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Neo- in cultural theory Bakhtin, Derrida and Foucault craig brandist

Nous sommes tous néokantiens. rather scarce, and those that trace its influence on 1 social and cultural theory have focused on the influence In the 1980s and early 1990s, when poststructuralism of Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert on Max set the agenda in cultural theory and shaped the way in Weber. The Marburg Schoolʼs influence on Durkheim which theorists from traditions were received, the via Charles Renouvier (1815–1903), Léon Brunschvicg work of the Bakhtin Circle was often seen as anticipat- (1869–1944), Octave Hamelin (1856–1907) and Emile ing contemporary concerns to a quite uncanny extent. Boutroux (1845–1921) has been given much less atten- While some adopted Bakhtin as a poststructuralist tion than the influence of Comte and Spencer.3 Whilst avant la lettre, others seized on Bakhtinian ideas as a recent upsurge of interest in the work of Georg an alternative way of dealing with the very issues Simmel has given rise to work on his sociological poststructuralism had raised without disappearing writings, his distinctive and no less influential forays into the poststructuralist void of Derridaʼs ʻoutside into neo-Kantianism and have been textʼ or partaking of Foucaultʼs of power. rather less well served. The work of the late Gillian Gradually, it became apparent that despite a reiterated Rose is a notable exception, providing learned assess- adherence to the ʻconcrete eventʼ and ʻsocial contextʼ, ments of the traces of both Baden and Marburg School Bakhtinian theory was itself as thoroughly anti-realist neo-Kantianism in some areas of classical , as the poststructuralists themselves. Western and poststructuralism.4 Many of Few were prepared to search for the grounds of Roseʼs critiques are, however, little more than sketches, perceived correspondences in intellectual history, and the unfamiliarity of neo-Kantian ideas – coupled partly because, in a common effort to maintain a with her own very dense, Hegelian proclivities and politically radical public profile, all three theorists juridical focus – mean that her work has not been kept their own philosophical sources well out of sight. widely received.5 Indeed, despite Foucaultʼs above-mentioned invoca- Bakhtin studies have, however, bought neo-Kantian- tion of neo-Kantianism, the extent to which he or ism and the it spawned back into focus, Derrida realized the traditions behind their own ideas allowing us to reassess recent intellectual history is unclear, since they only considered their immediate and better diagnose the malaise afflicting much con- theoretical ancestors. Bakhtin was rather more aware temporary theory. While the Baden School has been of his place in intellectual history and it is recent relatively well served by translations in English, with research into the sources of his ideas that has made the exception of the work of Ernst Cassirer and the the current investigation possible.2 I shall argue here late Jewish writings of Hermann Cohen, that of the that these three figures share roots in a common Marburg School remains largely untranslated. The ear- philosophical tradition: neo-Kantianism, specifically liest translated work by Cassirer, Substance and Func- that of the Marburg School. tion, marked the beginning of his divergence from the Few in the Anglophone world are primed to recog- School and his convergence with a specific variety of nize neo-Kantian traits in cultural theory these days. neo-.6 Bakhtin began reading the central Sustained works on neo-Kantianism in English are Marburg School texts quite early, encouraged by his

6 Radical 102 (July/August 2000) friend Matvei Kagan, who had studied in Marburg no self- because the power of mythical under Cohen and Paul Natorp and with Cassirer.7 In thought was sufficient to prevent any such objecti- the 1930s, Bakhtin followed Cassirer towards Hegel, fication. To understand the nature of these intellec- and also maintained a definite connection with key ele- tual enterprises we must turn to their philosophical ments of the Marburg method. The Marburg influence roots. on Derrida and Foucault come via different routes – including Husserl, Heidegger, Brunschvicg and clas- The Marburg School project sical sociology – so materializes in different ways. Neo-Kantianism was a rather misleading term since There are definite points, however, where the shared the revisions of Kant were fundamental. Where Kant heritage is apparent. argued that concepts are validated in their a priori When Roy Bhaskar notes that Derrida has an application to the empirical world, the neo-Kantians, ʻunfortunate tendency to elide the referent in the semi- following the work of R.H. Lotze, argued that the otic triangle … which deconstructs his own practice validity (Geltung) of propositions is established inde- which cannot thereby be theoretically sustainedʼ, it pendently, by . The realm of values and validity is the neo-Kantian basis of the method that has been is now akin to Platoʼs Ideas so that what has validity identified.8 Even the corporeally insistent historical (was gilt) is quite different from what is (was ist) works of Foucault and Bakhtin are rather different to and there is no point of transition between them. The the materialist works they once appeared. The subtitle ramifications of this move were brought out in the of Foucaultʼs 1963 The Birth of the Clinic illustrates work of Cohen, the leader of the Marburg School, who this well: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. argued that it no longer made sense to speak of a ʻthing The book deals with the production of an object of in itselfʼ if validity was autonomous. ʻObjectificationʼ according to ʻnew forms of the mathemati- meant not the relationship between the mind and an cal a prioriʼ, a consideration of which also brings his empirical world, but the production of the object by methodological opus, The Order of Things, to a close. and in thought. Cohen was uneasy about the term In the case of both Bakhtin and Foucault, the body ʻproduceʼ since this implied production of and from is a historically changing object of knowledge. In the ʻsomething placed outsideʼ; instead he adopted the Renaissance the individual body is a microcosm of term ʻoriginʼ (Ursprung). Cohenʼs intention was later the universe, with life and death having a cosmic sig- clarified by his student Cassirer: nificance. Over the next two centuries the individual The primacy of activity over possibility, of the life is separated and the cosmic co-ordinates lost.9 This independent-spiritual over the sensible-thinglike, is the way the transformation of perception – medical should be carried through purely and completely. and otherwise – occurred, and all other considerations Any appeal to a merely given should fall aside; in are beyond knowledge. This characteristic ʻbracket- place of every supposed foundation in things there ingʼ is clearly stated in the following comment by should enter the pure