744 seer, 87, 4, October 2009 Beasley-Murray,Tim. MikhailBakhtin and Walter Benjamin: Experience andForm. PalgraveMacmillan,Basingstoke and New York, 2007. ix + 214 pp. Notes.Bibliography. Index.-£45.00. Tim Beasley-Murray'sbook is a major contribution to the growing preeminence ofBakhtinian scholarship comingoutoftheUnitedKingdom.It is curiousthatso little has beenwritten up untilnowon thetwomajorfigures who are the subjectof his book. Curious,but perhaps understandable whenone takesintoaccountthecomplexity ofthought and thedifficulty of Benjamin's style, orthatofBakhtin inthetexts mostrelevant to sucha comparativestudy . Add to thisthedemandsmade on thereaderby thegreat learning ofbothfigures, and therelative paucity ofcomparative studies seems lesssurprising. It is notan undertaking foramateurs. The first thingto be said aboutthisbook is thatitis notjust anotherof whatmight be called'copular'studies ofBakhtin, thegenreof'Bakhtin and . . .'. Tim Beasley-Murray happilypossessesthephilosophical sophistication and historical knowledge to undertake a seriousstudy, and has produceda thoughtful readingofbothhis subjects, in theprocessdemonstrating what almostseemsineluctability in their dialogue. Thisgracefully written bookconsists ofan introduction and fourchapters. The introduction establishes from theoutset thatthiswillbe a nuancedstudy of similarities and differences in the workof the two thinkers. Neither,it seems,was awareoftheother, and thecontrast betweentheludiccharacter of Bakhtinand themelancholy natureof Benjaminwould seem further to preclude muchsimilarity. Througha careful analysis ofthehistorical situatednessofeach as theygrappledwithModernist complications oftheology and politics(in a vein similarto Mark Lilla's TheStillborn God,whichappeared afterBeasley-Murray's book was published [New York, 2007]), BeasleyMurrayarguesbothBakhtin and Benjaminsoughtto bringantitotalitarian politics and (unconventional) religious beliefintoa workable combination of aesthetics and ethics. The first chapter,'Habit and Tradition',situates Benjaminand Bakhtin within the context of early twentieth-century tensionsbetween NeoKantianism and Lebensphilosophie, as each soughtto understand hismodernist moment through construction ofa contrarian historiography. Benjamin sought toreviseGermanliterary history byclaiming a privileged spaceforthepreviouslyneglected Trauerspiel, in hiscelebration ofthedisappearing figure ofthe storyteller, and in hisreappraisals ofSchellingand Novalis.Bakhtincreates severalcounterhistories in his variousaccountsof the rise of novelness. Beasley-Murray's argument inthischapter isthatthereare atleastsuggestive parallelsbetweenBakhtin and Benjaminin thewayeach seeksto overcome theapparentcontradiction ofproffering a tradition thatis new. The secondchapter,'Experience',tracesparallelsbetweenBakhtinand Benjaminas each struggles to dignify experiencein a post-Kantian world. Each, often underthesameinfluences (suchas Simmel), wrestles withKant's dehumanizing definition ofthesubjectas a mere'I-think', constantly inneed of extra-personal categories to make senseof what has happenedto him. Througha seriesoftourde forcereadings, Beasley-Murray showsbothhis subjectsstriving forwaysto connectsubject/ objectand subject/ subjectas reviews 745 theyreformulate theErfahrung/ Erlebnis opposition in a newunderstanding of inter-subj ectivity . Inter-subjectivity is also thekeynote in thethird chapter, whichis devoted to variancesand similarities betweenBenjaminand Bakhtin in theirunderstanding oflanguage.Much has been written on thistopicin theliterature devotedtobothsubjects, butBeasley-Murray offers muchthatisfresh. There areseveralsubtleties inhisargument, as inhisuse ofHölderlin's fragmentary responseto Fichte' s Wissenschaftslehre (pp.95-97) as an aid in explicating Benjamin'sthorny theory of language.But perhapsmostinteresting is the decisiontouseBenjamin's no lessknotty theory oftranslation as a connection to Bakhtin'sideas about language.In an argument lengthier thancan be summarized here,Beasley-Murray also exploits Benjamin'sconceptof'aura' to see in Benjamin'sconceptoftranslation tendencies thathe equateswith Bakhtin's opposition between monologization (as whenGermanmakesHindi German)and dialogization (whenGermanis deeplyinfected withHindi). Whilethearguments in thischapterare intellectually bracing, itcouldbe arguedthatin dealingwithlanguage,theauthorhas been lessconvincing in suppressing differences betweenBakhtin and Benjaminthanin otherpartsof hisbrief, as he himself recognizes. He sees 'substantial differences between Bakhtin's heteroglossia and Benjamin's translation' (p. 104),and attheconclusionofa spirited justification forequatingBenjamin'stheory ofmontage with Bakhtin's theory ofpolyphony, he againremarks on 'centraldifferences' that nevertheless existbetweenthetwo(p. no). The readercan onlyagree,and applaudtheauthorforhisjudiciousness and scholarly candour. The concludingchapterascribesto Benjaminand Bakhtindiscrete, but analogousworldviews. It is entitled 'Totalities', and seeksto showhowboth men defendedtheopennessofbecomingin theirtheories ofliterature and history. It is herethatthebasisfora kindofBenjaminianmelancholy that hauntsthisbookemerges. For,ifitis indeedthecase,thatin thestateofthe modern - withall itsBaudelairian and Dostoevskian shockand theexcesses of Hitlerand Stalin- each thinker has succeededin articulating a nonauthoritarian totality capableoffreeing humansubjects from thefatedness of Kantian oppositions, the questionthatremainsunanswered is whyhas nothing changed? Beasley-Murray's bookconcludes witha perhapspredictable invocation of both Bakhtin's'loophole' and Benjamin's'small gatewayin timethrough whichthemessiahmightenter'.WhileI am suremostreaders,as wouldI, subscribe to thehumanesuggestion ofthoseopenings, suchgateways seem moresealed,and wordsmorefinished (in Bakhtin's senseofzavershen) than ever.Beasley-Murray writesundera shadowas long and as black as that whichfellacrossthedesksofhissubjects.Some recognition ofthefailure of post-Kantian utopianism might haveaddedtotheweight ofthisbookalready ladenwithabundantgifts ofhermeneutic learning. This is,in anycase, an important book thatshouldbe read notonlyby thosewitha professional interest in Benjaminor Bakhtin, butby all serious workers inthehumanities . . . and anyoneelseconcerned tobetter...