CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

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 INTRODUCTION

This thesis intends to challenge the dominant thinking on the understanding of Baktinian

Poetics. It seeks to claim that the critics of Bakhtin‘s theories in the twentieth and twenty-first

centuries give least attention to the sociological concerns of his works. While sociological

aspects of his theories should find greater recognition and value for their contributions to the

literary theory. This thesis will examine how the development of Bakhtinian poetics in the

twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with a specific focus on a Sociological facet, has facilitated

the development of a new understanding of literature and language.

The ideas of Mikhail M. Bakhtin, the leading Russian literary theorist and philosopher,

were produced at a time of crucial cataclysm in Russian history. He was only one of the very few

unconventional thinkers who survived the atrocities of the Soviet experiment. He is one of the

most inventive philosophers to find a dwelling in the twentieth century. His still increasing

scholarly profile validates his authority to dig out new meaning from the ways people stand in

relationship to otherness. His oeuvre challenges the conventions of social organization in which

its basic components are given an interactive status rather than a hierarchical ranking. His

theories wielded a significant influence on variety of areas within the humanities and social

sciences. His work on the philosophy of language, the study of Russian Formalism, and the

theory and history of the novel have become steadily acclaimed as exceedingly significant

developments in all these fields.

Largely the work of Mikhail Bakhtin has been received and made known across the

Western world through literary studies and the humanities from 1970s and 1980s. Mikhail

Bakhtin has been greeted by Tzvetan Todorov as, ―the most important Soviet thinker in the

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human sciences and the greatest theoretician of literature in the twentieth century‖ (Todorov, ix).

The translator of his book The Dialogic Imagination, Michael Holquist positioned him to the

tradition that produced Spitzer, Curtius, Auerbach and Rene Wellek. Furthermore, prior to

coming into the limelight in 1970s his works have been sinking into the oblivion for more than

half century. Originally he completed his work in 1920s but due to the social and political

upheaval in Russia most of his work got misplaced and lost. In the early 1960s a group of young

scholars namely, Vadim Kozhinov, Sergei Bocharov, and Georgy Gachev at Gorky Institute

discovered that Bakhtin had not cleaned out with most of his generation of literary intellectuals.

This brought a dramatic change not only in the fortune of Bakhtin but also marks a very

significant moment in the history of both Russian and western literary canons.

Repeatedly, over the last several decades, researchers from the diverse disciplines have

started questioning hierarchically arranged paradigms of thought about knowledge and obtained

alternative pattern to guide them. In so doing, Bakhtin‘s work, with its socially oriented focus on

language and the construction of meaning, has come to the attention of scholars in several fields.

Although much of his work is considered literary criticism, yet his ideas are being utilized not

just in Literary Studies but also in Philosophy, Semiotics, Cultural Studies, Anthropology,

Feminist and Post-Colonial Studies, and Marxism. He is now well known, due to the variety and

non-uniformity of his work. In reality, he is a profound believer in the pluralism of thought and

culture, which he describes ‗unfinalizability‘ that is the open-endedness of things indicates as if

all forms of life are fragments of an immeasurable, continuing ‗dialogue‘. Thus Bakhtin upholds

that there is a requirement of making meanings in a dialogic way with other people.

The ideas of his work are very crucial for the development of modern structuralist and

poststructuralist theory. That is why, Bakhtin has been proclaimed by formalists and their

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descendants the structuralists as one of their own, and he imparts with both of them the principle

that language should be the fundamental mean to analyze and to evaluate art and experience.

Poststructuralists, beginning with Julia Kristeva (1980), often declared him as a precursor

because his attack on the notion of a unified speaking subject as the guarantor of logos and his

vision of language as inevitably a patchwork of citations anticipates poststructuralist positions.

The self, for Bakhtin, is always provisory and in dynamic interchange, while the text can never

be said to ‗belong‘ to any fixed source. Marxists have claimed him of their leaning because of his

belief that language is always filled with ideologies and his backing of the underprivileged and

deprived, and admiration for ‗the people‘. Further, his emphasis on resistance to the authority,

and the disruption and mockery of what he terms ‗official culture,‘ certainly make him an

atypical Marxist.

Moreover, Bakhtin is credited with introducing several seminal concepts to the field of

literary theory. In The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship, Bakhtin disapproves of Russian

Formalism‘s essentialist approach to literature, putting forward instead a sociological materialist

approach of study. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language outlines Bakhtin‘s socio-historical

theory of language, censuring Ferdinand de Saussure‘s bio-physiological linguistics.

Freudianism: A Marxist Critique examines Freudian psychoanalysis from a Marxist materialist

point of view. Moreover in his later works, Bakhtin extended upon his socio-historical focus—

which he would eventually term ―Heteroglossia‖—applying it to literature as well as linguistics.

In Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics he expounds the idea of ―polyphony‖ while explores the

notion of ―carvinal‖ in Rabelais and His World. At the present time, these concepts have been

applied to an increasing array of problems with which they were not originally planned to

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wrestle, they turned out be impressively adaptive and appeared to explain a whole range of

phenomena.

Bakhtin‘s concepts are distinctively original and radically deconstructive in its very

nature, and his endeavor can often be observed as an apology of genres that have conventionally

been seen as trivial and insignificant. His advocacy of the novel should be considered as a

response to the classical view in which poetry is declared as the ―highest‖ literary form and prose

fiction as a lesser one. He is also a supporter of the popular - one could say of literary ―impurity‖

- and so stresses the way novels feed upon popular, ―subliterary‖ genres, as well as the way a

writer like Rabelais includes profanity, obscenity and a host of rhetoric rooted in popular speech

rather than in formal literary models. Thus, his contribution lies in his effort to subvert the

hierarchies formed in the field of literature. Using his deconstructive ideas into criticism, he tries

to bring democratic qualities not only in literature but also championed the same cause in the

field of language. His concepts emphatically allow alternative voices, ideas and views to

dethrone the authority and validity of existing world-views and dominating cultures. As in The

Dialogic Imagination, he discussed in highly suggestive way a theory of literature that inverts

most of the classical assumptions about the hierarchies of writing and what constitutes formal

excellence.

