62 research outputs found
Early Soviet research projects and the developments of "Bakhtinian" ideas: the view from the archives
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When the history of Bakhtin studies is finally written, one particularly ironic aspect that
will stand out is that an accurate understanding of the development of dialogic ideas has
required us to liberate ourselves from a series of monologic myths. Such thinking, to paraphrase
Bakhtin himself, 'impoverished' our understanding, 'disorganised and bled' an accurate
image of the dynamics of intellectual formation, by 'mixing it up' with 'fantastic'
and 'estranged' notions and 'rounding it out' into a 'mythological whole' (Bakhtin 1979
[l 936-81: 224; 1986 [l 936-81: 43) Four particularly persistent varieties may be briefly
summarised as follows: 1) Bakhtin was a thoroughly original thinker who thought up all
his ideas crA mhilo, 2) Bakhtin surrounded himself with mediocrities and there was a unidirectional
flow of ideas from him to, say, Voloshinov and Medvedev, 3) Bakhtin was
an 'unofficial' thinker who chose to remain outside the dominant trends within Soviet
scholarship and was fundamentally unaffected by that scholarship, 4) where Bakhtin was
compelled to engage with Soviet scholarship the result was either rebuttal or inner subversion
rather than serious engagement. I will refrain from identifying specific works in which
these myths are present since they permeated the majority of research in the field until
relatively recently and they have receded only gradually. Furthermore, the myths have not
uniformly disintegrated, but have retreated unevenly in the face of a varying amount and
quality of research in specific areas
The Perestroika of Academic Labour: The Neoliberal Transformation of Higher Education and the Resurrection of the âCommand Economyâ.
This paper compares the changing function and organisation of higher education (HE) under neoliberal reforms, with particular focus on the UK, with those introduced by the Stalin regime in the 1930s and developed in the decades that followed. Although ideologically contrasting, many policies developed to subordinate HE and other state enterprises more directly to the accumulation of capital driven by competition are in many respects strikingly similar in each case. The historical development of each is examined, along with the political economy underlying them, highlighting the most important common features and differences. The proletarianisation of HE in the UK is shown to have encouraged the adoption of âspontaneousâ forms of resistance reminiscent of those workers adopted in the USSR to protect themselves from bureaucratic pressure. The paper suggests ways in which these forms of resistance might be incorporated into a more general struggle against the encroachment of neoliberalism
Mikhail Bakhtin and early Soviet sociolinguistics
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Mikhail Bakhtinâs essays on the novel of the 1930s are perhaps his mot original, influential and valuable contributions to the study of European language and literature. The terms and limits of that originally have, however, seldom been systematically analysed, with most commentators content to admire the bold interweaving of sociolinguistic and literary themes which we find in these essays. The sources of Bakhtinâs ideas about the novel have been gradually coming into focus since the 1980s, but the sources of the sociolinguistic ideas embedded in these works have remained unexplored, perhaps because it is generally assumed the idea follow on from those delineated in Valentin Voloshinovâs 1929 book Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, which has often been ascribed to Bakhtin himself. There is, however, a qualitative difference between the linguistic ideas in Voloshinovâs texts and those in Bakhtinâs essays of the 1930s, not least the discussion of the historical development of language and discursive relations within society and the modelling of these features in the novel as a genre. While Voloshinovâs work facilitated the transformation of Bakhtinâs early phenomenology of intersubjectivity into the account of discursive relations we find in the latterâs 1929 Dostoevskii book, both works present largely synchronic analyses quite distinct from that found in the 1934 essay. Voloshinov succeeded in transforming Bakhtinâs early âphilosophy of the actâ and aesthetic activity into discursive terms largely through his adoption of Karl Buhlerâs âorganon modelâ of the âspeech eventâ or âspeech actâ, but this left the static phenomenology of the earlier work intact. Similarly, Voloshinov and Medvedev managed to recast Bakhtinâs early account of worldview into discursive terms by adopting and sociologising the notion of style found in works by Leo Spitzer and Oskar Walzel, but again the systematic transformations of the discursive environment remained beyond the purview of the Bakhtin Circle. Where, then, did Bakhtin, from 1929 exiled in a small Kazakh town where there was very limited access to books and little contact with his erstwhile colleagues, derive the historical and sociolinguistic ideas that pervade these works
Le marrisme et lâhĂ©ritage de la Völkerpsychologie dans la linguistique soviĂ©tique
La «Nouvelle théorie du langage» était un ensemble intellectuel éclectique,
dans lequel plusieurs thĂšmes dominants de la philologie russe du XIXĂšme
siÚcle était greffés sur des formules marxistes de surface. Cet article fait remonter les principes du marrisme à la Völkerpsychologie allemande de Steinthal et Lazarus, qui considérait la langue et le mythe comme l'expression de «l'ùme du peuple». La Völkerpsychologie dominait la philologie russe pré-révolutionnaire, mais fut obligée
de battre en retraite dans la période qui suivit immédiatement la Révolution. En
son lieu et place, c'est une théorie du langage à la fois sociologique et protopragmatique
qui fut progressivement mise en place. Marr essaya de marrier les