foundations of thinking, of Bakhtin: willing, of artistic and religious consciousness. In this way, Cohenʼs logic became the logic of the Three centuries ago the ʻwhole worldʼ was a unique origin.11 symbol that could not be adequately represented by any model, by any map or globe. In this symbol the Marburg neo-Kantianism was militantly anti- ʻwhole worldʼ, visible and cognised, embodied-real, psychologistic, and this made it a powerful influence was a small and detached patch of earthly space and on the development of ʻtranscendental phenomen- an equally small and detached chunk of real time. ologyʼ. Paul Natorp, the second major Marburg neo- Everything else unsteadily disappeared into the fog, became mixed-up and interlaced with other worlds, Kantian, argued – in an article that Husserl cited as estranged-ideal, fantastic, utopian. The point is not the catalyst of his own anti-psychologistic turn – that that the other-worldly and fantastic filled-in this the ʻthing in itselfʼ was at best a limiting concept impoverished , combined and rounded reality which organized thought, ʻan unknown X that we out into a mythological whole. The otherworldly endlessly defineʼ. However, he also argued that the disorganized and bled this present reality.10 ʻobjective validityʼ of that definition is ʻindependent of The world literally was that symbol, bled and dis- the subjectivity of knowledge … what is to be objec- organized by mythical thinking. The symbol did not tively valid, is to be valid apart from the givenness represent the world badly, but it was the world itself. of its representation in this or that consciousness.ʼ12 That symbol could not be represented, it could not Validity is established in accordance with the ʻfactual appear for itself but existed only in itself. Culture had validityʼ (faktische Geltung) of the mathematics that

Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) 7 underlies each , with the consequence that, as Cohen put it, genuine actuality consists of science in ʻpublished booksʼ.13 Where Kant argued that dog- matism begins with an analysis of , and criticism with an analysis of knowledge, the Marburg School argued that the lay in the perceived task of cognition. The dogmatic method regards the object of knowledge as given (gegeben) and takes the task of cognition to consist in the cognition of that object, drawing closer to it, revealing what is given in experi- ence from the given object. The critical method, on the other hand, regards only as the occasion for the production of the object; the object is not given but set as a task (aufgegeben). This is a never-ending task (unendliche Aufgabe) because all thought is in (das Werden). Despite the Marburg Schoolʼs , it is possible here to see the seeds of Heideggerʼs critique of ʻpres- enceʼ, which plays such a central role in Derridaʼs work.14 In the Marburg formulations Kantʼs trans- – into a never-ending task validated by the object cendental logic now becomes a pure logic (Cohen) or domains of individual . a general logic (Natorp), methods in which the object can and should be ʻproducedʼ from and in thought. Derrida: the origin of différance This is an uncompromising anti-realism incom- With his famous – or notorious – declaration that ʻthere patible with any form of reference to the empirical is no outside-textʼ, Derrida undertakes a neo-Kantian world, no matter how self-critical or falliblistic. Being reworking of structuralist startlingly remi- is now equated with being known; ʻmetaphysicsʼ, as niscent of Marburgian Geltungsphilosophie. Where the French neo-Kantian Brunschvicg put it, ʻmay be Brunschvicg had developed a Marburgian ʻmodality of reduced to the theory of knowledgeʼ.15 The divergence judgementʼ in which knowledge constitutes a world for between, on the one hand, the neo-Kantian approach to us, Derridaʼs ʻIl nʼy a pas de hors-texteʼ does not posit language and experience and, on the other, analytical an ontological ʻnothingʼ outside the text17 but claims philosophy with its concentration on reference, can be that language constitutes the world for us beyond traced back to the initial divergence between Lotze and which nothing can be justifiably posited. Both Foucault Frege.16 But it is in the work of the Marburg School and Bakhtin agree with this banishment of that the implications of the divergence become appar- and attack on representation as mimesis in their own ent: all knowledge of the empirical world is excluded respective neo-Kantian moves; all three effectively in principle. As we shall see, the Bakhtinian and present their work as ʻCopernican revolutionsʼ in phil- poststructuralist philosophies of language are typical osophy, deconstructing the ʻcopy theoryʼ of relations developments of neo-Kantianism, which in their own between language and a ʻgivenʼ object in favour of ways transform the object of cognition – the signified an investigation into the discursive constitution of the

8 Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) object of knowledge.18 For all three, the object can only of origin) that is rooted in Jewish .22 This is be known as signified, but never finally and entirely again reminiscent of Cohen, whose philosophy was a known since it is never actually present. In the case particular convergence of neo-Kantianism and Jewish of Derrida, presence is eternally disrupted by the ʻplay mysticism, the messianic aspects of which one also of absence and presenceʼ within a constantly shifting finds in Bakhtinʼs notion of carnival. signifying system. The Bakhtin Circle: neo-Kantian Rose has shown that Saussureʼs Course in General Linguistics proceeds along Kantian lines, with the langue/langage distinction corresponding to that The Bakhtinian linguistic development of neo-Kan- between the a priori (precondition) and the empiri- tianism is very different, not least because it is not cal (conditioned). Saussureʼs distinction between based on Saussurean linguistics. The Bakhtin Circle ʻconceptʼ and ʻsound-imageʼ further corresponds to subscribed to a philosophy of language that stressed Kantʼs distinction between concept and (given) intui- subjective spontaneity in communication while oppos- ing the psychologism of Romantic linguistics. In a tion/representation; Saussureʼs account of linguistic recently published plan for Valentin Voloshinovʼs value to Kantʼs move from ʻdescriptionʼ to transcen- Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, Cassirerʼs dental reconstruction where concept (signified) and 1923 work The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms vol. sound image (signifier) are shown to be a construct 1: Language is hailed as initiating a new phase of of signification.19 The Derridean critique of Saussure neo-Kantianism: actually follows many of the moves of the neo-Kan- tians in their critique of Kant. Langue (a priori) now ʻthe wordʼ becomes a partition [sredostenie] ʻproducesʼ language (empirical), but the subject is no between transcendental validity and concrete longer able to halt the play of difference to achieve actuality, a ʻthird realmʼ, as it were, lying be- a stable meaning (object of cognition). That meaning tween the cognising psycho-physical subject and the empirical actuality surrounding him on the is produced by the play of difference (the process of one hand, and the world of a priori, formal being becoming). Where the neo-Kantian object of cognition on the other. At the same time, the form of the is never finally defined (present) but is constantly being sign and significance (symbolic form) is common produced, Derridean presence is endlessly deferred. to all regions of cultural creativity, uniting them. Difference-ruled deferral famously becomes dif- Such is the systematic place of the word in the teachings of the neo-Kantians.