In fact, as a philosopher and as a critic, Bakhtin has been the object of a great deal of

scholarly deliberation. On the one hand, there are number of critics who hail him as a

provocative theorist whose work must be tested, explored and compared with the work of others,

there are also the theorists who even doubt the authorship of his works on the other. As Brian

Poole writes in an article that Bakhtin invented no new categories and the development of his

terminology lies in the sources he used. He concludes the article affirming that, ―Bakhtin is

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always standing on someone else‘s shoulders‖ (128). Another important theorist Ken Hirschkop

claims his work as ―hardly original‖ and even casts doubt on his educational background. Caryl

Emerson asserts that his work is ―loosely structured, even luxuriously inefficient‖ and also raises

the issue of ―repetitiveness‖ in his works. On the other, critic like Peter Good hails Bakhtin as,

―one of the most creative philosophers to find a home in twentieth century‖(3); Wayne C. Booth

also has a very high opinion about Bakhtin and justifies his so called drawbacks and obscurities,

observed in the introduction to Problem of Dostoevsky’s Poetics:

But every thinker must pay a price for every virtue, and I find that most of what

look like weaknesses are the inevitable consequences of his strengths. If he is

―vague,‖ so is every thinker who attempts to approach difficult and general

concepts that stand for ultimate and thus ultimate elusive concerns. What is vague

from a hostile point of view is wonderfully ―suggestive‖ when we consider it

from inside the enterprise. If he is repetitive, why should he not be, when what he

is saying will surely not be under stood the first, or third, or tenth time? When

talking about truths like these, once said is not enough said, because no statement

can ever come close enough and no amount of repetition can ever overstate the

importance of elusive yet ultimate truth. (xxvii)

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was born in 1895 and died in 1975. He was the son of a

bank manager, grew up in Vilnius and then Odessa. He entered the historical and philological

faculty of the University of Odessa in 1913, and in 1914 transferred to Petrograd University. As

a school teacher in Nevel (1918-1920) in western Russia, Bakhtin managed to evade the harsh

realities of civil war in the capital. In 1924 he moved back to Leningrad after a formative

intellectual period in Vitebsk, where he shaped his early ideas along with the thought of such

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figures as Valentin Voloshinov and Pavel Medvedev. Just preceding publication of his first

major work, Problem of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, he was arrested in 1929 for alleged association

with underground members of the Russian Orthodox Church. On account of his complaint of

Osteomylitis and deteriorating health, Bakhtin was transferred from prison to hospital and his

ten-year prison sentence to the Solvesky Islands was commuted to a six-year exile in the town of

Kustanai, in Kazakhstan to which he was accompanied by his wife.

After being banned from teaching, Bakhtin got job of a book-keeper in the new

cooperative of the newly collectivized system, and during this time wrote his exceptional and

multifaceted, long essay ―Discourse in the Novel‖. In 1936, after completion of his term, with

the help of Pavel Medvedev, party member and fellow circle member, he was given a teaching

position at the Mordovian Pedagogical Institute, a teacher‘s college in Saransk, a town four

hundred kilometers away from Mascow. Nevertheless, Stalin‘s Great Purge and a surge of arrest

by secret police of former prisoners and exile in 1937, forced Bakhtin and his wife to set off for

the village of Savelovo, about one hundred kilometers far from Moscow. During this period

because of increasing pain his right leg was amputated. Gradually this time political conditions

of the country was also becoming somewhat liberal because of which he was invited to lecture at

the Gorky Institute of World Literature, a part of Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1941.

The majority of his works were written during this time. His collection of four landmark

essays were also written in this period and later translated and published into English as The

Dialogic Imagination in 1975. Bakhtin also wrote doctoral dissertation for the Gorky Institute,

which later translated into English as Rabelais and His World, which he was unable to defend

because of the onset of war. After the war Bakhtin was able to return back to Saransk where he

held the chair of the Department of General Literature and promoted to ―the rank of docent‖.

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Again in November 15th, 1946, his dissertation defense took place. But his subject was

considered extremely controversial by some panelist and was strongly argued over for more than

seven hours by committee. The second defense took place on May 9th, 1947 and consideration

was postponed until June of 1951 when he was awarded a candidate‘s degree, a lesser degree

than the doctorate. Bakhtin remained in Saransk until he retired in 1961.

Bakhtin‘s oeuvre may be divided into following phases. From 1919 to 1924 Bakhtin was

concerned with the interrelationship of ethics, cognition and aesthetics but in terms of acts not

words, as he wished to avoid the autotelic formalism of his contemporaries. In the second phase,

1924 to 1930, he worked on Problems of Dostoevsky’s Creative Art, which was later revised and

published in English as Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Here Bakhtin confirmed the primacy

of the written or spoken utterance of dialogic discourse over that of the synchronic system of

Saussurean linguistics. The dialogic discourse of Dostoevsky‘s polyphonic novel is contrasted

with Tolstoyan monologism. In the 1930s, the third phase occurred in which he wrote a series of

extensive essays on the novel, which were put together eventually as The Dialogic Imagination.

Most significant was the concept of the ―chronotope‖ (chronos, time; topos, place), the

interrelatedness of space and time in ―Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel‖, from

Greek romance to Rabelais.

