Continuing research on the dreaded subject of identity, I keep
encountering someone I should have paid far more attention to. Mikhail
Mikhailovich Bakhtin. He was
a Russian philosopher, literary critic, semiotician and scholar who worked on
literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language.
He was born on
November 17th 1895 in Oryol, Russia, 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, and
then Odessa, where in 1913 he 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. Zelinsky, whose works contain the beginnings of concepts elaborated by
Bakhtin.
Bakhtin and his circle began
meeting in the Belorussian towns of Nevel and Vitebsk in 1918 before moving to
Leningrad in 1924. Their group meetings were terminated due to the arrest of
many of the group in 1929. From this time until his death in 1975, Bakhtin
continued to work on the topics which had occupied his group, living in
internal exile first in Kustanai (Kazakhstan, 1930-36), Savelovo (about 100 km
from Moscow, 1937-45), Saransk (Mordovia, 1936-7, 1945-69) In Saransk Bakhtin
worked at the Mordov Pedagogical Institute (now University) until retirement in
1961. He moved to Moscow in 1969 where he died at the age of eighty on March 7th 1975.
His writings, on a variety of subjects,
inspired scholars working in a number of different traditions (Marxism,
semiotics, structuralism, religious criticism) and in disciplines as diverse as
literary criticism, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and
psychology. Although Bakhtin was active in the debates on aesthetics and
literature that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, his distinctive
position did not become well known until he was rediscovered by Russian
scholars in the 1960s.
As to the rediscovery, I found this comment
from Tim Spurgin, Associate Professor of English Lawrence University Appleton,
Wisconsin, which is
quite revealing:
“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.”
The following are extracts from his work
published in 1986, Speech
Genres and Other Late Essays.
Trans. by Vern W. McGee. Austin, Tx: University of Texas Press.
“All the diverse
areas of human activity involve the use of language. Quite understandably, the
nature and forms of this use are just as diverse as are the areas of human
activity. This, of course, in no way disaffirms the national unity of language.
Language is realized in the form of individual concrete utterances (oral and
written) by participants in the various areas of human activity. These
utterances reflect the specific conditions and goals of each such area not only
through their content (thematic) and linguistic style, that is, the selection
of the lexical, phraseological, and grammatical resources of the language, but
above all through their compositional structure. All three of these
aspects--thematic content, style, and compositional structure--are inseparably
linked to the whole of the utterance and are equally determined by the
specific nature of the particular sphere of communication. Each separate
utterance is individual, of course, but each sphere in which language is used
develops its own relatively stable types of these utterances. These we may call speech genres. The wealth and diversity of speech genres are boundless because the various possibilities of human activity are inexhaustible, and because each sphere of activity contains an entire repertoire of speech genres that differentiate and grow as the particular sphere develops and becomes more complex. Special emphasis should be placed on the extreme heterogeneity of speech genres (oral and written). In fact, the category of speech genres should include short rejoinders of daily dialogue (and these are extremely varied depending on the subject matter, situation, and participants), everyday narration, writing (in all its various forms), the brief standard military command, the elaborate and detailed order, the fairly variegated repertoire of business documents (for the most part standard), and the diverse world of commentary (in the broad sense of the word: social, political)”
“The
text (written and oral) is the primary given of all these disciplines and of
all thought in the human sciences and philosophy in general (including theological
and philosophical thought at their sources). The text is the unmediated reality
(reality of thought and experience), the only one from which these disciplines
and this thought can emerge. Where there is no text, there is no object of
study, and no object of thought either. The
"implied" text: if the word "text" is understood in the
broad sense--as any coherent complex of signs--then even the study of art (the
study of music, the theory and history of fine arts) deals with texts (works of
art). Thoughts about thoughts, experiences of experiences, words about words,
and texts about texts. Herein lies the basic distinction between our
disciplines (human sciences) and the natural ones (about nature), although
there are no absolute, impenetrable boundaries here either. Thought about the
human sciences originates as thought about others' thoughts, wills,
manifestations, expressions, and signs, behind which stand manifest gods
(revelations) or people (the laws of rulers, the precepts of ancestors,
anonymous sayings, riddles, and so forth). A scientifically precise, as it
were, authentication of the texts and criticism of texts come later (in thought
in the human sciences, they represent a complete about-face, the origin of scepticism).
Initially, belief required only understanding--interpretation.”
“Understanding.
The dismemberment of understanding into individual acts. In actual, real
concrete understanding these acts merge inseparably into a unified process, but
each individual act has its ideal semantic (content-filled) independence and
can be singled out from the concrete empirical act. 1. Psychophysiologically perceiving a
physical sign (word, colour, spatial form). 2. Recognizing it (as
familiar or unfamiliar). 3. Understanding its significance in the given
context (immediate and more remote). 4. Active-dialogic understanding
(disagreement/ agreement). Inclusion in the dialogic context. The evaluative
aspect of understanding and the degree of its depth and universality.”
“One can say that any word exists for the speaker
in three aspects: as a neutral word of language, belonging to nobody; as an other’s word, which belongs to another
person and is filled with the echoes of the other’s utterance; and, finally, as
my word, for, since I am dealing with
it in a particular situation with a particular speech plan, it is already
imbued with my expression. […] The unique speech experience of each individual
is shaped and developed in continuous and constant interaction with other’s
individual utterances. This experience can be characterised to some degree as
the process of assimilation – more or
less creative – of others’ words (and not the words of a language. […] Our
thought itself – philosophical, scientific, and artistic – is born and shaped
in the process of interaction and struggle with others’ thought, and this
cannot but be reflected in the forms that verbally express our thought as
well.”
As to my attempt
at dealing with ‘signs of identity’, or ‘written identity’ as I conceive it,
the following comment seems appropriate:
“Converting an image into a symbol gives it
semantic depth and semantic perspective. The dialogic correlation
between identity and non-identity. The image must be understood for what it
is and for what it designates. The content of a true symbol, through mediated
semantic coupling, is correlated with the idea of worldwide wholeness, the
fullness of the cosmic and human universe. The world has contextual meaning.
"The image of the world appears miraculously in the word" (Pasternak).
Each particular phenomenon is submerged in the primordial elements of the origins
of existence. As distinct from myth, this is an awareness that one does not
coincide with one's own individual meaning. The symbol has a "warmth of
fused mystery" (Averintsev). The aspect of contrasting one's own to
another's. The warmth of love and the coldness of alienation. Contrast and
comparison. Any interpretation of a symbol itself remains a symbol, but it is
somewhat rationalized, that is, brought somewhat closer to the concept. A
definition of contextual meaning in all the profundity and complexity of
its essence. Interpretation as the discovery of a path to seeing
(contemplating) and supplementing through creative thinking.”
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| A commemorative plaque marking a building in which Mikhail Bakhtin worked. |
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