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Mikhail Bakhtin 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 Profcqor. 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 I hereby grant lo Simon fraser University the right to lend my thesis, project or extonded essay (the title of which is shown below) to users uf the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a reqbest from the library of any other univorsity, or other educational Institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of +his wor-k for flnanclal gain shall not be allowed without my written pertnission. 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.
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