… It is precisely férance, a Derridean version of Cohenʼs ʻoriginʼ, which on the ground of the philosophy of language that 20 also ʻdifferentiatesʼ. This is the ʻoriginary differenceʼ the Marburg Schoolʼs abstract and the between Kantʼs quid facti and quid juris recast in Freiburg Schoolʼs abstract ethicism is now be- Lotzeʼs contrast of what is and what has validity to ing overcome. By means of the inner form of become an opposition between being and meaning, the language (as a semi-transcendental form) move- ment and historical becoming is being introduced elision of which constitutes metaphysics. As Vincent into the petrified realm of transcendental-logical Descombes – one of the only writers to recognize forms. It is also on this basis that an attempt to re- the influence of neo-Kantianism on Derrida – argues, establish the idealist is being made.23 the identity of being and meaning is, for Derrida, only ʻat infinityʼ, infinitely deferred like neo-Kantian Voloshinov here signals the neo-Kantian appropriation ʻinfinite tasksʼ and ʻinterminable “teleologies”ʼ. Der- and adaptation of Wilhelm von Humboldtʼs organicist ridaʼs notion of ʻtraceʼ, which highlights ʻthe sign left philosophy of language in its evolution towards a type by the absent thing after it has passedʼ, is a mark of of neo-Hegelianism. In this new adaptation, language this originary delay. As Descombes puts it, without becomes a ʻpartitionʼ between ʻlifeʼ as understood reference to Cohen: ʻif every present bears the trace of by Lebensphilosophie and objective culture (validity). an absent which circumscribes it (and by which, in this Where in Bakhtinʼs early work the ʻact of our activity, sense, it is constituted, produced and given to be what of our experience, like the two-faced Janus, looks to it is), then paradoxically an “originary trace” must be both sides: at the objective unity of cultural realms conceived of; that is, a present trace of a past which and at the unrepeatable singularity of experienced never took place – an “absolute past”.ʼ21 Furthermore, lifeʼ, so now language embodies the ʻpartitionʼ between Habermas, another neo-Kantian thinker, refers to Der- these ʻmutually imperviousʼ worlds.24 This develop- ridaʼs temporalized Ursprungsphilosophie (philosophy ment is key to overcoming what Simmel had called

Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) 9 the ʻtragedy of cultureʼ resulting from the confronta- Linguistics: the regional sciences of tion of life and objective culture. The circularity of discourse? precondition and conditioned was now embraced; as The Marburg School sought to justify the Cassirer put it, the ʻliving process of speechʼ is one of distinct object domains by establishing the ʻfactual in which ʻindividuality and universality are contained validityʼ of mathematical thinking underlying each as equally justified and equally necessary aspects of individual science. Sciences, they thought, were essen- the process. The universal is that through which the tially regional, with a priori boundaries and princi- individual constructs the world, and the universal is ples, the erasure of which is fatal to science itself. what constructs the world of the individual.ʼ25 The Neo-Kantianism was thus the ultimate self-justifying linguistic structure now shifts, ʻimperceptiblyʼ, with academic philosophy. According to the Marburgers, every utterance and this shifting structure ʻconstructsʼ jurisprudence, the science of legal concepts, is the the individual utterance. As Bakhtin put it in 1961, the ʻmathematicsʼ of the cultural sciences. Bakhtin and Voloshinov sought to establish a science of discourse utterance ʻcreates something that before it never was, as a cultural science, which is validated according something absolutely new and unrepeatable.… But to the ʻmathematicsʼ of jurisprudence, producing its something created is always created from something objects but not implying that the existing norma- given.… Everything given is transformed into what tive linguistic structure (like the existing law) is the is created.ʼ While ʻpositivistʼ scholarship studies only embodiment of . Linguistics is a specific the ʻgiven in the createdʼ, the object is nevertheless object domain, but one whose method is that of the ʻcreated in the process of creation, the poet himself natural sciences; this lies behind Bakhtinʼs hostility is created, and his world view, and the means of to Saussurean linguistics. La langue is a system of 26 expressionʼ. Here we have the Bakhtinian recasting norms that cannot be questioned: a method appropriate of the Marburg never-ending task: thought as thought for the natural sciences is imposed on the cultural of origin. sciences so that linguistics claims to explain cultural Where Cassirer recast Humboldtʼs ʻinner-formʼ as phenomena. The existing standard of value must be the ʻlaw of significationʼ, Bakhtin concentrated on able to be questioned if the production of the object the relationality of discourse and called this ʻdialo- is a never-ending task, and this is especially the case gismʼ, the ongoing and never-ending process of inter- in the science of culture, the object of which is a 29 subjective thought-exchange, the units of which are ʻteleological formationʼ. utterances. Dialogism is the logic of thought-exchange Bakhtinʼs most systematic comments on this matter on the basis of language and, like all the ʻhuman are in his late notes on establishing a ʻmethodology sciencesʼ, has an ethical significance. For Cohen, the for the human sciencesʼ and his major 1953 essay on ʻdiscursive genresʼ, the latter of which takes advantage ʻmathematicsʼ of is jurisprudence, and it is of Stalinʼs recent consignment of linguistics to the for this reason that dialogism is both juridical and natural sciences.30 The neo-Kantian underpinnings of normative. In the novel, as the most self-consciously Bakhtinʼs argument are especially clear in recently dialogic form of complex (meta-)utterance, socio- published archival notes for the discursive genres specific discourses are brought to an inquest, with the essay, where Bakhtin tries to justify this new regional novelist him- or herself not ʻspeakingʼ directly.27 The science of discourse by arguing that only this can utterances of the hero are defined by their relations analyse the ʻrelatednessʼ of linguistic meaning (znach- towards (a) the object; (b) the given linguistic system enie) to ʻobjective validityʼ – that is, the ʻtruthfulness, of possibilities for expression; and (c) other utter- beauty, veracity, necessity, expressiveness, sincerityʼ ances within the sphere of intercourse. In this way of the utterance.31 These categories are what Kagan, the discourse can be judged ʻcorrect (or incorrect), following Cohen, called ʻundoubted facts of actual- true, right (or false/wrong), beautiful, just etc.