Kozhinov on Bakhtin

Abstract

C RITICAL THEORY INSPIRED by Mikhail has rapidly outpaced identification of the historical subject who lived from 1895 to 1975. Carnival, polyphony, and dialogue now produce apprehensions of banality, and topics on the order of Carnival and Political Conflicts or Bakhtin and Punk appear with alarming frequency in Western cultural debate. In Russia, as earlier in the Soviet Union, Bakhtin's views act as moral referents for a wide array of earthbound political appreciations of pluralism and democracy, on the one hand, and transcendent impulses to religion and higher states of consciousness, on the other.' Even in the midst of this massive response, Bakhtin's own beliefs and supporting pieces of evidence that could clarify them-his important texts and the testimony of his friends and colleagues-are still controversial issues. The ambiguity of the basic evidence has undoubtedly stimulated the critical industry, but at the price of threatening Bakhtin's personal reality-a reality at times explicitly rejected in favor of the modern uses to which his ideas are put.2 The underlying, interesting issue of presence in this regard seems to be that of intellectual validity. There is, of course, a vast literature available on the question of validity in the interpretation of literature. The specifics of Bakhtin's ideas and his presence in our midst raise the question whether that same concern for personal, historical, contextual, and intentional validity should be extended to include the realm of ideas, or whether ideas enter a sphere of human consciousness in which debate and definition carry their own exclusive value outside of the formulator.