Mikhail Bakhtin: An Aesthetic for Democracy [Paperback]

Kenneth Hirschkop (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0198159609 | ISBN-13: 978-0198159605

This book makes a radical break with earlier interpretations of Bakhtin's work. Using recent Russian scholarship, Ken Hirschkop explodes many of the myths which have surrounded Bakhtin and his work and lays the ground for a new, more historically acute sense of his achievement. Through a comprehensive reading of Bakhtin's work, Hirschkop demonstrates that his discussion of the philosophy of language, literary history, popular festive culture, and the phenomenology of everyday life revolved around a lifelong search for a new kind of modern ethical culture. A detailed examination of the major works reveals the careful interweaving of philosophical and historical argument which makes Bakhtin at once so compelling and so frustrating a writer. Hirschkop treats Bakhtin not as a metaphysician or a philosopher for the ages, but as a writer inevitably drawn into the historical conflicts produced by a modernizing and democratizing Europe. As a consequence, Bakhtin becomes a more sober but also more original writer, with a striking contribution to make to the definition of the democratic project.

Editorial Reviews

Review

`Intellectually vigorous ... subtle and wide-ranging interpretation ... asks several compelling qustions.' Galin Tihanov, THES 20/10/00.

`Hirschkop offers a comprehensive reading of some of Bakhtin's central texts ... He has also included a biographical survey of Bakhtin's life and work based on recent research published in Russia and the West. This readable and rhetorically seductive part sandwiched between the two more substantiallly analytical parts of the book renders excellent service to scholars who are unable to follow the ever growing Russian Bakhtiniana ... incisive and historically scrupulous narrative.' Galin Tihanov, THES 20/10/00.

`Undoubtedly the most reliable and up-to-date biographical excursus on Bakhtin and the Bakhtin circle available in English' Galin Tihanov, THES 20/10/00.

`This thoughtful, erudite and committed study of Bakhtin's ideas and their role in the (re)definition of the democratic project should be welcome as a substantial contribution to our dialogue with and appropriation of Bakhtin's thought; an added advantage is Hirschkop's engaged and lively prose style, which is likely to communicate his arguments to a wider readership.' Galin Tihanov, THES 20/10/00.

`In this book, Ken Hirschkop builds upon recent advances in Bakhtin studies to provide the most informed critical study of Bakhtin's work to date. He draws on the extensive research that has been carried out both in Russia and in the West, and examines this research and Bakhtin's own work through a far more philosophically astute lens than as been used hitherto ... Hirschkop provides a useful window onto the Russian-language research for English speakers.' Craig Brandist, Radical Philosophy, 104, Nov/Dec.00.

`the central part on Bakhtin 'myths and history' ... is a masterful distillation of a very varied and widely scattered collection of materials.' Craig Brandist, Radical Philosophy, 104, Nov/Dec.00.

`Hirschkop has made a significant contribution to our understanding of an important and influential thinker.' Craig Brandist, Radical Philosophy, 104, Nov/Dec.00.

`Ken Hirkschop's study of Bakhtin's life and works is a thought-provoking inquiry into the interdependence of aesthetics and politics on the basis of a comprehensive and meticulously researched interpretation of Bakhtin's protean thought, together with an intelligent and de-mystifying response to Bakhtin scholars in Russia and the West.' Times Literary Supplement, 19th May 00.

`Hirschkop, who writes with flair, meticulously surveys both the primary and secondary sources and offers a trenchant and comprehensive critique ... an important book.' D.B. Johnson, Choice, Jul/Aug. 2000.

About the Author

Ken Hirschkop is Research Fellow in English Literature, University of Manchester

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (March 2, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198159609
• ISBN-13: 978-0198159605
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,618,766 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A completely new Bakhtin., September 5, 2004

By 

Anonymous (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Mikhail Bakhtin: An Aesthetic for Democracy (Hardcover)

This book produces a picture of Mikhail Bakhtin completely new to a general English-language readership. Hirschkop's analysis is rendered in lucid, fluent, often funny prose, largely devoid of the forest of academic jargon one might expect to find in such a volume; he draws on a huge variety of texts of Bakhtin's never seen in English, and some never published at all. And his unabashedly opinionated reading of the existing Bakhtin scholarship, complete with frank appraisals of the failings of many of the best-known English works on Bakhtin, is welcome, useful, often funny, and even more often devastatingly accurate. Deflating many of the prevalent myths, legends, apocrypha, and anecdotes about the elusive Russian critic, Hirschkop argues for a Bakhtinian aesthetic of dialogue as a feature of radical, utopian democracy. He has not only rescued Bakhtin from his academic fans -- a worthy goal in itself! -- but produced a fascinating text in its own right on the politics of aesthetics.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars plenty of complexity, May 16, 2010

By 

Bruce P. Barten (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mikhail Bakhtin: An Aesthetic for Democracy (Hardcover)

Settling into winter early in 2012 with such a fine appreciation of heckling, I can appreciate Ken Hirschkop's book, Mikhail Bakhtin/an Aesthetic For Democracy (1999, 2002) much better than when I received it in 2010. Meaninglessness is a fiction, and I now find something that is worth quoting because I am so familiar with Weber's idea of "purposive-rational action" (p. 265) that I can see how to love literature in a society of spectacle turning ordinary life inside out on a much deeper level than life pretends to have.

Meaningless, endless, probably

repetitive everyday life is

therefore not so much a product

of modernity as one of its leading

fictions. Bakhtin thus parts company

with the line of cultural criticism

with which he otherwise has a great

deal in common - the critique of

instrumental reason. According to

the line of cultural argument

which extends from early sociology

through to Habermas, the sin of

capitalist civilization is that

it introduces a means-oriented,

instrumental rationality which

worries only about how to be

efficient, rather than about

the value of one's actions.

Whether this is expressed in

Weber's idea of `purposive-

rational action', the Frankfurt

School's idea of instrumental

reason, or Habermas's concept of

strategic action, it expresses

the belief in the possibility

of a mode of conduct where

unrationalized interests drive

one forward. The strategic actor

aims to manipulate others, or

maximize profits, or maintain

power, and he (one may well

let it remain a he in this case)

uses language to achieve the

desired result. (p. 265).

Adjusting to a crash in which I take part at the bottom in the bottom dropping out of anything that resembled mathematics in a society that is based on simple electronic piracy makes it easy to see literary life in pure forms of heckling where intellectuals like Hirschkop still have questions:

The obvious question

is whether such a thing

is, in fact, possible,

or whether the strategic

actor is merely a useful

fiction for those who

hope that culture or language

in themselves are a source

of cooperation and unselfish

human effort. One could hardly

deny that people act

instrumentally - that they

manipulate others, make

cost-benefit calculations,

seek to maximize their

power and wealth, or just

react in self-defense.

But whether one can explain this

by recourse to the political-

economic category of `interest'

(class or personal), the ethico-

religious idea of the selfish,

or belief in an ego which can

effectively isolate itself from

intersubjective considerations,

is another matter. (p. 265).

I have been struggling with some issues that seem historical to me, in spite of the fact that screaming in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota is like a voice crying in the wilderness, even when I yell: I would rather be Samson. I really would like to understand this book, but any individual interest is compared to an inert object, unable to take part in the intersubjectivity that makes language part of socio-ideological movements in history. The book is way too optimistic about democracy for me. All the messages I hear about tax cuts based on the economic interests of individual millionaires and billionaires might not be exciting in a novel, but they don't get to the fundamental question: who did these people think they were trying to fool?