DOCSLIB.ORG

Philology and Philosophy in Mikhail Bakhtin

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Philology and Philosophy in Mikhail Bakhtin 10.3726/78000_121 Philology and Philosophy in Mikhail Bakhtin Augusto Ponzio Università di Bari Abtsract Two declarations by Mikhail Bakhtin in his 1973 conversations with Duvakin: that he is an unofficial person; and a philosopher more than a philologist. The first express- es the desire to escape forms of representation, formal, technical, specialized attitudes, denounced as “imposture”. The second, connected to it, concerns his choice not to remain inside the philologist’s world, in the specialism of a discipline despite how he had known and practiced it during his studies, a wide-ranging approach which included literary histo- ry, literary criticism, modern and ancient languages, classical literatures, study of popular literature and folklore, comparative linguistics, general linguistics, aesthetics, philosophy. For Bakhtin all this “knowhow” is connected with life, with individual responsibility, “non-alibi in existing”, expressed with the central concept “chronotope”: to connect two chronotopes, foster dialogue between them: that of verbal art and of life. His choice: an “unofficial” philosopher evading all forms of theoreticism to construct a “philosophy of singularity”, supported by knowledge as a “philologist”, which too makes him the great Bakhtin. Keywords Philology, Philosophy, Discourse genres, Chronotope, Responsibility-without- alibis 1. Two Declarations by Mikhail Bakhtin, by Way of a Premise 1.1 An unofficial person I will begin with two declarations made by Mikhail Bakhtin in his conver- sations of 1973 (in Bakhtin 1996, second edition 2002, It. trans. Mikhail Bakhtin, In dialogo, 2008) with Viktor Duvakin (1899–1982, a Majakovskij expert). After teaching literature for over forties years at the university of Moscow, Duvakin spent the last fifteen years of his life recording memories about Russian culture in the early twentieth century. The first declaration made by Bakhtin in his 1973 conversations ßwith Victor Duvakin (1996, It. trans., p. 347) concerns Marija Judina © Peter Lang AG Philology, vol. 1/2015, pp. 121–150 122 Augusto Ponzio (1899–1970). She too was a member of the so-called “Bakhtin circle”, at the time “philosophical circle”, from the time it was inaugurated in Nevel’ in 1918: “Marija Veniaminovna Judina as person was absolutely unofficial. Anything official was a burden for her. The same for me. I can’t bear the official either”. Bakhtin, an unofficial person: with respect to official, public circles, he was from another circle, one tending towards unofficialness, even be- fore his arrest and conviction. Thanks to this attitude he was able to pro- ceed in his intellectual travels in spite of long years of total exclusion from the culture of his time, always thinking and writing. Mikhail Mikhajlovic Bakhtin was born on 17th November (4th ac- cording to the Julian calendar) 1895 in Orël. He belongs to the same generation as the semiotician Roman Jakobson (1896), the ethnologist Vladimir Propp (1895), the formalist Victor Sklovskij (1893), the psy- chologist Lev Vygotskij. After long years spent in exile for having col- laborated with the religious-philosophical association founded by Alek- sandr Mejer, he died in Moscow in 1975, the year his first collection of writings was published, followed by another in 1979. During his lifetime, after publication of his monograph on Dostoevsky in 1929, banished from official culture during the Stalinist period, he published a second amplified edition of this work in 1963, followed by his monograph on Rabelais in 1965. Bakhtin carried out his university studies in Odessa and Petrograd where Veselovskij, Baudouin de Courtenay and Zelinskij taught their cours- es. On shifting to Vitebsk in 1920, Bakhtin met Pavel N. Medvedev (born in 1891, executed in 1938) and Valentin N. Vološinov (1885–1936). They became friends and collaborated closely, forming a circle which after Bakh- tin’s death was denominated the “Bakhtin circle”. Other members included the pianist Marija Judina, the musicologist Sollertiskij, the biologist Kanaev, the writer Vaginov, the indiologist Tubjanskij, the poet Kljuev. 