In fourth phase, having measured Dostoevsky‘s representation of the city as deriving from a

carnivalesque intuit of life, and having contemplated on the Rabelaisian chronotope, Bakhtin

toiled on a large scale work, which he planned to submit for a doctorate and which was published

in the west as Rabelais and His World. Ostensibly Bakhtin‘s plan was to reveal the origins of

Gargantua and Pantagruel in the popular culture of medieval and Renaissance carnival. In

essence carnival opposes everything that is Stalinist –the dialogical voice of unofficial culture in

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the people opposed the theological monologism of the Catholic Church and tyrannical

communism. Finally, the main studies of Bakhtin‘s fifth phase is unearth in Speech Genres and

Other Late Essays, which present a recapitulation after a reassessment of the early work. As the

title proposes, they reiterate the centrality of the social and historical ramifications of utterance.

The decisive event that gives its immense impression on the making of oeuvre of Bakhtin

is his varied experience in Navel where he formed a group of scholarly personalities of diverse

fields in 1918, before moving to Leningrad in 1924. Later this group has been named after

Bakhtin as ‗The Bakhtin Circle,‘ which include Mikhail Bakhtin(1895-1975), Mariia Iudina

(1899-1970), Matvei Kagan (1889-1937), Ivan Kanaev (1893- 1984), Pavel Medvedev (1891-

1938), Ivan Sollertinskii (1902-1944), Konstantin Vaginov (1899-1934) and Valentin

Voloshinov(1895-1936). Bakhtin Circle is presumed to have been started by Kagan on his arrival

from Germany, where he had studied philosophy in Leipzig, Berlin and Marburg. The circle did

not confine itself to the academic philosophy but closely engaged in radical cultural events of the

time. Most of group‘s significant works were produced after its move to Leningrad in 1924,

where new members joined the circle, such as the biologist and later historian of science Ivan I.

Kanaev and the specialist in Eastern philosophy and religion Mikhail I. Tubianskii. The

companionship and involvement of all these men of letters greatly had an effect on the thoughts

of young Bakhtin. However, this is also an indisputable fact that Bakhtin was the most

exceptional and original thinker of the circle. Nevertheless the circle facilitated him greatly to

make palpable ideas about the contemporary philosophy and literary thoughts.

In addition to the influences of his fellow thinkers upon him, the work of Bakhtin can

only be properly understood if one has a clear insight of the philosophical traditions with which

it interconnected and out of which it developed. The influence of Neo-Kantianism is clearly

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discernible in his early writings. Basically Neo-Kantianism was abstract and abstruse philosophy

that developed out of a widespread urge in German philosophy to return to and develop the

teachings of Kant. Kant had argued that knowledge was possible through the application of a

priori categories to sensory data acquired when we encounter objects existing independently of

our minds. While, the Neo-Kantians of Marburg School, Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) and Paul

Natorp (1854-1924) argued that the object of cognition was actually produced by the subject

according to a priori categories dwelling in ―consciousness in general‖ and that the mind could

only know what the mind itself produces. Further Kant argued that the objective validity of

concepts are established in their application to sense impressions while the Neo-Kantian argued

that the validity of concept is independent of any potential application in the world. Instead,

knowledge is based on the ―factual validity‖ of mathematical principles that underlie the

individual sciences. One of the key features of neo-Kantianism passed on to the Bakhtin Circle

was the view that the ‗production‘ of objects according to either the ‗factual validity‘ of sciences

or universally valid values means that the world is not something that is given to the senses but

something that is ‗conceived‘. His theories of language clearly elucidate this claim, as he writes

in ―Discourse in the Novel‖ that ―A dialogue of language is a dialogue of social force‖. And at

another juncture he writes:

Every word is directed toward an answer and cannot escape the profound

influence of the answering word that it anticipate […] Responsive understanding

is a fundamental force, one that participates in the formulation of discourse. (DN,

280)

Hence, it is clear from the cited examples that Bakhtin rejects the Kantian argument of literary

autonomy or the idea that literature or language is ruled by its own laws rather than other realm.

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Bakhtin conveys the same sentiments as does Neo-Kantians hold that literature or language

cannot merely be treated as one experienced it. Instead, one should take into account all the

extraneous factors including sociological one using the faculty of reason. This faculty of reason

is essentially influenced by the ‗world of words‘ which fill up the social world. For each spoken

or written word can only be properly understood within a certain social context. Therefore, one

cannot surrender oneself only to the sensory pleasures and experiences of the literary work,

shunning the social implication of that particular text.

Phenomenology undoubtedly exerts one of the major philosophical influences on the

works of Bakhtin. It stresses the perceiver‘s central role in determining meaning. It generally

studies the ways in which individual human beings come to cognition of object. According to

Edmund Husserl the proper object of philosophical investigation is the contents of our

consciousness and not objects in the world. Phenomenology claims to show us the underlying

nature both of human consciousness and of ‗phenomena‘. It deals with the construction and

nature of individual consciousness. Further, it attempts to show that individual human mind is

the center and origin of all meaning. Phenomenology has important implications for theories of

the use of language. In intentional act of discursive type the speaker infuses the linguistic

structure with meaning according to his or her perspective. In a passage in Marxism and the

Philosophy of Language Bakhtin/Voloshinov asserts that: ―Consciousness becomes

consciousness only once it has been filled with ideological (semiotic) content, consequently, only

in the process of social interaction‖ (11). For Bakhtin the reality of language lay not in the

abstract norms of theoretical linguistics but out there, in the endless multiplicity and richness of

actual speech, of dialect and idiolect, of slang and swearing, of trade and profession, of the street

and the dining room, of court and country, of past and present, of both literature and life, all

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subject to the ever-changing contexts of society and history from the slogan of the day to the

expression of an epoch. Furthermore, there is speech within speech, as if every single utterance,

spoken or written, echoed its past contexts, situations and meanings – the historical dynamics of

connotation in constant struggle with the opposing force of monologism. Bakhtin‘s ‗early works‘

contain a close application of the tradition of phenomenology inspired by Max Scheler. Scheler‘s

conception of empathy (Einfuhlung) and theories of ‗material‘ and ‗formal‘ ethics has a

resounding influence on his Toward a philosophy of the act and Author and hero in aesthetic

activity. The ‗emotional –volitional acts‘ Bakhtin discusses in Toward a philosophy of the act

engender an empathic sense of ‗participation‘ and ‗participatory thinking‘. Basically Emotional –

volitional acts are the acts of ‗co-experiencing‘ which is developed in critique of empathy by

Scheler.

