Mikhail Bakhtin: An Aesthetic for Democracy by Ken Hirschkop Materializing Bahktin: The Bakhtin Circle and Social Theory by Craig Brandist , Galin Tihanov (review)

Abstract

YES,32, 2002 YES,32, 2002 metropolis.Hook is thereforecarefulto make frequentuse of the subjunctivemood. He even, two-thirds of the way through a discussion of Henry George, remarks: 'What, you may ask, has all this to do with Scotland' (p. I85). He is able to answer the questionwith George;but not alwayselsewhere. This uncertainty is conveyed in three ways. It is signalled firstby the whimsical title,takenfromanEdinburgh Magazine articleof 1819commentingon the dominance of Scottish Literature.(Much has changed in I80 years.) It is noted secondly by a brief preface which rejects 'any single theoretical approach' (p. 6) to ScottishAmerican relations. Finally, the uncertainty is embedded into the structureof the text. The core of the workis framedby three essays.Chapters2 and 3 are about the importance of the central Scottish Enlightenment qualityof politeness. Chapter II is quite different;it is about the importance of violence, an impolite quality often found in Scottishcities, as any Saturday-nightvisitorto anAccident and Emergency Department will know. These three essays are in turn framed by two more. Their titlesasserta confident trajectoryfrom Gandercleughto Goosecreek;their contents fail to prove it. Chapter I, on 'The Scottish Invention of the USA', discusses the controversy surrounding Garry Wills's Inventing America (New York: Doubleday, I978). Chapter I 2, entitled 'The Scottish Invention of American Studies',provides an enlightening account of C. M. Nichol's American Literature (1882), a pioneering work which was soon completely ignored. This suggests that for Hook's purposes the most important Scottish writer is not chivalrous Sir Walter but ratherJames Hogg, who was (according to the Edinburgh literati) appropriately-named, and whose ThePrivate Memoirs andConfessions ofa Justified Sinner presents a complex text which, in undermininga common view of Scotland, underminesitself. UNIVERSITY OF EXETER ROBERT LAWSON-PEEBLES MikhailBakhtin.AnAesthetic ForDemocracy. By KENHIRSCHKOP. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. I999. xx + 332 pp. [45 (paperbound ?I4.99). Materializing Bahktin.TheBakhtin Circle andSocialTheoy. Ed. by CRAIG BRANDIST and GALIN TIHANOV. (St Antony's Series) Basingstoke: Macmillan; New York: St Martin'sPress,in assoc.with StAntony's College, Oxford. 2000. viii + 207 pp. ?42.50. Here are two usefulbooks on Bakhtin,a monograph and a collection of essays.To take the collection first,it is full of insights drawn from scholarswho would like to place Bahktinin a Hegelian context, winning the dialectic for the dialogic, with the sense that if this is done, Bakhtin might be brought into more of a rapport with Marxism.This accounts for essaysbyJean-Francois C6ot and by Galin Tihanov on Bakhtin and Lukacs, and by Michael Gardiner, writing an interesting piece on Merleau-Ponty's 'open dialectic' in relation to Bahktin. The topic of the dialectic reappears in Vladimir M. Alpatov, discussing Marxism and linguistics. However, these essays are a little too short, and consequently reliant on material the various writerssay they have published elsewhere, so the good effect is a little minimized: this is particularly the case with the essay by Peter Hitchcock that looks at globalization and Bakhtin. Shortnessis more of a problem with the essay by Chris Humphrey on medieval carnival, which he links to Stallybrass and White on 'transgression':this essay isjust tooshort. Because the authors have little time for post-structuralismand deconstruction(CraigBrandist,whose subjectis the relation of dialogism to Russian populism, speaks of 'the nullity of Derrida's hors-texte' (p. 9 )), the essays also run the danger of not including Bakhtin in relation to more metropolis.Hook is thereforecarefulto make frequentuse of the subjunctivemood. He even, two-thirds of the way through a discussion of Henry George, remarks: 'What, you may ask, has all this to do with Scotland' (p. I85). He is able to answer the questionwith George;but not alwayselsewhere. This uncertainty is conveyed in three ways. It is signalled firstby the whimsical title,takenfromanEdinburgh Magazine articleof 1819commentingon the dominance of Scottish Literature.(Much has changed in I80 years.) It is noted secondly by a brief preface which rejects 'any single theoretical approach' (p. 6) to ScottishAmerican relations. Finally, the uncertainty is embedded into the structureof the text. The core of the workis framedby three essays.Chapters2 and 3 are about the importance of the central Scottish Enlightenment qualityof politeness. Chapter II is quite...