The Bakhtin Circle’s dialog in Vietnam

Abstract

In this article, we use Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive method to study the influence of Mikhail Bakhtin in Vietnam in the 1990s and 2000s. By using evaluations of Bakhtin by researchers in Vietnam and around the world, we argue that he is not the only owner of the theory of dialog and polyphony. His friends, Pavel Medvedev and Valentin Voloshinov, also played important roles in defining these concepts. The Bakhtin Circle’s dialog theory is related to the sense of democracy in society. The work of Bakhtin was introduced to Vietnam in the 1980s and led to a “Bakhtin fever” throughout Vietnam. However, he has been less overrated recently. We also discover a mistake in the dialogic theory of the Bakhtin Circle. The members of the Circle said that the nature of language is dialogic, which means that whenever language is used, either in literature or in common life, it is always polyphonic. Based on this claim, novels use language to tell stories, so novels are polyphonic. The Bakhtin Circle was mistaken when labeling Dostoevsky’s novels as polyphonic and Tolstoy’s novels as monologic. In the same vein, the Bakhtin Circle strongly believed that language in poetry is always monologic. We think this claim is also wrong. Dialogicality appears in all kinds of poetic languages.