The other important source that has some bearing on his works is theory of Gestalt. The

chief claim of the Gestalt theory is that humans do not perceive atomic sensations (of colour, and

so on) which they then piece together to form a whole, picking out its essential features against a

background of other objects. Knowing how the mind makes sense of sensorial and imaginative

experience can contribute to a better understanding of the literary texts themselves. Bakhtin‘s

theory of language is certainly has the effect of Gestalt because he does not think of language as

unified and coherent phenomena rather propounded all his theories in a backdrop of language as

a pluralistic and democratic sphere. His theories of language establish that language in isolation

has no validity and people make sense of it only in its totality. As Bakhtin enunciates in his

seminal book:

It represents the co-existence of socio-ideological contradictions between present

and the past, between differing epochs of the past, between different socio-

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 ideological groups in the present, between tendencies, school, circles and so forth,

all given a bodily form. (DI 291)

Furthermore his theories of language elucidate that one can neither understand nor comprehend

the real nature of language until he/she is not aware of the interior structures it comprise of.

Since splitting the nuances of language is an uphill task, therefore, people take it without

wondering on its authentic disposition instead procures it in entirety. Dissecting the inner

working of language Bakhtin declares:

A dialogue of language is a dialogue of social forces perceived not only in their

static co-existence, but also a dialogue of a different times, epochs and days, a

dialogue that is forever dying, living, being born: co-existence and becoming are

here fused into indissoluble concrete unity that is contradictory, multi-speeched

and heterogeneous. (DI 365)

Furthermore Bakhtin is also influenced with the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de

Saussure. Reducing the emphasis on studying the historical aspects of language, Sausssure

concentrated on the patterns and functions of language in use, with the emphasis on how

meanings are maintained and established and on the function of grammatical structures. Bakhtin

shares the same assumption with Saussure that language in all of its manifestations is a

multifaceted and multilayered phenomenon that represents simultaneously two mutually

dependent dimensions such as articulatory- audatory, sound-idea, and social-individual. Saussure

also contended that language must be considered as a social phenomenon, a structured system

that can be viewed synchronically (as it exists at any particular time) and diachronically (as it

changes in the course of time). He, thus, formalized the basic approaches to language study and

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asserted that the principles and methodology of each approach are distinct and mutually

exclusive. He introduced two terms that have become common currency in linguistics—―parole,‖

or the speech of the individual person, and ―langue,‖ the system underlying speech activity. .

Though Bakhtin was impressed by Saussure‘s innovatory work in linguistics, but sought to

replace the latter‘s ‗neutral‘ formalism with sociologically aware linguistic theory which could

take account of language‘s value-laden nature.

One of the most significant issues concerning the work of Bakhtin/circle is its association

with Marxism. In spite of adherence to Marxism their attitude differ while dealing with it and at

the same time did not hold a monolithic view towards it. Even if they are not conventional

Marxists yet their approaches and values are certainly more ‗sociological‘ and ‗anti-idealist‘ than

that of the work of most Anglo-American literary critics up until the last twenty years. One can

apparently witness the influence of Marxist philosophy in his works in two ways. Firstly,

Bakhtin‘s declaration that literature represents a struggle among socio-ideological languages

unsettles the notion that there could be a language of truth transcending relations of power and

desire. Secondly, his assertion that words and discourses have socially differential significance

implies linguistic and literary forms are necessarily shaped by the class relations that structure

society. Furthermore, he believe that cultural forms reflect social conditions existing in particular

society and language reveals hidden ideologies and power relation within society. Drawing

attention to the use of language to create the materialistic world Bakhtin records that ―word‖

represents ―ideological world‖. His firm resistance to the ―unitary‖ and ―canonic‖ language and

―authority‖ gives the voice and confidence to the repressed and passive discourses. Their works

throw the radiance over the received models of intellectual history to carve out the lethal and

veiled function of ideology. About which Bakhtin write down in ―Discourse in the Novel‖:

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 A mythological feeling for the authority of language and a faith in the unmediated

transformation into seamless unity of entire sense, the entire expressiveness

inherent in that authority, are still powerful enough in all ideological genre to

exclude the possibility of any artistic use of linguistic speech diversity in the

major literary forms. (DI 370)

Thus, Bakhtin‘s theories advocate the openness, nonconformity and free expression in the social

sphere including language. He revolts against the ―rational‖, ―reasoned‖ and ―definite‖

explanation of meaning-making processes in society and bestows legitimacy to each single

interpretation discarding the deep routed ideologies in artistic structures. Bakhtin claims that:

―the artistic representation of an idea is possible only when the idea is posed in terms beyond

affirmation and repudiation‖ (PDP 80). Furthermore, in The Formal Method in Literary