1.2 From philology to philosophy The second declaration made by Bakhtin in his 1973 conversations with Victor Duvakin (1996, It. trans., p. 347) concerns the relation in his work between philology and philosophy: © Peter Lang AG Philology, vol. 1/2015, pp. 121–150 Philology and Philosophy in Mikhail Bakhtin 123 Duvakin: But weren’t you also a classicist? Bakhtin: I was… I was a philosopher. What I’d say is… D: Were you more of a philosopher than a philologist? B: Philosopher more than philologist. Philosopher: and that’s what I am still today. I’m a philosopher. I’m a thinker. Well then, let me see, in Peters- burgh, Petrograd, as in Odessa, there was no philosophy department. All the same, there they would ask “what is philosophy?”, and the answer was, “neither fish nor fowl”. There was no specialization that could re- spond adequately. Of course, there was a department where philosophy was taught, but not an independent department. You want to finish your studies and continue in philosophy? Fine, but you are obliged to finish them in something like a Department of Russian studies, or German studies… D: And do so in the historical-philological area? B: In the historical-philological area … that is, the classical section. Let’s say I decided for the classical… A diploma was possible in the two depart- ments, because the philosophical section in itself did not offer… D: Did not offer the possibility of having a profession. B: … it didn’t give a profession. D: In general that’s fair enough. B. Yes, I believe so. After all, what is a philosopher? … Generally, let’s say, philosophers are distinguished as humanist philosophers and philosophers of nature: the latter are specialized in natural sciences, physics, mathemat- ics, in addition to philosophy; the former in the human sciences (Bakhtin, 1996, It. trans., p. 120). The orientation chosen by Bakhtin was historical-philological: in Petrograd he continued his studies at the historical-philological faculty, but in the de- partment of classical studies (Ibid. p. 122). At the University of Odessa and in Petrograd (St. Petersburgh) his pro- fessors for European linguistics and classical studies were, among others, Aleksandr Tomson, who studied with Filipp Fortunatov, and author of Intro- duction to linguistics, and Faddej Zelinskij. For philosophy Nikolaj Lange, who followed Wundt, and Aleksandr Vvedenskij, a scholar of logic, “a rig- orous Kantian, but not neo-Kantian” (Ibid., p. 135–136). During the same conversation, Bakhtin premised that: I’ve had a very valuable formation and education, no doubt. But I have to say this: though I can’t complain about gymnasium or university, fundamentally my education comes from my own readings. Everything and always. Because, in reality, scholastic and official institutions can’t give an education that is fully satisfactory. When you limit yourself to this, essentially you become … an knowledge official. You only learn about the preceding phase of a discipline, but as to the contemporary situation, the © Peter Lang AG Philology, vol. 1/2015, pp. 121–150 124 Augusto Ponzio creative …, in my opinion initiation comes about by reading the most recent literature, the most recent books independently. (Ibid., p. 113) So then, what does Bakhtin mean when he says, “Philosopher more than philologist. Philosopher: and that’s what I am still today. I’m a philosopher”. As he clarifies throughout his writings (see “The Problem of Text”, 1959–61, in Bakhtin, 1986a, pp. 103–104), through to the last two from the early 1970s (“Response to a Question from the Novij Mir Editorial Staff, 1971, and “Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences”, 1974, respec- tively in Ibid., pp. 1–9, and 159–171), philosophy for Bakhtin is a study on the points of contact and interaction among different disciplines and as such cannot be described as linguistic, philological, literary, sociological, or semiotic, and so forth. For Bakhtin philosophy means not to accept restriction to the bound- aries of a discipline, nor to the sphere of “general ontology”, to evoke Edmund Husserl, the already given world, the being of things, being as it presents itself in today’s world, in contemporaneity. Bakhtin also indi- cates this movement beyond, this search for the otherwise, this encroach- ment with the particle “meta”: in fact, in the second edition of his book on Dostoevsky, given that his research cannot be contained within clas- sifications established by studies in linguistics and philology, he tags it “metalinguistics”. 