DOCSLIB.ORG

8. What Is Alice Trying to Tell Us?

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
8. What Is Alice Trying to Tell Us? SCOTT MARSDEN 8. WHAT IS ALICE TRYING TO TELL US? A Post-structuralist and Bakhtinian Analysis to Examine Subjectivity and Conflicting Voices in Career Discourse Truth is not born nor is it found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction. (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 110) How can the conflicting voices and assimilation of words of others affect our con- scious and unconscious thoughts, and how do life-choices, social experiences, knowledge and ideas, attitudes and values construct our ideological world and sub- jectivity? To answer this research question, I am using the interview with one high school student, Alice, as a case study to examine how her past and present subjec- tive experiences have influenced her utterances concerning her career choices as well as why and how her use of words reveal an ongoing dialogue of conflicting voices and subjectivities. My interest in using Bakhtin’s literary theory comes from his concept of dialogic aesthetics as a kind of conversation. It is concerned with how we connect with others and create a community through a dialogic and crea- tive collaboration with the audience. Can we see the ongoing dialogue and conflict- ing voices in the interview with Alice by utilizing Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981) liter- ary theory articulated in his Discourse in the Novel? How can a post-structuralist analysis reveal the conflicting voices and on-going dialogue? In this chapter, I draw on Bakhtin’s literary theory and post-structuralist analysis to make visible the varied and opposing voices within Alice reflected in the interview about her possi- ble career choices. My analysis explores the contexts and conflicts within Alice that are central to understand why she uses the words in the interview. This analy- sis of Alice’s interview allows the reader to understand how ongoing dialogues exist within individuals, who are both sites for a range of possible forms of subjec- tivity and are subjected to a range of particular discourses in the form of conflict- ing voices. BAKHTIN AND POST-STRUCTURALISM ON LANGUAGE In this chapter, I am interested in understanding how our modes of thought and individual subjectivity can explain the working of power on behalf of specific in- terests and our subjectivity as sites of struggle and potential change. By using post- structuralism along with Bakhtin’s theory of language, it is possible to examine subjectivity, social processes, and institutions to understand existing power rela- tions and how individuals are made up of these conflicting processes. W.-M. Roth & P.-L. Hsu (Eds.), Talk About Careers in Science, 135–146. © 2010 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. MARSDEN In the latter part of the 20th century, post-structuralist thought has had a major impact on scholarship. Post-structuralist approaches draw on a variety of theories of language, subjectivity, social processes, and social institutions to conceptualize and analyze power relations, struggle, and strategies for change. Subjectivity is thought as a process, constantly being reconstituted in dialogue each time we think and/or speak. Thus, “the ideological becoming of a human being, in this view, is the process of selectively assimilating the words of others” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 341). In post-structuralism, the individual is always the site of conflicting forms of sub- jectivity. From and with language, we acquire ways of making sense of experience. As outlined in chapters 12 and 15 (both by Roth, this volume), for example, lan- guage constitutes the particular ways of speaking and thinking available to each member of society. Language, therefore, is integrally related to the forms of con- sciousness available to us. The discourses we acquire in and through participation in societal activity influ- ence our ideological relationship with the world; they thereby mediate how we behave. A word is authoritative when it demands that we make it our own. It thereby enters into our consciousness. Here we affirm or reject it. Human beings are shaped by the words they use because consciousness develops when they learn a language that they take from others. The fact that each individual is constituted by more than one discourse that reveals many subject positions and opens the door for resistance to one fixed position and the possibility of other positions. This means a reversal of meaning and enables the subject to speak in his/her own right. Human knowledge is constructed from personal experiences and is a reflection of the mind as well as of the nature. The assumptions that Alice has about the world can and do help her make sense of the world around her, the way she sees the world, and the way she acts within and upon her world. By identifying many conflicting voices that influence how Alice speaks and acts, she can begin to recognize the conflicting voices and learn how to resist some of the fixed ways of speaking and acting. These conflicting voices are like ways of thinking and producing meaning and constitute the conscious and unconscious mind and the emotional life of Alice. Dialogic expression refuses to accept the assumption that there is one language, one isolated story through which the abso- lute truth can be articulated. These institutions are also sites of conflicts and domi- nant discourses, and are under constant challenge. Alice’s choice of words and how she put certain words together with other words show us a conflicting struggle within herself and is an ongoing process that has helped her make sense of her world-view which in turn influences her decision-making process. Her subjectivity is made up of conscious and unconscious thoughts. Conflicting forms of subjectiv- ities provide her with voices and give meaning to her experiences and to her par- ticular ways of thinking. From acquiring others’ words, she had her own words to make sense of her relations to the world around her. Bakhtin’s theory demonstrates how the voices of others become woven into what we say, write, and think. Bakhtin emphasizes that dialogue is not information exchange but a way of living. In his dialogic theory of language, he states that as human beings, we are all engaged in various dialogues, conversations, and dis- 136 .