Scholarship he challenges the achievement of Formalism in Russia because they only

concentrated on ―the device‖ which would make a work ―literary‖ overlooking what kind of

ideological material is used to construct it. Bakhtin wants to highlight that formalists ignored

history and social conditions that construct the work. Therefore, as Marxism provides a

sociological context and interpretation of cultural forms, the foundation of Bakhtinian theories

also lies in the sociological poetics. In spite of their association to traditional Marxist theories,

his theories detach its attention from economic base to the social and cultural domain. They are

sometime termed as a ―neo-formalist‖ and ―neo-Marxist‖ for this very reason. For they try to

establish a new start in the premises of formalism appropriating the ideas from the Marxist study

of language. Regarding to the nature of ‗neo-Marxist‘ critics Wayne C. Booth presents a

remarkable observation:

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 For them, all art and all criticism is ―political.‖ And it is easy for them to show

that any work of art when probed for ideology will reveal ideology. Even the

blank canvases, the 4 ½ -minutes silences, the self destroying machines, the pure

circles and spheres and triangles of the most minimal art cannot escape their

meanings. (xv)

Hence, one can also trace Bakhtin‘s association with the school of ―Critical theory‖ which is the

product of a group of German neo-Marxists who were dissatisfied with the state of the reception

of mainstream Marxian theory. The organization associated with critical theory, the Institute of

Social Research was officially founded in Frankfurt, Germany, on February 23, 1923. Critical

theory is composed largely of criticism of various aspects of social and intellectual life, but its

ultimate goal is to reveal more accurately the nature of society. The leading critical theorists are

Max Horkheimer, Thedor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Herbert Marcuse –draw on their ideas

with the mixture on Marxism, critical philosophy and psychoanalysis to present the critique of

the capitalist social order. Most of the Critical school‘s work is aimed at a critique of modern

society and a variety of its components. The Critical school is largely indebted to Marxism but

also critical of it. Whereas much of early Marxian theory aimed specifically at the economy, the

Critical school shifted its attention to the cultural level in light of what it considers the realities of

modern capitalist society. Thus, the critical thinkers try to shift the focus of Marxian theory from

the economy to the cultural realm. Therefore, they try to reorient Marxian theory in a subjective

direction. The important factor motivating this shift is that the Critical school feels that Marxists

have overemphasized economic structures, shunning its cultural aspects. Hence, they are critical

of the symbolic order and traditions of western philosophy rather than of the capitalist order. For

this reason they level significant criticisms at what they call the ―cultural industry,‖ the

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rationalized, bureaucratized structure that control modern culture. The ‗culture industry,‘

producing what is conventionally called ―mass culture,‖ is defined as the ―administered,

nonspontaneous, reified, phony culture rather than real thing‖. Adorno and Horkheimer wrote a

famous essay called ―The Culture Industry –Enlightenment as Mass Deception‖ in 1946 which

argues that the culture is dominated by the commodities produced by the culture Industry and

that these commodities, while purporting to be democratic, individualistic and diversified, are in

actuality authoritarian, conformist and highly standardized. However, the literal meaning of the

term ‗industry‘ is ‗factory‘ but here it refers to the standardization of the cultural product, its

meaning and value. The term ‗cultural industry‘ is used mainly to describe mass cultural forms.

It transforms the individual from thinking and discerning individual into an unthinking

consumer. The ‗culture industry‘ does not want the consumer to think but to merely to consume.

It also controlled and programmed the consciousness of masses. As a result, the masses failed to

develop a revolutionary consciousness. In Adorno‘s words from his later essay ‗Culture Industry

Reconsidered‘:

The masses are not primary but secondary, they are an object of calculation; an

appendage of machinery. The customer is not king, as the culture industry would

have us believe, not its subject but its object… The masses are not the measure

but the ideology of the cultural industry. (99)

Adorno and Horkheimer treat even urbanization as a form of the culture industry. Hence, they

claim that housing projects that are supposed to respect the individualism and independence of

the individual actually transforms him into one more ‗unit‘ like thousands of others. The living

units, as they put it, become ‗well- organized complexes‘ which give rise to the ‗massification‘.

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The Critical school is also interested in and critical of what they terms the ―knowledge industry‖

which refers to the entities concerned with the production of knowledge. In Adorno‘s view

popular art forms are forced to collude with the economic system which shapes them. Its

autonomy has allowed it to extend itself beyond its original mandate and become oppressive

structures interested in expanding their influence throughout society. This ―knowledge industry‖

is solely responsible for the creation and propagation of dominating cultures and ideologies. The

earlier Marxian theories discard the vital position language claims whilst creating ideologies and

hierarchies. While critical theorists and Bakhtinian theories weigh up literature as a social

practice, rather a form of knowledge. Bakhtin‘s theories engage an interrogating and challenging

notion of language in the formation of ideologies. He termed language as ―socio-ideological‖

phenomena rather than having merely linguistic dimensions. His theories strive to prove that

languages can dominate societies by becoming the language of crucial institutions of political

and cultural centers. As language carries the ideology that is a conscious effort on the part of the

capitalist, the marketer, and the politically dominant classes to increase profits and maintain

power. In this manner his theories affirm the position critical theorists obtained. He maintains

that ideology is made of language in the form of linguistic sign, hence, declares language as a

social activity which question authority and conventions, and subvert hierarchy and stability. For

Bakhtin, everything ideological possesses meaning: ―it represents, depicts, or stands for

something lying outside itself. In other words it is ‗sign‘. He expands his claim saying that

―without signs, there is no ideology‖ (MPL 9). Moreover he elucidates the working of

ideological signs in real and social domain asserting:

Every ideological sign is not only a reflection, a shadow, of reality, but is also

itself a material segment of that very reality. Every phenomenon functioning as an

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 ideological sign has some kind of material embodiment, whether in sound,

physical mass, colour, movements of the body, or the like…. Signs emerge, after

all, only in the process of interaction between one individual consciousness and

another. And the individual consciousness itself is filled with signs. (MPL 11)

Thus, Bakhtin‘s ideas justifies the premises established by critical theorists which emphases the

role of ideologies in the production of culture and knowledge overlooking economy.