ʼ. The ityʼ, the ʻspheres of objects and problems of separate author thus plays the role of the assumed but unheard scientific and cultural disciplinesʼ into which ʻactuality ʻsuperaddresseeʼ who, like Kantʼs theoretical reason, is broken upʼ.32 The same feature found its way into sits in judgement. Outside the literary work, however, the neo-Kantianism that shaped French philosophy. As the presence of such a judge is simply assumed as Durkheimʼs teacher, Hamelin, put it, quoting Renou- a structural requisite of dialogue, the ʻthirdʼ the vier, such ʻcategories are necessary phenomena in ʻabsolutely just responsive understanding of whom is relation to our minds … they are necessary … presupposed either at a metaphysical distance or in which are the condition of [the understanding] being distant historical timeʼ.28 used.ʼ33

10 Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) Like Bakhtin, Derrida seeks to found a new regional of culture and made a productive origin. As Habermas science of language in use, though on rather differ- recognizes with reference to Derrida, the printed form ent premisses. His characterization of science and of of language severs the text from the context in which writing, the science of which is grammatology, is typi- it arose, from concrete connections with individual cally neo-Kantian: science is a ʻtaskʼ in which ideal subjects and gives it an autonomy in relation to all objects are produced, while writing is ʻthe condition living contexts, so that the text becomes readable in of the possibility of ideal objects … the condition of all changing contexts. The semantic content (Natorpʼs the epistémè.ʼ34 Derrida draws heavily on Husserlʼs ʻobjective validity) is thereby saved from psycholo- essay ʻthe Origin of Geometryʼ, which, as Rose shows, gism.40 Derridaʼs embrace of writing is thus similar is itself a ʻclassic piece of neo-Kantianism in the to Cohenʼs notion of genuine actuality being science Marburg styleʼ: in published books.

It seeks to justify an exemplary or regional science Life, culture and the inbetween not knowledge as such; it drops the distinction be- tween appearances and things in themselves; it turns Foucault presents the most systematic poststructuralist the question of transcendental possibility into the attempt to develop a neo-Kantian scheme of regional delineation of a productive origin; and it defines the validities and to relate this to discourse in life. The fol- a priori metacritically as ʻcultureʼ or ʻhistory.ʼ ʻCul- lowing passage from The Archaeology of Knowledge tureʼ or ʻhistoryʼ becomes the name for the source of signification which repeatedly creates or posits shows the connection with the principles of Cohen its idealities or validities: this historical beginning is and Derrida but it also provides a useful bridge to defined as ʻorigin in an accomplishment, first as a Bakhtinʼs work: project and then as a successful executionʼ.35 Different oeuvres, dispersed books, that whole mass Derrida sets writing as a metacritical a priori one of texts that belong[s] to a single discursive forma- stage back from that of Husserl: ʻbefore being the tion – and so many authors who know or do not object of a history – the object of an historical science know one another, criticize one another, … pillage one another, meet without knowing it and obsti- – writing opens the field of history – of historical nately intersect their unique discourses in a web becoming. And the former (Historie in German) pre- of which they are not the masters, of which they 36 supposes the latter (Geschichte).ʼ Writing, the world cannot see the whole, and of whose breadth they of and in signs, now becomes the mathematics of have a very inadequate idea … they communicate history as science (method) and the object of history is by the form of positivity of their discourse.… Thus ʻproducedʼ by différance. Derrida criticizes the notion positivity plays the role of what might be called a historical a priori.41 that experience ʻalways corresponds to a certain type of factual or regional experience (historical, psycho- Objective validity is here an agitated field of discursive logical, physiological, sociological, etc.), giving rise to interaction strikingly reminiscent of Bakhtinʼs mature a science that is itself regional and, as such, rigorously work. In a well-known passage, Bakhtin describes how 37 outside linguisticsʼ for its phonologism. Reversing every utterance is a dependent but active participant in the hierarchy between speech and writing means that a constantly (re)forming discursive mesh of intersect- regional sciences themselves become conditions of ing utterances of which individuals have but partial ʻexperienceʼ: regional sciences give rise to (objectify) knowledge: regional experience. Every … prose word – everyday, rhetorical, scien- Bakhtin makes a similar point when he argues tific – cannot but be oriented on the ʻalready saidʼ, that ʻcommunication requires objective validity (in all the knownʼ, on ʻcommon opinionʼ etc. The dialogic its various forms depending on the sphere of inter- orientation of the word is of course a phenomenon course); without it communication would degenerate common to every word. It is the natural condition and decay. All utterances have dealings with objective of every living word. On each of its routes toward actuality regardless of the consciousness or of the object, in all its directions, the word meets the alien word and cannot but enter into a living ten- people (speakers, those engaged in communication), sion-filled interaction with it.42 and regardless of communication itself.ʼ38 Derridaʼs notion of ʻarche-writingʼ as the ʻpure movement which Though Bakhtinʼs passage displays a much stronger produces differenceʼ39 is thus akin to Cassirerʼs ʻlaw of phenomenological coloration than that of Foucault, symbolizationʼ but without the organicism which the there is a close relationship between the notions of latter inherited from von Humboldt and bequeathed to ʻdirectednessʼ and ʻpositivityʼ, since in each case the Bakhtin. History is transferred wholesale to the realm object of discourse is not given but, in classic neo-

Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) 11 Kantian style, posited in the discursive act. In each his books on Freud and on the philosophy of lan- case the object is posited not by a subject in complete guage, where he makes a distinction between ʻlife- control of his or her positing discourse, but according ideologyʼ (zhiznennaia or zhiteiskaia ideologiia, to a discursive a priori with historical being. misleadingly rendered as ʻbehavioral ideologyʼ in the In the preface to The Order of Things Foucault English translation) and ideology proper as the realm distinguishes three levels at which his analysis will of objective validity. As Galin Tihanov has shown, work. The first level is constituted by the primary this derives from an inventive development of the codes of culture: work of Simmel and Nikolai Bukharin so that ʻlife The fundamental codes of culture – those govern- ideologyʼ becomes a ʻsupply chamberʼ for ideological ing its language, its schemas of perception, its systems (ʻethics, science, art and religionʼ), displaying a greater fluidity and sensitiv- ity due to a closer contact with social situation; infiltrating, influencing and transforming ideological systems. Voloshinov also distinguishes between dif- ferent ʻstrataʼ of life ideology, with the lower regions having a greater proximity to ʻlifeʼ than the upper levels, which are more systematized.44 The category of life and its relations with the realms of ʻobjective valid- ityʼ was similarly the central question throughout Foucaultʼs career, though his approach to this question changed consid- erably. Foucaultʼs ʻthird realmʼ roughly corresponds to Voloshi- novʼs ʻupper levelʼ of life-ideology, exchanges, its techniques, its values, the hierarchy while the first level corresponds to the latterʼs lower of its practices – establish for every man, from the level. In Bakhtinʼs mature work the relatively stable very first, the empirical orders with which he will be dealing and within which he will be at home. forms that the different levels of ʻlife-ideologyʼ take are defined in terms of discursive genres, a category At the second level, and ʻother extremity of thoughtʼ which Foucault rejects, with ʻprimaryʼ genres being are ʻthe scientific theories or the philosophical interpre- embedded in direct social interaction: tations which explain why order exists in general, what Secondary (complex) discursive genres – novels, universal law it obeys, what principle can account for dramas, all types of scientific research, large pub- it, and why this particular order and not some otherʼ. licistic genres etc. – arise in more complex condi- Between these two extremes, however, is a third ʻmore tions and relatively well-developed and organized obscureʼ level that he calls the ʻpure experience of cultural communication (primarily written): artistic, order and its modes of beingʼ, or the ʻepisteme.ʼ This scientific, socio-political etc. In the process of their formation they absorb and rework various primary is regarded as the most difficult sphere to analyse (simple) genres, which have been composed in and also the most fundamental, since it occupies the direct discursive intercourse. On becoming ingre- space between the first and second levels and provides dients of the complex ones, the primary genres are the basis for the construction of the second level. transformed and acquire a specific character: losing This realm is described as a sort of ineffable proto- their direct relation to real actuality and towards 45 reflexivity firmly linked to time and space, shifting real alien utterances. and anarchic but also more ʻtrueʼ than the second Here we have a simple bifurcation into what we level.43 might call ʻlife-genresʼ (Foucaultʼs first level) and Foucaultʼs fascinating exposition is remarkably the genres of ʻobjective cultureʼ (second level), but in similar to an analysis developed by Voloshinov in Bakhtinʼs on the novel he introduces a third

12 Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) realm consisting of the small parodic genres which acute, leading to a flood of ʻunofficialʼ culture into are themselves incorporated into the larger, secondary, their novels. The carnivalesque plays a particularly meta-genre of the novel; this is further expanded in important role here, constituting a sort of genre of his discussion of the Menippean satire in the 1963 the third realm, a transition point between cultureʼs Dostoevsky book. Indeed, Bakhtin develops a scheme ʻprimary codesʼ and reflexive forms. In each case there in which the genres associated with popular culture is no attempt to assess the adequacy of any histori- (ʻlowʼ humorous genres, and especially carnival) are cally generated form of social consciousness against a preconditions of science in the same way as Foucaultʼs world existing independent of knowledge, but only an third level of ʻpure experience of orderʼ.46 These genres attempt to uncover the preconditions for historically stand midway between life and the ʻofficialʼ culture specific oeuvres. This is a neo-Kantian project which that, like Foucaultʼs second level, is an object of sus- both Bakhtin and Foucault share. picion for its association with authority. In each case the ʻthirdʼ realm represents an ʻorder which divides Shifting positions on a neo-Kantian base systems of positivities “before presenting them to With these methodological parallels it is no surprise the understanding”ʼ, delineating ʻa classic Geltungs- that there are so many areas in which Foucaultʼs and logikʼ.47 Bakhtinʼs historical works can be compared, but it is Foucaultʼs ʻarchaeologicalʼ project is to analyse the almost solely on this basis that comparative work has relationship between third and second levels: so far progressed. Foucaultʼs pervasive anti-humanism and subsequent turn from archaeology to genealogy to rediscover on what basis knowledge and theory has overshadowed attempts to discern philosophical became possible; within what space of order knowl- edge was constituted; on the basis of what historical common ground at a more fundamental level. As a priori, and in the element of what positivity, ideas Rose shows, Foucaultʼs reversion to genealogy was a could appear, sciences be established, experience defection from one school of neo-Kantian thinking to be reflected in philosophies, rationalities be formed, another, with the Marburgian primacy of validity being only, perhaps, to dissolve and vanish soon after- replaced by a Nietzschean version of Baden School wards.48 neo-Kantianism in which the primacy of value in the Though very different from those of Foucault, production of knowledge takes the form of power.50 Bakhtinʼs historical works follow precisely this pattern, It is significant that it is this move that draws the fire focusing entirely on the forms of pre-literary culture of the more Marburgian Habermas, who argues that which made the novels of, say, Rabelais and Dosto- ʻthe internal aspects of meaning, of -validity, and evsky possible. Where Foucault attempts to outline of evaluating do not go without remainder into the ʻrules of formation which were never formulated externally grasped aspects of practices of powerʼ.51 in their own rightʼ but were nevertheless intuitable, Unlike the poststructuralists, Bakhtin remained a Bakhtin develops the notion of the ʻchronotopeʼ, or humanist throughout his career, his philosophy of lan- time–space characteristic of a particular guage being based on an organicist model rather than