharmakon?

4. What is "heteroglossia," first of all, and what are the differences between "unitary language" and "the realities of heteroglossia" (74)? And what, finally, does Bakhtin have in mind when he speaks about the "internal dialogism of the word" (76)?

5. Near the end of "Social Heteroglossia," we hear about a lot of familiar things: speech, the speaking person, fathers and sons. What would Derrida have to say about Bakhtin's treatment of those things? Would Derrida credit Bakhtin for resisting the pull towards logocentrism? If not, what might he say instead?

What next?

• Homepage for English 60A
  
• Syllabus for week six (Bakhtin)
  
• Students' responses to Bakhtin
  
• Links to internet resources dealing with Bakhtin