2. A Constant Idea: the Notion of Chronotope In “Notes Made in 1970–71”, Bakhtin outlines an introduction that antici- pates a collection of his writings from various phases in his research. He was working on this collection (Voprosy literatury i estetiki, 1975) just before his death: This collection of my essays is unified by one theme in the various stages of its development. The unity of the emerging (developing) idea. […] in these works there is much external open-endedness, that is, an open-endedness not of the thought itself but of its expres- sion and exposition. Sometimes it is difficult to separate one open-endedness from another. My love for variations and for a diversity of terms for a single phenomenon. © Peter Lang AG Philology, vol. 1/2015, pp. 121–150 Philology and Philosophy in Mikhail Bakhtin 125 The multiplicity of focuses. Bringing distant things closer without indicating the inter- mediate links. (Bakhtin, 1979, Eng. trans., p. 155) In Bakhtin’s works “the theme in the various stages of its development”, “the emerging idea” is the notion of chronotope. This idea is already present in Bakhtin’s text from the early 1920s, “K filosofii postupka” (1920–24, in Russian and Italian in Bachtin e il suo Circolo 2014), where he introduces the notion of exotopy (vnenakodimost’). In this text he also introduces the no- tion of “architectonics” where all values, meanings and spatial-temporal re- lationships are characterized in terms of otherness: “I-for-myself, the other- for-me, and I-for-the-other” (Bakhtin 1993, p.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Chaosmosis : an Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm I Felix Guattari ; Translated by Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis
    Chaosmosis an ethico-aesthetic paradigm Felix Guattari translated by Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS BLOOMINGTON & INDIANAPOLIS English translation© 1995, Power Institute, Paul Bains, and Julian Pefanis Chaosmosis was originally published in French as Chaosmose. © 1992, Editions Galilee All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses' Resolutions on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39 .48-1984. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Guattari, Felix. [Chaosmose. English] Chaosmosis : an ethico-aesthetic paradigm I Felix Guattari ; translated by Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-253-32945-0 (alk. paper). - ISBN 0-253-21004-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Psychoanalysis-Philosophy. 2. Subjectivity. I. Title. BFl 75.G81313 1995' 95-31403 194-dc20 1 2 3 4 5 00 99 98 97 96 95 On the planking, on the ship's bulwarks, on the sea, with the course of the sun through the sky and the ship, an unreadable and wrenching script takes shape, takes shape and destroys itself at the same slow pace - shadows, spines, shafts of broken light refocused in the angles, the triangles of a fleeting geometry that yields to the shadow of the ocean waves.
    [Show full text]
  • Bakhtin's Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives
    literary.chronotope.book Page 3 Tuesday, May 4, 2010 5:47 PM BAKHTIN'S THEORY OF THE LITERARY CHRONOTOPE: REFLECTIONS, APPLICATIONS, PERSPECTIVES Nele Bemong, Pieter Borghart, Michel De Dobbeleer, Kristoffel Demoen, Koen De Temmerman & Bart Keunen (eds.) literary.chronotope.book Page 4 Tuesday, May 4, 2010 5:47 PM © Academia Press Eekhout 2 9000 Gent T. (+32) (0)9 233 80 88 F. (+32) (0)9 233 14 09 [email protected] www.academiapress.be The publications of Academia Press are distributed by: Belgium: J. Story-Scientia nv Wetenschappelijke Boekhandel Sint-Kwintensberg 87 B-9000 Gent T. 09 255 57 57 F. 09 233 14 09 [email protected] www.story.be The Netherlands: Ef & Ef Eind 36 NL-6017 BH Thorn T. 0475 561501 F. 0475 561660 Rest of the world: UPNE, Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA (www.upne.com) Nele Bemong, Pieter Borghart, Michel De Dobbeleer, Kristoffel Demoen, Koen De Temmerman & Bart Keunen (eds.) Bakhtin's Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives Proceedings of the workshop entitled “Bakhtin’s Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives” (27-28 June 2008) supported by the Royal Flemish Academy for Sciences and the Arts. Gent, Academia Press, 2010, v + 213 pp. ISBN 978 90 382 1563 1 D/2010/4804/84 U 1414 Layout: proxess.be Cover: Steebz/KHUAN No part of this publication may be reproduced in print, by photocopy, microfilm or any other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher. literary.chronotope.book Page i Tuesday, May 4, 2010 5:47 PM I CONTENTS Preface .
