Bakhtin and Religion: A Feeling for Faith by Susan M. s> Felch Paul J. Contino (review)

Abstract

730 SEER, 8o, 4, 2002 long-overdue acknowledgement by British readers of Nabokov's place in twentieth-century Western literature. For those new to Nabokov it offers a valuable point of departure, particularlyto those daunted by Brian Boyd's two-volume biography, or frustratedby Nabokov's highly selective autobiography , Speak, Memorg. At the very least, Grayson'sstudy conveys the essence of Nabokov's creative spirit,his undinting curiosity,his artisticintegrity,and his unfailingsense of mischief. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies BARBARA WYLLIE University College London Feich, Susan M., and Contino, PaulJ. (eds).Bakhtin andReligion: A Feeling for Faith.Rethinking Theory. NorthwesternUniversity Press,Evanston, IL, 2001. Xiii + 252 pp. Notes. Index. $79.95; $27.95. THE religious dimension to the thinking of Mikhail Bakhtinwas a discovery made relativelyrecently in the West, but the delay has if anything been more than compensated for by the recent upsurge of the creative engagement on the part of Western scholars with this aspect of his thought. The present meticulously produced volume, with its nine major contributions, demonstrates this amply; furthermore the inclusion, as an Appendix, of L. V. Pumpiansky's notes on Bakhtin's Leningrad lectures of the mid-twenties, prepared with an introduction by N. I. Nikolaev, and here translatedwith notes by Vadim Liapunov, make this book essential reading for anyone seriously interested in Bakhtin as a major twentieth-centuryphilosopher of the human predicamentin the spiritualaswell as the culturalsense. Why has it taken so long? The first wave of Bakhtinian reception in the early eighties fell on to a world of Westernliteraryand culturaltheorywhich was generally indifferent, if not actively hostile, to matters of religion. A decade wasto passbeforeBakhtin'searlyworks,wherethereligiousdimension is most discernible, were translated into English, and even then, to the scholarly mind trained in theory, Bakhtin'sway of writing theology, with its fluid intimations, concern with primary human relationships, and a near absence of conceptual abstractionsor system,was hardto grasp,even to those prepared to attempt to do so. Bakhtinwas inventing a new language, which his readers needed to take a leap of faith in order to understand. A pathbreaking and essential work in this respect was Ruth Coates's Christianity in Bakhtin.GodandtheExiledAuthor (Cambridge, I998) with itsscrupulousanalysis of the use of Christiantermsin the Bakhtiniancorpus. Coates's contributionto the presentvolume, 'The Firstand Second Adam in Bakhtin's Early Thought' follows the same methodology of close textual reading. Other contributorsset Bakhtin'sthought against wider contexts, or offerinterpretationsof Bakhtin'steaching:AlanJacobs, forinstance ('Bakhtin and the Hermeneutics of Love'), interpretsBakhtin'sChristianethicsthrough his notions of 'I-for-myself'and 'I-for-another',seeing Bakhtinas a continuer of St Augustine and contrasting his approach with that, for instance, of Simone Weil,on the groundsofBakhtin'sspecialinsistenceon the 'responsibility ' and 'self-activity'of the selfin its uniqueplace in life. Severalwritersmake REVIEWS 731 the point that Bakhtin'swritingson religion need to be approached not from a Protestantworld-view, but through the prism of Orthodoxy: Charles Lock ('Bakhtin and the Tropes of Orthodoxy'), for instance, and Alexandar Mihailovic ('Bakhtin's Dialogue with Russian Orthodoxy and Critique of LinguisticUniversalism')both examine in depth Bakhtin'sthinkingin relation to the formulariesof the FourthEcumenical Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, namely that concerning the two natures of Christ human and divine and the idea of unity and separateness,'non-merging',that this implies. Lock places Bakhtinin the patristictraditionof St Gregory of Nyssa with its stress on the incarnate logosand the sanctificationof the created world. Mihailovic draws out this idea with an illuminating comparison of Bakhtin'slinguistics with that promoted by his older contemporary, N. Iu. Marr. Randall A. Poole's 'The Apophatic Bakhtin'discussesBakhtinin relation to Kant, to SergeiBulgakovand the Orthodox stresson personhood and growthinto God (theosis). Graham Pechey's original reading of 'Authorand Hero in Aesthetic Activity' ('Philosophy and Theology in Aesthetic Activity'), argues that Bakhtin'snew concept of 'aesthetics'was to drawinto itself'allthose impulses of community and intersubjectivity that modern thought had effectively driven into the exile of theology and a specialized spiritualexperience'. Paul J. Contino and Susan M. Felchprovide a helpfulIntroductionto the volume, and CarylEmersona thoughtfulAfterword('Plenitudeas a Formof Hope'). It is good that Sergei Averintsev's magnificent critique of Bakhtin on Rabelais ('Bakhtin,Laughter and Christian Culture', I988) is also included...