Mikhail Bakhtin

Exploration of the ambivalent philosophic foundation of the work of Bakhtin and contemporary critics.

Michael Bernard-Donals explores the ambivalence underlying the language theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, and the mirroring difficulties experienced by antifoundationalist and materialist strands in literary scholarship. This book is a contextualized study of Bakhtin, a critique of contemporary criticism, and an original contribution to literary theory.The language theory of Mikhail Bakhtin does not fall neatly under any single rubric - 'dialogism,' 'marxism,' 'prosaics,' 'authorship' - because the philosophic foundation of his writing rests ambivalently between phenomenology and Marxism. The theoretical tension of these positions creates philosophical impasses in Bakhtin's work, which have been neglected or ignored partly because these impasses are themselves mirrored by the problems of antifoundationalist and materialist tendencies in literary scholarship. In Mikhail Bakhtin: Between Phenomenology and Marxism Michael Bernard-Donals examines various incarnations of phenomenological and materialist theory - including the work of Jauss, Fish, Rorty, Althusser, and Pecheux - and places them beside Bakhtin's work, providing a contextualised study of Bakhtin, a critique of the problems of contemporary critics, and an original contribution to literary theory.