    [Show full text]
  • Characters in Bakhtin's Theory
    Studies in 20th Century Literature Volume 9 Issue 1 Special Issue on Mikhail Bakhtin Article 5 9-1-1984 Characters in Bakhtin's Theory Anthony Wall Queen's University Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl Part of the Modern Literature Commons, and the Russian Literature Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Wall, Anthony (1984) "Characters in Bakhtin's Theory," Studies in 20th Century Literature: Vol. 9: Iss. 1, Article 5. https://doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1151 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in 20th Century Literature by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Characters in Bakhtin's Theory Abstract A common focus in many modern theories of literature is a reassessment of the traditional view of the character in a narrative text. The position that this article defends is that a revised conception is necessary for an understanding of the means by which dialogism is said to function in novelistic discourse. Revising the notion does not, however, involve discarding it outright as recent theories of the subject would have us do. Nor can we simply void it of all "psychological" content as suggested by many structuralist proposals. To retain Bakhtin's concept of the notion of character, we must understand the term "psychological" in the context of his early book on Freud. In artificially combining Bakhtin's isolated remarks on the literary character, we arrive at a view which postulates textualized voice-sources in the novel.
    [Show full text]
  • Augusto Ponzio: a Brief Note on the “Italian Bakhtin”
    Marcel Danesi AUGUSTO PONZIO: A BRIEF NOTE ON THE “ITALIAN BAKHTIN” 1. Introduction The link between dialogue and knowledge was established in the ancient world by the great teachers and philosophers of that world, from China to the Middle East, from north to south, east to west. It is probably the oldest implicit principle in history of how we gain understanding, and its validity is evidenced by the fact that it is still part of education and most forms of philosophical inquiry in all parts of the world today. Studying what dialogue is, therefore, is no trivial matter, if indeed it constitutes a powerful format for the construction, discovery, and acquisition of knowledge. It was used by Socrates, after all, in the form of a question-and-answer exchange as a means for achieving self-knowledge. Socrates believed in the superiority of dialectic argument over writing, spending hours in the public places of Athens, and engaging in dialogue and argument with anyone who would listen. The so-called “Socratic method” is still as valid today as it was then, betraying the implicit view that it is only through the humility that comes through dialogue that it becomes possible to grasp truths about the world. Through dialogue, in fact, we come to understand our own ignorance, which entices us forward to investigate something further. There really is no other path to understanding than the dialogic one – so it would seem. The modern-day intellectual who certainly understood this like very few others of his era was the late Russian philosopher and literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975).
    [Show full text]
  • Dialogic Pedagogy and Semiotic-Dialogic Inquiry Into Visual Literacies and Augmented Reality
    ISSN: 2325-3290 (online) Dialogic pedagogy and semiotic-dialogic inquiry into visual literacies and augmented reality Zoe Hurley Zayed University, Dubai Abstract Technological determinism has been driving conceptions of technology enhanced learning for the last two decades at least. The abrupt shift to the emergency delivery of online courses during COVID-19 has accelerated big tech’s coup d’état of higher education, perhaps irrevocably. Yet, commercial technologies are not necessarily aligned with dialogic conceptions of learning while a technological transmission model negates learners’ input and interactions. Mikhail Bakhtin viewed words as the multivocal bridge to social thought. His theory of the polysemy of language, that has subsequently been termed dialogism, has strong correlations with the semiotic philosophy of American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce’s semiotic philosophy of signs extends far beyond words, speech acts, linguistics, literary genres, and/or indeed human activity. This