Mikhail Bakhtin: The Word in the World (Critics of the Twentieth Century)

257 Pages·2007·1.21 MB·English

by  Graham Pechey

MIKHAIL BAKHTIN
Mikhail Bakhtin is one of the most influential theorists of philos-
ophy as well as literary studies. His work on dialogue and
discourse has changed the way in which we read texts – both
literary and cultural – and his practice of philosophy in literary
refraction and philological exploration has made him a pioneering
figure in the twentieth-century convergence of the two disciplines.
In this book Graham Pechey offers a commentary on Bakhtin’s
texts in all their complex and allusive ‘textuality’, keeping a sense
throughout of the historical setting in which they were written and
of his own interpretation of and response to them. Examining
Bakhtin’s relationship to Russian Formalism and Soviet Marxism,
Pechey focuses on two major interests: the influence of Eastern
Orthodox Christianity upon his thinking; and Bakhtin’s use of
literary criticism and hermeneutics as ways of ‘doing philosophy by
other means’.
Graham Pechey was born in South Africa and educated at the
Universities of Natal and Cambridge. He has published numerous
articles on Mikhail Bakhtin, Romantic writing, literary and cultural
theory, and South African literature. Having retired in 2000 from
lecturing in English at the University of Hertfordshire, he now
teaches English part-time at the University of Cambridge and is an
Associate at the University’s Centre of African Studies.
CRITICS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
General Editor: Christopher Norris,
University of Wales, Cardiff
A.J. GREIMAS AND THE NATURE OF MEANING
Ronald Schleifer
CHRISTOPHER CAUDWELL
Robert Sullivan
FIGURING LACAN
CRITICISM AND THE CULTURALUNCONSCIOUS
Juliet Flower MacCannell
HAROLD BLOOM
TOWARDS HISTORICALRHETORICS
Peter de Bolla
F.R. LEAVIS
Michael Bell
POSTMODERN BRECHT
ARE-PRESENTATION
Elizabeth Wright
DELEUZE AND GUATTARI
Ronald Bogue
ECSTASIES OF ROLAND BARTHES
Mary Wiseman
JULIA KRISTEVA
John Lechte
GEOFFREY HARTMAN
CRITICISM AS ANSWERABLE STYLE
G. Douglas Atkins
EZRA POUND AS LITERARY CRITIC
K. K. Ruthven
PAUL RICOEUR
S. H. Clark
JÜRGEN HABERMAS
CRITIC IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE
Robert C. Holub
INTRODUCING LYOTARD
ART AND POLITICS
Bill Readings
WILLIAM EMPSON
PROPHET AGAINST SACRIFICE
Paul H. Fry
ANTONIO GRAMSCI
BEYOND MARXISM AND POSTMODERNISM
Renate Holub
KENNETH BURKE
RHETORIC AND IDEOLOGY
Stephen Bygrave
NORTHROP FRYE
THE THEORETICALIMAGINATION
Jonathan Hart
ROMAN JAKOBSON
LIFE, LANGUAGE AND ART
Richard Bradford
JACQUES DERRIDA
OPENING LINES
Marian Hobson
RAYMOND WILLIAMS
LITERATURE, MARXISM AND CULTURALMATERIALISM
John Higgins
MIKHAIL BAKHTIN
THE WORD IN THE WORLD
Graham Pechey

MIKHAIL BAKHTIN
The Word in the World
Graham Pechey
First published 2007 by Routledge
2Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USAand Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis
or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks
please go to www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
©2007 Graham Pechey
Typeset in Palatino by Taylor & Francis Books
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Acatalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Acatalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-96280-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN: 978-0-415-42420-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-42419-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-96280-0 (ebk)
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY
OF MY LATE WIFE, THE ARTIST NOLA
CLENDINNING (1943–93)

CONTENTS
Editor’s foreword x
Acknowledgements xiv
Abbreviations xvii
Introduction 1
1 Boundaries versus binaries 13
2 Aesthetics and the avant-garde 33
3 Syntax and its subversion 56
4 Chronotopicity and conceptuality 82
5 The novel and its others 105
6 Eternity and modernity 127
7 Philosophy and theology 152
8 ‘First philosophy’ and the ‘first’ Bakhtin 181
Appendix: on the naming of ‘free indirect discourse’ 208
Notes 209
Bibliography 223
Index 230
ix