life-form which make certain types of literature pos- the intellectualism of Saussure. His idea of dialogue sible, and which correspond to specific discursive was a linguistic rendering of an ethic of intersubjective formations.49 The age of the epic corresponded with relations developed from the Marburg School and the Athenian monoglossia, and it was only the collapse phenomenology of , whose own work of this that made the development of science and was to some extent an attempt to overcome the frag- ʻrealisticʼ literature possible. The first pre-novelistic mentation of subjectivity described by Nietzsche. In works were made possible by the first inter-anima- the Bakhtinian mix there are the developments of tion of cultures and languages – polyglossia – which neo-Kantianism in the work of Simmel and Cassirer, resulted from the collapse of Athenian democracy and with the attempt to overcome the dichotomy of life Hellenic expansion. The modern novel was born with and objective culture through the notion of unfolding the breakdown of the feudal order, which allowed the symbolic forms. Derridaʼs and Foucaultʼs attachment inter-animation of different social groups and their to Nietzscheʼs fragmentation of the subject and a neo- discourses (heteroglossia). Saussurean philosophy of language is in sharp contrast Rabelais and Dostoevsky were both writing at to Bakhtin, while the French theorists both effectively ʻthresholdʼ times when the old order was in decline took the opposite side to Bakhtin in the famous 1929 and the new order had yet to form, times when the Davos disputation between Heidegger and Cassirer. inter-animation of social discourses was particularly Foucault and Derrida diverge on their attitude to phe-

Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) 13 nomenology and to Heideggerʼs Ursprungsphilosophie, it reverts back to the Marburg-type metaphysics of but their points of agreement are more pervasive. the production of the object through mathemati- There are nevertheless distinct points of convergence cal categories that the thinkers which mediated the between the French and Russian theorists. Derridaʼs Marburg influence had tried to undermine. Where the encounter with Levinas on the basis of intersubjective intervening generation of sociologists, existentialist ethics, pioneered by Scheler, led Derrida to move and Western Marxists had sought to toward a delineation of an ethics of outline the relationship between the history of science, which in some respects echoes the ethical charge of philosophy and productive relations, the poststructural- Bakhtinʼs dialogism. Similarly the later Foucaultʼs ists re-establish originary productive categories. After gravitation toward an ethics which reactivates the all, if validity is established independently of an sollen (ought) at the basis of Baden neo-Kantianism unknowable existence, then a disembodied ethics of brings him back into a common problematic. Common object-constitution can leave the world unknown and to all three theorists is a tendency to efface politics unchanged. It is easy to see how this fits in with the and ultimately to replace it with ethics, itself a classic perceived need of disillusioned post-1968 intellectuals neo-Kantian move. Foucault ultimately transforms the to justify their withdrawal from collective politics. will to power into a vitalistic will to life, revealing The resulting ʻnew ethicsʼ that now dominates social his own connection to Lebensphilosophie, taking us theory is, predictably, reminiscent of that with which back to his formulations in The Order of Things and incipient struggled. It also reminds to the parallels with Bakhtinʼs attempts to mediate the us of the roots of cultural studies in Kulturkritik.52 ʻworldsʼ of life and culture through a ʻthird realmʼ. This ʻnew ethicsʼ and Kulturkritik was Bakhtinʼs point These developments are all explicable with reference to of departure, with the presence of Simmel, Cohen and roots in a shared philosophical tradition which in the Scheler dominating his early ethical work. However, in case of Bakhtin was direct but in that of the French Stalinʼs Russia Bakhtin was not able to settle into what theorists was gained through a tradition of academic Rose calls the ʻslumber of the mathesisʼ,53 even through philosophy and sociology founded on German neo- a movement from philosophy to literary studies. The Kantianism. apparent separation of economic life from politics and The neo-Kantian logic of presenting the world as citizenship that characterizes bourgeois democracy and not ʻgivenʼ but ʻset as a taskʼ asserted itself in all on which neo-Kantian ethicism rests, could not be three cases with the wholesale replacement of politics maintained in Stalinʼs Russia, even within the realm by ethics. While Marburg neo-Kantian philosophers of literary criticism. Bakhtin and the poststructuralists were predominantly reformist socialists, their prime thus meet on the road going in opposite directions: aim was to establish a philosophy of regional sciences the former struggles to accommodate the increasingly based on the ʻproductionʼ of objects of knowledge apparent effects of political economy on culture within according to . In the realm of the a compromised neo-Kantian framework, while the human sciences this meant treating society exclusively latter respond to the dissipation of socio-economic as a ʻmoral realityʼ and human as ʻjuridical struggle and consolidation of bourgeois democracy personsʼ, while consigning consideration of the physi- by absorbing culture into a neo-Kantianized realm cal structures and biological requirements that impose of validity. given parameters on, and act as forces within, social Whatever the of their respective works, life to the natural sciences. Thus, the socio-economic which are often considerable, Bakhtin, Derrida and structures existentially presupposed by a specific and Foucault are seriously compromised by the neo-Kantian emergent mode of political rule or cultural formation philosophy that underlies them. Just as economic life were neglected in favour of a sui generis logic of and politics are intimately intertwined and cannot be culture. Bakhtin, Derrida and Foucault were all, in adequately explained and criticized in isolation, so their own way, compelled by the logic of their own the ʻrealmsʼ of existence and validity, fact and value, premisses to misrepresent one element of a relationship must be related in any adequate social and cultural that is integrated at a ʻmolecularʼ level by hypostasiz- theory. This requires a theory of reference princi- ing that element. The consequences for analysis are pally excluded from neo-Kantianism and a politics seriously debilitating and the political consequences that strives to overcome the division of social life in are nothing short of disastrous. practice. Theories based on neo-Kantianism can reflect Not only does this return us to a fundamentally such a division but they can neither explain nor be a idealist philosophy; in the case of poststructuralism guide to changing it.