study traces links between Bakhtin’s dialogism with Peirce’s semiotics. Conceptual synthesis develops the semiotic-dialogic framework. Taking augmented reality as a theoretical case, inquiry illustrates that while technologies are subsuming traditional pedagogies, teachers and learners, this does not necessarily open dialogic learning. This is because technologies are never dialogic, in and of themselves, although semiotic learning always involves social actors’ interpretations of signs. Crucially, semiotic-dialogism generates theorising of the visual literacies required by learners to optimise technologies for dialogic learning. Key Words: Dialogism / signs / semiotics / questioning / opening / augmented reality / technologies Zoe Hurley (PhD, Lancaster University, UK) is the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs in the College of Communication and Media Sciences at Zayed University, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
    [Show full text]
  • AN INTRODUCTION to INTERTEXTUALITY AS a LITERARY THEORY: DEFINITIONS, AXIOMS and the ORIGINATORS Mevlüde ZENGİN∗ “The Good of a Book Lies in Its Being Read
    Pamukkale Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi Sayı 25/1, 2016, Sayfa 299-326 AN INTRODUCTION TO INTERTEXTUALITY AS A LITERARY THEORY: DEFINITIONS, AXIOMS AND THE ORIGINATORS Mevlüde ZENGİN∗ “The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.” Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose Abstract The aim of this study is to provide a succinct discussion of intertextuality from a theoretical perspective. The concept of intertextuality dates back to the ancient times when the first human history and the discourses about texts began to exist. As a phenomenon it has sometimes been defined as a set of relations which a text has with other texts and/or discourses belonging to various fields and cultural domains. Yet the commencement of intertextuality as a critical theory and an approach to texts was provided by the formulations of such theorists as Ferdinand de Saussure, Mikhail Bakhtin and Roland Barthes before the term ‘intertextuality’ was coined by Julia Kristeva in 1966. This study, focusing on firstly, the path from ‘work’ to ‘text’ and ‘intertext’, both of which ultimately became synonymous, and secondly, the shifting position of the reader/interpreter becoming significant in the discipline of literary studies, aims to define intertextuality as a critical theory and state its fundamentals and axioms formulated by the mentioned originators of the intertextual theory and thus to betray the fact that intertextuality had a poststructuralist and postmodern vein at the outset.
    [Show full text]
  • Dialogue in Peirce, Lotman, and Bakhtin: a Comparative Study
    Dialogue in Peirce, Lotman, andSign Bakhtin: Systems AStudies comparative 44(4), 2016, study 469–493 469 Dialogue in Peirce, Lotman, and Bakhtin: A comparative study Oliver Laas School of Humanities, Tallinn University Narva mnt 25, 10120, Tallinn, Estonia/ The Chair of Graphic Art, Faculty of Fine Arts Estonian Academy of Art, Lembitu 12, 10114, Tallinn, Estonia e-mail: [email protected] Abstract. Th e notion of dialogue is foundational for both Juri Lotman and Mikhail Bakhtin. It is also central in Charles S. Peirce’s semeiotics and logic. While there are several scholarly comparisons of Bakhtin’s and Lotman’s dialogisms, these have yet to be compared with Peirce’s semeiotic dialogues. Th is article takes tentative steps toward a comparative study of dialogue in Peirce, Lotman, and Bakhtin. Peirce’s understanding of dialogue is explicated, and compared with both Lotman’s as well as Bakhtin’s con- ceptions. Lotman saw dialogue as the basic meaning-making mechanism in the semio sphere. Th e benefi ts and shortcomings of reconceptualizing the semiosphere on the basis of Peircean and Bakhtinian dialogues are weighed. Th e aim is to explore methodological alternatives in semiotics, not to challenge Lotman’s initial model. It is claimed that the semiosphere qua model operating with Bakhtinian dialogues is narrower in scope than Lotman’s original conception, while the semiosphere qua model operating with Peircean dialogues appears to be broader in scope. It is concluded that the choice between alternative dialogical foundations must be informed by attentiveness to their diff erences, and should be motivated by the researcher’s goals and theoretical commitments.