Furthermore, he uses the notions of ‗dialogism‘ and ‗carnival‘ to criticize an authoritarianism

which wants to stifle the individuality of stray thought or marginalized point of view. This can

be seen in ‗polyphony‘ of the novel, which is characterized by many voices present in it. The

language of carnival and popular festivals carries this polyphony. Likewise, Bakhtin claims that

the carnivalization of literature:

Proved remarkably productive as a means for capturing in art the developing

relationships under capitalism, at a time when previous form of life, moral

principles and beliefs were being turned into ‗rotton card‘ and previously

concealed, ambivalent, and unfinalized nature of man and human thought was

been nakedly exposed. (PDP 166)

In addition to, propagating his theories, Bakhtin tries to establish the crucial role society plays in

the formation of ‗social language,‘ that proliferate the dominant ideologies in social intercourse

without even knowing it. To clarify his stand Bakhtin writes:

Our speech, that is, all our utterances (including creative works) is filled with

others‘ words, varying degrees of otherness or varying degrees of `our own-ness‘,

varying degrees of awareness and detachment. These words of others carry with

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 them their own expression, their own evaluative tone, which we assimilate, re-

work, and re-accentuate. (DI 89)

Moreover, Bakhtin‘s ideas can be deciphered in response to the notions of radical

Russian formalists. In spite of his justifiable disagreement with the existing doctrines of

formalism he does not discard it entirely. In fact, the driving forces behind his fundamental ideas

have their origin in it. As he concludes his seminal work The Formal Method in literary

scholarship asserting that:

In general, formalism played a productive role. It was able to formulate the most

important problems of literary scholarship, and to do so with such sharpness that

they can no longer be avoided or ignored.

Therefore, it would be most incorrect to ignore formalism or to criticize it on

grounds other than its own. Both paths only lead to compromise. This path was

followed by academic scholarship, which at first ignored formalism and now

seeks to do the same by half-heartedly acknowledging it. Some Marxists arrive at

the same compromise by preferring to hit formalism in the back instead of

meeting it face to face. (174)

As a matter of fact during 1920s critics focused their attention on so called ‗formal methods‘ or

formalist theory in Russia. The group of young scholars who came to be known as formalists had

begun their work in the 1915 as Moscow Linguistic Circle, and in 1916 as OPOJAZ (stand for

‗The Society for the Study of Poetic Language‘). The leading figures of the former group were

Roman Jakobson and Peter Bogatyrev. They later assisted to form the Prague Linguistic Circle in

1926 which included Roman Jakobson, Jan Mukarovsky and Rene Wellek. While Viktor

20
Shklovsky, Yury Tynyanov and Boris Eikhenbaum were prominent members in OPOJAZ. Their

prime unifying concern was the establishment of an autonomous science of literature based on

―concrete poetics,‖ that is, on the specific, intrinsic characteristics of verbal art. Hence they were

much more involved in ‗methods‘ much more concerned to determine a ‗scientific basis for the

theory of literature. Furthermore they considered that human ‗content‘ (emotion, ideas and

reality) does not comprises any literary significance in itself, but merely provided a context for

the functioning of literary ‗devices‘. Their primary goal was to outline models and hypotheses to

explain how aesthetic effects are produced by literary devices, and how the ‗literary‘ is

distinguished from and related to the ‗extra-literary‘. They treat literature as a special use of

language which achieves its distinctiveness by deviating from and distorting ‗practical‘ language.

They distinguished between the literary language and practical language. According to them

practical language is used for acts of communication, while literary language has no practical

function at all simply makes us see differently. Moreover the thing which distinguishes literature

from practical language is its construction. They regarded poetry as purely literary language.

What is more is that formalist analysis stressed on the theories that try to understand the

general nature of literature and literary devices along with the historical evolution of literary

techniques. They did not view literature as aiming to represent reality or character or to impose

moral or intellectual lessons, but is considered to be an object as autonomous and autotelic. The

Russian formalists censured the historical, sociological and biographical approaches to literary

study. They tried to ascertain the autonomous existence of literary study and place it on concrete

scientific sources. They were of the view that literature does not convey any clear or

paraphrasable idea rather it conveys what is otherwise inexpressible. They treat literature as a

unique mode of expression, not an extension, not an extension of rhetoric of philosophy. They

21
propounded that the function of literature is to offer the reader a special mode of experience by

drawing attention to its own ―formal‖ features. They declared literature is an ‗extra-social‘

phenomenon which is ‗self-valuable‘, ‗self-contained‘, and ‗self-perpetuating‘ that should and

must be isolated from the social surroundings in which it existed.

However, the earlier period of Formalism was dominated by Viktor Shklovsky (1893-

1984). Throughout his whole corpus of work he constantly attempt to point out the techniques

which writers use to evoke specific effects. He develops his seminal concept in his important

essay ―Art as Technique‖ (1917) terming it as ―defamiliarization‖ which means ‗making

strange‘ where he declares that the technique of art is to make object ‗unfamiliar,‘ to make form

difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must

be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important.

