The Bakhtin Circle: Philosophy, Culture and Politics by Craig Brandist (review)

Abstract

MLR, 99.1, 2004 271 The Bakhtin Circle: Philosophy, Culture and Politics. By Craig Brandist. London and Sterling, VA: Pluto Press. 2002. x + 221 pp. ?45 (pbk ?15.99). ISBN o74531 -811-8 (pbk 0-74531-810-x). Craig Brandist's challenging book might be seen as another successful attempt at materializing Mikhail Bakhtin. One of the most extraordinary thinkers of the twenti? eth century, Bakhtin, nevertheless, was hardly the 'original monumental genius' (p. 3) presented in the 1980s. Although in recent research attitudes to Bakhtin have changed significantly,the problem of the Circle's intellectual context and the original sources of many of its ideas still remains. Fluid terminology, a heavy load of philosophical connotations, the notorious absence of references in Bakhtin's writings, as well as the complex matters of disputed authorship and seriously flawed translations, have all obscured the points of contact between the work of the Circle and Western mainstream philosophy. In investigating some of the fouhdations of the Circle's ideas, Brandist offersan insightful journey into the European philosophy of the early twentieth cen? tury. He interprets the work of the Bakhtin Circle thinkers as a 'particular ongoing synthesis of mainly German philosophical currents in peculiarly Soviet contexts' (p. 5). The philosophical traditions with which the Circle engaged were the NeoKantianism of the Marburg School, Lebensphilosophie, and Georg Simmel's account of the relationship between life and culture, Phenomenology, and Gestalt theory. In the 1930s Hegelian influences began to appear in Bakhtin's work, either directly or by way of Nikolai Marr's theory of language, whose impact on Bakhtin and Voloshinov, as Brandist asserts, was much stronger and more lasting than is usually recognized. Among other unavoidable peculiarities of the Soviet context is the fact that, under the conditions of tight censorship, aesthetic concepts in the Circle's work came to be endowed with ethical and even socio-political meanings, while socio-political terms acquired broader philosophical implications. In the firsthalf of the 1920s the Circle developed an aesthetic and ethical philosophy, which drew heavily on Neo-Kantian sources and examined the borders between aesthetics and ethics as realms of art and life. Bakhtin followed Franz Brentano in making the intentional act the centre of his ethical theory and understood responsibility as a bridge between life and culture. Drawing on Simmel's and Max Scheler's sociology, Bakhtin introduced the essen? tial concept of intersubjectivity, which would become central for Pavel Medvedev's literary theory, Valentin Voloshinov's philosophy of language, and Bakhtin's own theory of the novel. Analysing in this way the works of the Circle and its other major philosophical concepts, Brandist invariably traces their original German sources, thus providing a secure European intellectual context even forthe trademarks of Bakhtin's theory,such as chronotope and carnival. By the end of the book it becomes clear that, although rethought and reinterpreted, the same philosophical foundations remained influential throughout Bakhtin's career and recur in his late works, partly perhaps due to the scholar's lifelong isolation. This is one of the conclusions of the book, which in Brandist's opinion can be seen as another critical adjustment to the 'protective belt' of the Bakhtin theory that has already been subject to a number of serious refutations. To protect its 'hard core' and make its positive heuristic workable forfuture research, Brandist offersalternative social and political applications ofthe Circle's legacy, which are particularly consistent with Voloshinov's ideas. The reader, however, is left with a feeling that, in the wake of this hugely informative and uncompromising book, the 'hard core' itself of Bakhtin's theory is ripe for serious reconsideration. University of Exeter Vladislava Reznik ...