    [Show full text]
  • Problems of Language in Welby's Significs
    Problems of Language in Welby's Significs Introduction The term "significs" was coined by Victoria Lady Welby (1837-1912) toward the end of the last century to designate the particular bend she wished to confer on her studies on signs and meaning. Significs trascends pure descriptivism and emerges as a method for the analysis of sign activity, beyond logico-gnoseological boundaries, and, therefore, for the evaluation of signs in their ethical, esthetic and pragmatic dimensions. To carry out her work Welby was convinced that the instrument at her disposal, verbal language, should be in perfect working order. Consequently, the problem of reflecting on language and meaning in general immediately took on a double aspect as it also surfaced in her mind as the problem of the condition of the specific language through which she was thinking. After her death Welby was very quickly forgotten as an intellectual and until recent times, if she was ever remembered it was as Charles S. Peirces correspondent and not necessarily in her own right as the ideator of significs. Her influence has gone largely unnoticed having been most often than not unrecognized. In addition to her publications, Welby was in the habit of discussing her ideas in her letters and to this end corresponded with numerous intellectuals, many of whom she knew personally, including a part from Peirce, M. Bréal, B. Russell, H. and W. James, H. Bergson, R. Carnap, A. Lalande, F. Pollock, G.F. Stout, F.C.S. Schiller and C.K. Ogden, G. Vailati, M. Calderoni and many others. Ogden promoted significs as a university student during the years 1910- 1911, and contrihuted to spreading Welby's ideas.
    [Show full text]
  • I Russian Formalism and Prague Structuralism
    I RUSSIAN FORMALISM AND PRAGUE STRUCTURALISM The origins of Russian Formalism date back before the Russian Revolution to the activities of the Moscow Linguistic Circle and the St Petersburg-based group, Opojaz, both of which con­ cerned themselves with the study of poetic language. The major figures were Victor Shklovsky, Roman Jakobson, Boris Eikhenbaum, Osip Brik and Yury Tynyanov. The Russian Formalists rejected the unsystematic and eclectic critical ap­ proaches which had previously dominated literary study and endeavoured to create a 'literary science'. As Jakobson put it: The subject of literary science is not literature, but literariness, i.e. that which makes a given work a literary work'. The Formalists were uninterested, therefore, in the representational or expressive aspects of literary texts; they focused on those elements of texts which they considered to be uniquely literary in character. Initially they emphasised the differences between literary language and non-literary or practical language. The best known Formalist concept is that of 'defamiliarisation' (ostranenie) , a concept particularly associated with Shklovsky and discussed in his 'Art as Device', first published in 1917, where he argues that art renews human perception through creating devices which undercut and undermine habitual and automatised forms of perception. In later Formalism the emphasis shifted from the relation between literary and non-literary language to the linguistic and formal aspects ofliterary texts themselves. Jakobson and Tynyanov argued that literary devices themselves also became familiar. They shifted the focus to the means by which certain devices become dominant in literary texts and take on a defamiliarising role in relation to other devices or aspects of the text which are perceived in familiar or automatic terms.
    [Show full text]
  • Augusto Ponzio the Dialogic Nature of Signs “Semiotics Institute on Line” 8 Lectures for the “Semiotics Institute on Line” (Prof
    Augusto Ponzio The Dialogic Nature of Signs “Semiotics Institute on Line” 8 lectures for the “Semiotics Institute on Line” (Prof. Paul Bouissac, Toronto) Translation from Italian by Susan Petrilli --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7. Dialogism and Biosemiosis Bakhtinian dialogism and biosemiosis In light of the Bakhtinian notion of ‘dialogism,’ we have observed (see first lecture) that dialogue is neither the communication of messages, nor an initiative taken by self. On the contrary, self is always in dialogue with the other, that is to say, with the world and with others, whether it knows it or not; self is always in dialogue with the word of the other. Identity is dialogic. Dialogism is at the very heart of the self. The self, ‘the semiotic self’ (see Sebeok, Petrilli, Ponzio 2001), is dialogic in the sense of a species-specifically modeled involvement with the world and with others. The self is implied dialogically in otherness, just as the ‘grotesque body’ (Bakhtin 1965) is implied in the body of other living beings. In fact, in a Bakhtinian perspective dialogue and intercorporeity are closely interconnected: there cannot be dialogue among disembodied minds, nor can dialogism be understood separately from the biosemiotic conception of sign. As we have already observed (see Ponzio 2003), we believe that Bakhtin’s main interpreters such as Holquist, Todorov, Krysinsky, and Wellek have all fundamentally misunderstood Bakhtin and his concept of dialogue. This is confirmed by their interpretation of Bakhtinian dialogue as being similar to dialogue in the terms theorized by such authors as Plato, Buber, Mukarovsky. According to Bakhtin dialogue is the embodied, intercorporeal, expression of the involvement of one’s body (which is only illusorily an individual, separate, and autonomous body) with the body of the other.