14 Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) Notes cal Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, trans. J. Denton, This article is based on research carried out under the State University of New York Press, New York, 1997, project ʻThe Russian and European Contexts of the p. 89. works of Mikhail Bakhtin and the Bakhtin Circleʼ, 12. Paul Natorp, ʻOn the Objective and Subjective Ground- Journal of the British funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board of ing of Knowledgeʼ, trans. D. Kolb, Society for Phenomenology the British Academy. , vol. 12, no. 3, 1981, pp. 252–3. The most sustained examination of Husserlʼs 1. Quoted in Frédéric Vandenberghe, Comparing Neo-Kan- debt to Natorp is Iso Kern, Husserl und Kant: Eine tians: Ernst Cassirer and Georg Simmel, University of Untersuchung über Husserls Verhältnis zu Kant und Manchester Department of Sociology, Occasional Paper zum Neukantianismus, Martinus Nijhoff: The Hague, No. 49, 1996, p. 2. 1964, pp. 321 ff. Derrida elides the continuities between 2. I have in mind the work of, among others, Natalia Bonet- Husserl, Heidegger and neo-Kantianism in his essay on skaia, Askol´d Muratov, Brian Poole and Galin Tihanov, Cohenʼs ʻDeutschtum und Judentumʼ, ʻKant, the Jew, the I am indebted to Poole and Tihanov for comments on an Germanʼ, New Literary History, vol. 22, no. 1, 1991, p. earlier version of this article. 41. Derrida here shows little familiarity with Cohenʼs 3. Notable exceptions include Steven Collins, ʻCategories, earlier, more influential works. Concepts or Predicaments? Remarks on Maussʼs Use 13. K.S. Bakradze, Ocherk po istorii noveishei sovremennoi of Philosophical Terminologyʼ, in Michael Currithers burzhoiznoi filosofii, Sabchota sakartvelo, Tblisi, 1960, et al., The Category of the Person: , Phil- p. 251. osophy, History, Cambridge University Press, New York, 14. Heidegger succeeded Cohen in his chair in philosophy 1985; and Terry F. Godlove, ʻIs Space a Concept? Kant, at Marburg. Commenting on the famous 1929 Davos Durkheim and French Neo-Kantianismʼ, Journal of the disputation between Heidegger and Cassirer, Franz History of the Behavioral Sciences, vol. 32, no. 4, 1996, Rosenzweig argued that the former furthered the spirit of pp. 441–55. Cohenʼs philosophy more than did Cassirer. On this, see 4. Hegel Contra Sociology, Athlone, London, 1981; Dia- Gillian Rose, Judaism and Modernity, Blackwell, Ox- lectic of : Post- and Law, Black- ford, 1993, p. 112; and Peter Eli Gordon, ʻRosenzweig well, Oxford, 1984. and Heidegger: Translation, Ontology and the Anxiety of 5. Christopher Norris anticipated ʻwidespread discussion Affiliationʼ, New German Critique 77, 1999, pp. 114–16. among critics, philosophers and … theorists of a post- Rose also notes how, ʻlike Cohen, Heidegger begins by structuralist persuasionʼ arising from Roseʼs 1984 book expounding time as the productive unity and difference on poststructuralism and law, but this does not appear internal to Kantʼs transcendental exposition of experi- to have materialized. Christopher Norris, Deconstruction enceʼ (Dialectic of Nihilism, p. 70). and the Interests of Theory, Pinter Publishers, London, 15. Vincent Descombes, Modern French Philosophy, trans. 1988, p. 245. L. Scott-Fox and J.M. Harding, Cambridge University 6. The neo-Hegelian structure of Cassirerʼs central work Press, Cambridge, 1980, p. 19. was first advanced by Donald Verene in ʻKant, Hegel 16. On this, see Michael Dummett, ʻObjectivity and Real- and Symbol: the Origins of the Philosophy of Symbolic ity: Lotze and Fregeʼ, in Frege and Other Philosophers, Formsʼ (Journal of the History of Ideas 30, 1969, pp. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991, pp. 97–125. 33–46), and was elaborated in J.M. Krois, Cassirer: 17. Frank Lentricchia, After the New Criticism, Methuen, Symbolic Forms and History, Yale University Press, London, 1983, p. 171. On this aspect of Brunschvicgʼs New Haven and London, 1987. work see S.I.M. Du Plessis, The Compatibility of Science 7. V.D. Duvakin, Besedy s M.M. Bakhtinym, Progress Pub- and Philosophy in 1840–1940, Balkema, Cape lishers, Moscow, 1996, pp. 39–41. Town, 1972, pp. 45–6 and 192–208. 8. Roy Bhaskar, etc., Verso, London, 1994, pp. 199– 18. Compare Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic 200. Forms, vol. 1: Language, trans. R. Mannheim, Yale 9. Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archae- University Press, New Haven and London, 1955, pp. ology of Medical Perception, trans. A.M. Sheridan 105 ff. Smith, Tavistock, London, 1973, pp. 170–73. Compare 19. Rose, Dialectic of Nihilism, pp. 113–14. Bakhtinʼs account of medicine, largely borrowed from 20. Ibid., 151. Cassirer without reference, in Rabelais and His World, 21. Descombes, Modern French Philosophy, pp. 144, 148. trans. H. Iswolsky, Indiana University Press, Bloom- 22. Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Mod- ington, 1984, pp. 359 ff. On Bakhtinʼs unattributed bor- ernity, trans. F. Lawrence, Polity Press: Cambridge, rowing from Cassirer here, see Brian Poole, ʻBakhtin 1987, pp. 167, 182. and Cassirer: The Philosophical Origins of Bakhtinʼs 23. ʻLichnoe delo V.N. Voloshinovaʼ, Dialog Karnaval Carnival Messianismʼ, South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. Khronotop 2, 1995, pp. 87–8. 97, no. 3/4, 1998, pp. 537–78. 24. M.M. Bakhtin, Raboty 1920-kh godov, Next, Kiev, 1994, 10. ʻRoman vospitaniia i ego znachenie v istorii realizmaʼ, p. 12; Toward a Philosophy of the Act, trans. V. Lia- Estetika slovesnogo tvorchestva, Iskusstvo, Moscow, punov, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1993, p. 2. 