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]
  • 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]
  • 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]
  • 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]
  • Kafka : Toward a Minor Literature
    Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature This page intentionally left blank Kafka Toward a Minor Literature Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari Translation by Dana Polan Foreword by Réda Bensmai'a Theory and History of Literature, Volume 30 University of Minnesota Press MinneapolLondon The University of Minnesota gratefully acknowledges translation assistance provided for this book by the French Ministry of Culture. Copyright © 1986 by the University of Minnesota Originally published as Kafka: Pour une littérature mineure Copyright © 1975 by Les éditions de Minuit, Paris. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290, Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Seventh printing 2003 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Deleuze, Gilles. Kafka: toward a minor literature. (Theory and history of literature ; v. 30) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924—Criticism and interpretation. I. Guattari, Felix. II. Title. III. Series. PT2621.A26Z67513 1986 833'.912 85-31822 ISBN 0-8166-1514-4 ISBN 0-8166-1515-2 (pbk.) The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. Contents Foreword: The Kafka Effect by Réda Bensmai'a ix Translator's Introduction xxii 1. Content and Expression 3 2. An Exaggerated Oedipus 9 3. What Is a Minor Literature? 16 4. The Components of Expression 28 5. Immanence and Desire 43 6.
    [Show full text]
  • Passages Taken from Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World
    Passages taken from Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. Trans. by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press (1984). For a fuller understanding of Bakhtin's work one should read the work in full, but I hope the following will serve to introduce Bakhtin's concepts to beginning students of renaisance drama. Page numbers after particular passages refer the reader to the book. "Bakhtin's carnival, surely the most productive concept in this book, is not only not an impediment to revolutionary change, it is revolution itself. Carnival must not be confused with mere holiday or, least of all, with self-serving festivals fostered by governments, secular or theocratic. The sanction for carnival derives ultimately not from a calendar prescribed by church or state, but from a force that preexists priests and kings and to whose superior power they are actually deferring when they appear to be licensing carnival." (Michael Holquist, "Prologue," Rabelais and His World, xviii) From the "Introduction" "The aim of the present introduction is to pose the problem presented by the culture of folk humor in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and to offer a description of its original traits. "Laughter and its forms represent... the least scrutinized sphere of the people's creation.... The element of laughter was accorded to the least place of all in the vast literature devoted to myth, to folk lyrics, and to epics. Even more unfortunate was the fact that the peculiar nature of the people's laughter was completely distorted; entirely alien notions and concepts of humor, formed within the framework of bourgeois modern culture and aesthetics, were applied to this interpretation.
    [Show full text]
  • Bakhtin's Dialogism and Vossler's Stylistics / Dialogismo Bakhtiniano
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/2176-457326367 Dialogismo bakhtiniano e a estilística vossleriana / Bakhtin’s Dialogism and Vossler’s Stylistics Miriam Bauab Puzzo* RESUMO O objetivo deste artigo é discutir as relações possíveis entre duas vertentes teóricas do início do século XX: o dialogismo bakhtiniano e a estilística de Vossler. Embora na demonstração de sua prática pedagógica em sala de aula Bakhtin não mencione essa teoria de base, ela ali está presente com algumas variantes que resultam do diálogo tenso com ela estabelecido. Este trabalho objetiva analisar a teoria de Vossler, com o intuito de observar como Bakhtin dialoga com os conceitos vosslerianos no que diz respeito à concepção de língua, gramática e estilo e em que medida se apropria de alguns conceitos em suas anotações de aula. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Dialogismo; Gramática; Estilo; Bakhtin; Vossler ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to discuss the possible relationships between two theoretical trends of the early 20th century: Bakhtin’s dialogism and Vossler’s stylistics. Despite not mentioning Vossler’s theory in his grammar teaching notes, Bakhtin does include it in his classroom practice with some variations, which is a result of the dialogue between the two. Thus, this article aims to analyze Vossler’s theory so as to observe how Bakhtin interacts with Vossler’s concepts of grammar and style and to consider the extent to which some of these concepts are used in his classroom notes. KEYWORDS: Dialogism; Grammar; Stylistics; Bakhtin; Vossler * Universidade de Taubaté – UNITAU, Taubaté, São Paulo, Brasil; [email protected] Bakhtiniana, São Paulo, 12 (1): 131-149, Jan./Abril 2017.
    [Show full text]
  • The Pros and Cons of Deconstructing Bakhtin: a Reflection on Boris Groys
    ISSN: 2325-3290 (online) The pros and cons of deconstructing Bakhtin: A reflection on Boris Groys Sergeiy Sandler Independent scholar, Israel Sergeiy Sandler is a scholar and translator (into English and Hebrew) of Mikhail Bakhtin's works. He is the author of multiple articles on Bakhtin's philosophy, as well as of studies promulgating a Bakhtin- inspired approach to linguistics and the philosophy of language. In the summer of 1989, the heated debate around the theories of French poststructuralist thinkers (Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and others) and their American followers was all the rage in many intellectual circles. It is as a contribution to this debate that Boris Groys originally published the article, which has now been brought to us in English translation on the (Virtual) pages of the Dialogic Pedagogy Journal. The contribution was quite sophisticated—a critique of some central ideas of poststructuralism (rejecting the notion of the subject, the “death of the author”) using poststructuralism’s own methods of genealogy and deconstruction. More specifically, Groys offered a critique of poststructuralism carried out in the form of a deconstructive reading of one of poststructuralism’s “ancestors”, and his choice of “ancestor” was Mikhail Bakhtin. This, of course, required reading Bakhtin’s work as poststructuralism avant la lettre—a strained interpretatiVe exercise to say the least.1 But strained interpretations can sometimes nevertheless yield interesting results. And so it happened that Groys’ article became a somewhat scandalous classic in the field of Bakhtin scholarship. Within the context of Bakhtin scholarship, Groys’ article is a mixed bag, the way strained interpretations are prone to be.
    [Show full text]