    [Show full text]
  • Susan Petrilli READING AUGUSTO PONZIO, MASTER of SIGNS and LANGUAGES 1. the General Theoretical Framework Augusto Ponzio Is a Pi
    Susan Petrilli READING AUGUSTO PONZIO, MASTER OF SIGNS AND LANGUAGES 1. The general theoretical framework Augusto Ponzio is a pivotal figure in two research fields that are closely related – semiotics and philosophy of language. The expression “philosophy of language” conveys the scope and orientation of his studies as he addresses problems relevant to semiotics from the perspective of philosophy of language, updated in light of latest developments in the sign sciences, from linguistics to biosemiotics. As such his approach may be more properly described as pertaining to general semiotics. However, Ponzio practices general semiotics in terms of critique and the search for foundations, which derives from his work in philosophy of language. As critique of semiotics, Ponzio’s general semiotics overcomes the delusory separation between the humanities, on the one hand, and the logico-mathematical and the natural sciences, on the other, evidencing instead the condition of interconnectedness among the sciences. His own semiotic research relates to different fields and disciplines, practicing an approach that is transversal and interdisciplinary, or if we prefer “undisciplined”, to use a concept theorized by Ponzio. Moreover, in such a framework general semiotics continues its philosophical search for sense. From this perspective Ponzio most significantly addresses the problem of the sense of science for human beings. 2. A semiotical- philosophical profile Augusto Ponzio (b. 17 February 1942) is Full Professor of Philosophy of Language and General Linguistics and member of the Department of Linguistic Practices and Text Analysis, Bari University, Italy. From 1981 to 1999 he directed the Institute of Philosophy of Language, which he founded at the Faculty of Foreign Literature and Languages in 1981.
    [Show full text]
  • Mikhail Bakhtin: a Justification of Literature
    Mikhail Bakhtin: A Justification of Literature Sonya Petkova Mikhail Bakhtin is one of the most influential literary critics of the 20th century. He was born in 1895 and lived in St. Petersburg at the time when the Russian Formalists were publishing their innovative theory on art and lan- guage. His own theory, however, is generally thought to transcend the work of the Formalists, and to anticipate structuralism and poststructuralism. His most famous study, “Discourse in the Novel,” written in the 30s-40s (but not published until 1967), presents the theory of dialogism in language and the claim that a work of art is not a self-sufficient whole. Bakhtin’s writing is often seen as the foundation of poststructuralism. This essay will focus on Bakhtin’s earlier work Problemy Poetiki Dostoevskogo (1929) and its notion of polyphony which is, I argue, the cornerstone of the theory of heteroglossia developed later in “Discourse in the Novel” (written in the1930-40s). Part I of the paper examines the idea of polyphony in Problemy; part II discuss- es heteroglossia in “Discourse in the Novel.” Part III delineates the continuation of Bakhtin’s thought in the work postsructuralist critics Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes. I also investigate, in part IV, a hardly examined aspect of Bakhtin’s work—his criticism of poetry. “Lectures on the History of Russian Literature” was published in the five-volume Sobrannie Sochinenii (Collected Works). These lectures, many of which on poetry, complicate Bakhtin’s theory of language and reveal his work as encompassing far more than previously thought. Moreover, they help us to realize that Bakhtin’s work not only preempts poststructuralism but disagrees with its tendency to merge artistic discourse with dis- course in general.
    [Show full text]