Freud in the Bakhtin Circle: Concepts of Textual Subjectivity

Abstract

Publications of the Bakhtin Circle in the mid-twenties showed major interest in psychoanalysis. Voloshinov, the central figure of this interest, published book-length critical analyses and detailed presentations of this contemporary psychology in 1927. It seems, however, that other and later works of the Bakhtin Circle show no direct connection with psychoanalysis. Using Voloshinov’s 1926 long paper, “Discourse in Life and Discourse in Art”, I try to show that indirect connections and parallel ideas are still lurking in the background of his thinking. I use in my comparison a parallel work, Freud’s book-length Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious. Beside general correspondences between the two works, I consider three important concepts of Voloshinov: the enthymeme, intonation and thirdness. These concepts, in different wording, appeared in Freud’s work too.