Among Western critics, Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) needs no
introduction. His name has been invoked in literary and cultural studies
across the ideological spectrum, from old-fashioned humanist to
structuralist to postmodernist. In this candid assessment of his place
in Russian and Western thought, Caryl Emerson brings to light what might
be unfamiliar to the non-Russian reader: Bakhtin's foundational ideas,
forged in the early revolutionary years, yet hardly altered in his
lifetime. With the collapse of the Soviet system, a truer sense of
Bakhtin's contribution may now be judged in the context of its origins
and its contemporary Russian "reclamation."
A foremost Bakhtin authority, Caryl Emerson mines extensive Russian
sources to explore Bakhtin's reception in Russia, from his earliest
publication in 1929 until his death, and his posthumous rediscovery.
After a reception-history of Bakhtin's published work, she examines the
role of his ideas in the post-Stalinist revival of the Russian literary
profession, concentrating on the most provocative rethinkings of three
major concepts in his world: dialogue and polyphony; carnival; and
"outsideness," a position Bakhtin considered essential to both ethics
and aesthetics. Finally, she speculates on the future of Bakhtin's
method, which was much more than a tool of criticism: it will "tell you
how to teach, write, live, talk, think."