deux courants en remplaçant la catégorie de nation (narod, Volk) par celle de
classe, ce faisant, il réhabilitait le courant précédent. Les successeurs de Marr prolongÚrent
cette tentative. AprÚs le rejet des idées marristes en 1950, cette façon
d'envisager les choses se perpĂ©tua, Ă ceci prĂšs que la centralitĂ© de la classe fut Ă
nouveau remplacée par celle de nation
Reflections on the work of R.O. Ć or: Materials from institutional archives
The work of Rozalija Osipovna Ć or (1894-1939) is examined through materials held in the archives of institutions in which she worked. Particularly important is the text of her self-criticism of 1932 in which she examines the formation of her own ideas and the influences on her work. This is supplemented with reflections on her published work and new information about aspects of her contribution to Soviet linguistc thought in the 1920s and 1930s that have remained unexplored. This brings new light to bear on Ć orâs work by illustrating her relationship to European linguistic thought and the development of Soviet intellectual life in the period of the ascendency of the ideas of Nikolaj Marr
Rethinking the colonial encounter with Bakhtin (and contra Foucault)
The limitations of employing a Foucauldian framework for studying the colonial encounter are discussed and an alternative approach drawing on the work of the Bakhtin Circle is proposed. The origins of the Foucauldian approach in postcolonial studies is traced back to the emergence of Stalinist critiques of âbourgeois orientalismâ at the beginning of the Cold War, which proposed a dualistic model of closed discourses of âbourgeoisâ and âSovietâ orientalism. The Bakhtinian approach developed in opposition to Stalinist attempts to âmonologiseâ the critical approaches developed in the USSR, questioning the idea of closed discourses and stressing modes of engagement between different social groups and ideological positions. The second part of the article provides a case study of the emergence on Indo-European philology, which is often presented as a clear example of Western Orientalism. It is shown that this movement developed as a result of collaboration between European philologists and Indian high-caste pandits. It is shown that various agendas were pursued within philology, and that a number of different critical intersections emerged over time. It is suggested that a Bakhtinian approach, suitably revised and developed, provides a superior starting point for understanding these phenomena
Bakhtine, la sociologie du langage et le roman
Le travail de Bakhtine sur le roman dans les années 1930 a généralement
été vu comme opposé aux tendances dominantes de la pensée sovietique de
l'Ă©poque, ou mĂȘme comme une subversion de cette pensĂ©e. Cette impression
est fallacieuse, car, Ă la suite de son arrestation en 1929, Bakhtine a
subi une perestroïka intellectuelle», en tous points aussi profonde que
celle de nombre de ses contemporains. Il a, en effet, adopté les points fondamentaux
du programme marriste, et fait de nombreux emprunts au travail
d'intellectuels soviétiques influents. Il n'y a guÚre de raisons de soupçonner
la sincĂ©ritĂ© de cette rĂ©orientation, mĂȘme si Bakhtine fait subir Ă ces
idées des ajustements trÚs particuliers. Son travail des années 1930 devrait
ĂȘtre considĂ©rĂ© plutĂŽt comme une contribution Ă la science soviĂ©tique que
comme le renversement de ses principes de base, et ses idées sur la langue
et la société comme beaucoup moins originales qu'elles ne le paraissaient
autrefois. Si l'on veut chercher l'originalité des articles de Bakhtine des
années 1930, c'est ailleurs qu'on va la trouver, dans la façon dont il a intégré la socioiinguistique soviétique naissante à la théorie du roman
Language, caste and the Brahmanical framing of European indology: Aleksei Barannikov's "Some positions in the field of indology" (1941)
A translation of the named article by the early Soviet Indologist A. P. Barannikov (1890â1952) is introduced. The topicality of the article in relation to current trends in scholarship is discussed, and a brief consideration of the historical context of the publication of the original article is provided. This includes reflections on the specificities of pre-Revolutionary Indology in Russia, especially as represented in the work ofS. F. Olâdenburg (1863â1934) and F. I. Shcherbatskoi (aka Theodor Stcherbatsky, 1866â1942), and the development of a new form of Indology as represented by the translated article. Information is provided about the intellectual sources of the article, highlighting the development of sociological approaches to language in the early USSR, and comparisons with the ideas of Antonio Gramsci. It is suggested that Barannikovâs work, with its discussion of the centrality of conflictual relations between Sanskrit and vernacular traditions, anticipates some recent works on the anti-caste movement, and it suggests a more complex relationship between colonial philology and oriental studies more generally, and the intellectual traditions of the indigenous elite
The Bakhtin Circle and the East (or What Bakhtinian Ideas Tell Us about âDecolonising the Curriculumâ)
The ideas of the Bakhtin Circle, specifically those of Bakhtin and Tubianskii are discussed with regard to the contemporary project to decolonise the university curriculum. The anti-colonial aspects of the work of the circle, which are mainly implicit rather than explicitly stated, are emphasised in relation to the semantic palaeontology Bakhtin adopted and developed from scholars such as Marr, Frank-Kamenetskii and Freidenberg on the one hand and Tubianskiiâs discussion of the ideas of Tagore on the other. Links with the early anti-caste movement and contemporary Soviet Indology are drawn and are contrasted with perspectives current in so-called âsubaltern studiesâ. It is suggested that, suitably revised and developed, Bakhtinian ideas can contribute to combatting colonial bases within universities
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