He asserts that the purpose of a work of art is to change our mode of perception from the

automatic and practical to the artistic. He enunciates that as our normal perceptions become

habitual, they become automatic and unconscious. Therefore, it is through defamiliarization one

may disrupt the modes of ordinary linguistic discourse, literature ―makes strange‖ the world of

everyday perception and renews the reader‘s lost capacity for lost sensation. Later Boris

Eichenbaum also contributed significantly in the development of formalism. He wrote an

important essay ―The Theory of the ‗Formal Method‘ ‖ (1926) clarifying the essential

assumptions of the formalist method. He states that formalism is ―characterized only by the

attempt to create an independent science of literature which studies specifically literary material‖

(qtd in Kharbe 308). He says that the chief characteristic of formalist is their rejection of ready-

made aesthetics and general theories.

22
Though Bakhtin/circle was influenced with the thoughts of formalist and cultivated their notions

in connection with the formalist theories, yet they rejected the kind of grave focus formalist had

on the formal aspects of the literature discarding other facets of literature and semiotics. In

contrast to an understanding of language as sets of closed, abstract systems of normative forms,

the Bakhtin/circle viewed it as comprising dynamic assemblage of socio-cultural resources that

are fundamentally tied to their social and historical contexts. . From Bakhtin‘s perspective,

formal study of language systems is ineffective, and the early formalists were essentially wrong-

headed because they ignore the way in which speech is always rooted in a particular material

situation that contributes a significant part of its meaning. According to Bakhtin the ‗sentence‘ is

objective in nature and can be reiterated in same to other, but the ‗utterance‘ is unique and

unrepeatable. Where the sentence has signification, the utterance has a ‗theme‘, which is non

reiterative and concrete; the utterance also includes values, so that it can be beautiful, sincere,

false or courageous. As a matter of fact Bakhtin‘s works suggest a kind of ideological analysis

that does not proceed immediately from ―surface‖ to ―depth‖, but rather moves laterally across

texts, to indentify the ―social languages‖ that weave among them. Disapproving the very

premises of formalist poetics they extended a new strand from the formalism labeling it as

sociological method. Nevertheless sociological method cannot be scrutinized in absolute

isolation from the formalist methods. Regarding the interrelation between formalist methods and

sociological methods I.R. Titunik mentions:

Thus the utility and necessity of contending with formalism arose, not as a matter

of demolishing formalism, but of using it to se perspectives in which the ‗right‘

premises would be shown in concrete contradiction with the ‗wrong‘ ones. (177)

23
 The definite date of the establishment of sociological theory is difficult to pin down.

People have been thinking about, and developing theories of, social life since early in history, but

they were unaware about the fact that their thoughts would bring them in the row of the

forefathers‘ of the social theorists. Ostensibly it is only in the 1800s that classify an array of

thinkers who can be labeled as social thinkers. The sole reason of the spurt of social thinkers on

literary field is the polito-socio upheaval of the nineteenth and early twentieth century across the

world. The long series of political revolutions ushered in by the French Revolution in 1789 and

carrying over through the nineteenth century was the most immediate factor in the rise of

sociological theorizing. For the reason that the impact of these revolutions on many societies was

enormous and many positive changes resulted, which attracts the attention of many writers.

At least as important as political revolutions in shaping of sociological theory was the industrial

revolution, which swept through many Western societies, mainly in the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries. It herald a new era of economic expansion and rapid changes in society. The Industrial

Revolution was not a single event but many interrelated developments that culminated in the

transformation of the Western world from a largely agricultural to overwhelmingly industrial

system. The early years of the 19th century were marked by great social unrest of industrial

revolution. Mass production by factories had led to enormous increase in wealth, but it was

concentrated in the hands of the capitalists, who were indifferent to the welfare of the factory

labourer. They profited greatly while majority worked long hour for low wages in unhealthy

factories, and living in hideous conditions with no leisure and recreation. A reaction against this

system brought an uprising in Western society that affected social thinkers immensely which

beget four major figures in the history of early sociological theory namely Karl Marx, Max

Weber, Emile Durkheim, and George Simmel. They spent their lives studying the problems

24
faced by masses and tried to formulate the theories to highlight the evil nature of capitalism

along with the programs that would help to solve them. Their thoughts changes the mode of

perception and working of the society.

Subsequently, the later years of nineteenth century and early year of twentieth century were of

the years of democracy and reform. At the back of reform was the liberal thought of Jeremy

Bentham and his disciples James Mill and his son John Stuart Mill. Bentham was the father of

Utilitarianism viz., the doctrine that the criterion of good government as of all legislation is the

greatest good of greatest number. He and his follower preached the absolute freedom of the

individual. This concept of individual liberty had been first propounded by Rousseau and later

promulgated by Tom Paine, Godwin and others. They opposed all privilege and fovour the

abolition of all artificial disabilities and restrictions.

In addition, the growth of science and its profound impact on religiosity also bring the dramatic

change in the social sphere. People begin to understand world through the use of close

observation by the human faculties coupled with a reliance on reason. The old way of life was

represented by superstition, an angry God, and absolute submission to authority. Everything was

understood to work according to God‘s plan. The events of history were not chance occurrences,

but events that served to carry out God‘s will. The universe was fairly young, having been

created by God about 4000 years before Christ, and it was kept in operation through God‘s

immediate involvement. The earth was at the physical center of the universe; since man was the

highest level of creation, clearly God‘s purposes were centered on him. The social theory is held

to be the source of critical ideas, such as the centrality of freedom, democracy, and reason as

primary values of society. Therefore, thinkers and writers are held to be free to pursue the truth

in whatever form, without the threat of sanction for violating established ideas. Thus many

25
social thinkers believe that science and reason could bring happiness and progress. All of this

had an impact on the development of sociological theory.