1979, pp. 118–236, 224; ʻThe Bildungsroman and Its 25. ʻ“Geist” and “Life”ʼ, in Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy Significance in the History of Realismʼ, Speech Genres of Symbolic Forms, vol. 4: The Metaphysics of Symbolic and Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee, Univer- Forms, trans. J.M. Krois, Yale University Press, New sity of Texas Press, Austin, 1986, pp. 10–59, 43. Haven and London, 1996, pp. 3–33, 16–17. 11. Quoted in Jürgen Habermas, ʻThe German 26. M.M. Bakhtin, ʻ1961 god. zametkiʼ, Sobranie sochinenii of the Jewish Philosophersʼ, Philosophical–Political V, Russkie slovari, Moscow, 1996, pp. 329–60, 330– Profiles, trans. F.G. Lawrence, Heinemann, London, 31. 1983, pp. 21–43, 26. See also Andrea Poma, The Criti- 27. See M.M. Bakhtin, ʻSlovo v romaneʼ, in Voprosy lit-

Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000) 15 eratury i estetiki, Khudozhestvennaia literatura, Mos- pp. 308–10; Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, cow, 1975, pp. 72–233, 200; ʻDiscourse in the Novelʼ, trans. L. Matejka and I.R. Titunik, Harvard University The Dialogic Imagination, trans. C. Emerson and M. Press, Cambridge MA, pp. 91–3. On this, see Galin Holquist, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1981, pp. Tihanov, ʻVoloshinov, Ideology and Language: The Birth 259–422, 388. The jurisprudential heritage is especially of Marxist Sociology from the Spirit of Lebensphiloso- clear in the work of the Circleʼs other literary theorist phieʼ, South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 97, no. 3/4, 1998, Lev Pumpianskii: ʻIn the heroic novel there is an un- pp. 599–621. interrupted passing of judgement (sud) on the character. 45. M.M. Bakhtin, ʻProblema rechevykh zhanrovʼ, in So- … The method [of the heroic novel] is the trial of the branie, pp. 159–206, 161; ʻThe Problem of Speech powers of contending sides in a well-considered social Genresʼ, in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, pp. court through the construction of the walk of life, scenes 60–102, 62. of a life, accompanied by the uninterrupted interpretation 46. On this, see especially Bakhtinʼs ʻEpos i romanʼ, Vo- of the authorʼ (L.V. Pumpianskii ʻRomany Turgeneva i prosy, pp. 447–83, 466; ʻEpic and Novelʼ, The Dialogic roman “Nakanune”: istoriko-literaturnyi ocherkʼ, in I.S. Imagination, pp. 3–40, 23. Tirgenev, Sochineniia VI, Moskva–Leningrad, 1929, pp. 47. Rose, Dialectic of Nihilism, p. 185. 9–26, 9, 11). 48. Foucault, The Order of Things, pp. xxi–xxii. 28. Bakhtin, ʻ1961 god. zametkiʼ, pp. 333, 337. Note also 49. Though the term was allegedly taken from biology, one Voloshinovʼs affirmative comments on the ʻ“juridical” of the main sources of this idea was Cassirerʼs neo- theory of tragedyʼ developed in Cohenʼs Ästhetik des Kantian writing on ʻintuitive expressionʼ in language in Reinen Gefühls in ʻSlovo v zhizni i slovo v poeziiʼ, in volume 1 of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, pp. 198 V.N. Voloshinov, Filosofiia i sotsiologiia gumanitarnykh ff., and ʻmyth as a form of intuitionʼ and ʻlife formʼ in nauk, Asta, St. Petersburg, 1995, pp. 59–86, 82; English volume 2 on Mythical Thought (trans. R. Manheim, Yale translation, ʻDiscourse in Life and Discourse in Poetryʼ, University Press, New Haven and London, 1955). in Ann Shukman, ed., Bakhtin School Papers, Russian 50. Rose, Dialectic of Nihilism, pp. 187 ff. Poetics in Translation 10, 1983, pp. 5–29, 25. 51. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 29. Hermann Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, Georg Olms p. 276. Verlag, Hildesheim and New York, 1981, p. 309. 52. See Francis Mulhern, ʻThe Politics of Cultural Studiesʼ, 30. On Stalinʼs Marxism and Questions of Linguistics, see Monthly Review, vol. 47, no. 5, 1995, pp. 31–40. V.M. Alpatov, ʻWhat is Marxism in Linguisticsʼ, in Craig Brandist and Galin Tihanov, eds, Materializing Bakhtin: The Bakhtin Circle and Social Theory, Mac- millan: London, 1999, pp. 173–93. 31. Sobranie, p. 251. 32. Matvei Kagan, ʻGerman Kogen (4 iiulia 1842–4 aprelia 1918)ʼ, Nauchnie izvestiia sbornik vtoroi, R.S.F.S.R. Akademicheskii tsentr narkomprosa, Moscow, 1922, pp. 110–124, 114. 33. Quoted in Collins, ʻCategories, Concepts or Predica- ments?ʼ, p. 61. 34. Of Grammatology, trans. G. Spivak, Johns Hopkins Uni- versity Press, Baltimore, 1976, p. 27. 35. Rose, Dialectic of Nihilism, p. 150. Husserlʼs 1936 essay is reproduced in Thomas Luckmann, ed., Phenomen- ology and Sociology, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1978, pp. 42–70. Derridaʼs first major published work was his LʼOrigine de la géometrie de Husserl, Traduction et Introduction, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1962; English translation Edmund Husserlʼs Origin of Geometry: An Introduction, trans. J.P. Leavey, Hays, Stoneybrook, 1978. 36. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 27. 37. Ibid., pp. 60–61. 38. Sobranie, p. 251. 39. Derrida, Of Grammatology, 62. 40. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, pp. 165–6. 41. Quoted in Lentricchia, After the New Criticism, p. 188. 42. ʻSlovo v romaneʼ, p. 92; ʻDiscourse in the Novelʼ, p. 278. 43. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, Tavistock, London, 1970, pp. xx–xxi. 44. Voloshinov, Filosofiia i sotsiologiia gumanitarnykh nauk,

16 Radical Philosophy 102 (July/August 2000)