Since the 1970s, researchers in the social sciences and humanities have shown a growing interest

in sociological theory. Sociological theory has managed to occupy a position of intellectual

facilitator and catalyst in the humanities and the social sciences. The current appeal of

sociological theory as opposed to sociology is because it expresses and interdisciplinary branch

of knowledge. Sociological theory, therefore, might be seen as an attempt to strike up a new

relation between the social and human sciences. Basically, Sociological theory concerns

reflection on the social world in the broadest possible sense of the world and the emergence of

sociological theory coincides with the emergence of postmodernity. It can be seen in the most

general sense to be a reflection on the nature of postmodern society. It aims to provide a general

interpretation of the social forces that have shaped the modern world. Although all the major

social theories were the responses to the experiences of crisis within modernity, yet modernity

not only experienced in terms of crisis. It was also experienced as a promise of new freedoms,

and many contained within it utopian impulses. This tension between the crisis and future

possibility encapsulates both the spirit of modernity and the responses of social theorist to the

predicament of modern society.

George Ritzer introduces the range of sociological theory with one line summaries in following

manner:

The modern world is an iron cage of rational systems from which there is no

escape.

Capitalism tends to sow the seeds of its own destruction.

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 The city spawns a particular type of society.

The modern world has less moral cohesion than earlier societies had.

In their social lives, people tend to put on variety of theatrical performances.

The social world is defined by principles of reciprocity in give-and-take

relationships.

People create the social worlds that ultimately come to enslave them.

People always retain the capacity to change the social worlds that constrain them.

Society is an integrated system of social structures and functions.

Society is a ―juggernaut‖ with the ever-present possibility of running amok.

While it appears that the Western world has undergone a process of liberalization,

in fact it has grown increasingly oppressive.

The world has entered a new postmodern era increasingly defined by the

inauthentic, the fake, by simulations of reality.(3)

Thus, sociological theory is the product of postmodernism. The rise of sociological theory can be

related to the emergence of the social as a specific domain separate from the other sphere of the

state and the realm of the household and private sphere. On the whole, sociological theory can be

defined as the study of scientific ways of thinking about social life. It encompasses ideas about

how societies change and develop, about methods of explaining social behavior, about power

and social structure, class, gender and ethnicity, modernity and civilization and problems in

social life. Although early social theory was the response to the rise of the ―civil society‖ and the

recognition that society was an artifact produced by human action as opposed to being part of the

preordained nature of the world, but sociological theory comprises as Ritzer defines ―the ‗big

ideas‘ in sociology that have stood the test of time (or promise to), idea systems that deal with

27
major social issues and are far-reaching in scope.‖(613). Therefore, it seems that the radical ideas

of Mikhail Bakhtin fit in this definition quite well.

Although this thesis will highlight the Bakhtin‘s association with sociological poetics, yet

it is essential to point out that he is primarily a literary critic and most of his publications deal

with literary criticism. In spite of being a literary critic at first place, his ideas can be integrated

into various sociological perspectives. His thinking on literary criticism is profoundly shaped by

sociological leanings. In fact, Bakhtin has a much more complicated and sophisticated social

theory. He propagates an abstract, coherent and greatly satisfying sociological theory that can be

used to analyze any society. Thus, one can clearly figure out the underpinning of social issues

infused into the nucleus of the theories propounded by him. He tries to uncover the patterns,

forms, and structures, of social intercourse operating in the garb of language to strengthen the

dominant and authoritarian ideologies. Therefore, Bakhtin revolts against the ―official,

formalistic and logical authoritarianism‖ whose unspoken name is Stalinism. Like Karl Marx he

also envisages the possibility of establishing a classless society based on the principle of social

equality. To give life to this thought, he put forward the concept of ‗carnivalesque‘ in his study

of Rabelais. The idea derives from the medieval carnival when a degree of otherwise

unpermitted freedom was granted to ordinary people to lampoon the figure of authority

associated with church and state. Bakhtin‘s use of the term is a metaphorical one that connotes a

form of resistance to power and authority. Furthermore, his notion of novelistic discourse

presents a struggle among the ‗socio-ideological‘ languages and subverts the prevailing belief

that there could be a language of truth and authority and it treats genre as a public matter or, as a

collective expression of a people.

28
Therefore Mikhail Bakhtin can be regarded as the precursor of Russian social theory and at the

same time occupies the important place in the propagation of social theory in world. The

development of social theory in Russia is closely connected to the social modernization of the

Russian empire and the rise of liberal and radical political movement. As a result, for Russian

social theorist, the revolution and ensuing civil war were extreme experiences. Both Russian

revolution and rise of Stalinism are extremely important aspect of social theory. In the wake of

political repression and the purges several writers either emigrated or exiled from the Russia.

These leading thinkers attempted to explain the painful tensions and contradictions of modern

society from the outside of vantage of a cultural, religious or national idea that was incapable of

taking shape in reality. During the time of their exile or exodus they also came across with the

ideas of leading western thinkers like Kant, Hegel, Husserl, and many others. As the outcome of

this assortment many Russian thinker mix their ideas which were predominantly of Marxist

leaning with that of western thinkers. Consequently Marxism underwent a transformation and

became an activist philosophy of the revolutionary proletariat, geared toward lifting the inborn

alienation of the human being. The ideas of Bakhtin circle is the result of this synthesis. The so

called ‗Nevel School‘, which decisively formed the philosophy of Bakhtin and the theoreticians

of his circle ( Kagan, Voloshinov, and Medvedev) during the 1910s to 1920s was also the

product of this synthesis. Thus, the obvious Marxist and less obvious phenomenological

orientation of Bakhtin‘s thinking during the second half of the 1920s was built on an unarguably

Neo-Kantism foundation. Both George Simmel‘s notion of the conflict of modern culture and

Max Scheler‘s material value-ethics also exerted an immediate influence on Bakhtin‘s early

writings, which were dedicated to the ‗philosophy of the act‘ and the relationship of the author

with hero in the world of the aesthetics.

29