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Chapter 3 - Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2021

Ken Hirschkop
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo, Ontario
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Summary

Bakhtin's work continually develops, but on the basis of a few enduring concerns. The first of these is the belief that the fate of Europe depends on a new conception of historical life as an 'ethical reality', which is structured by the prospect of a messianic future. The second is the claim that this ethical reality depends on a crucial distinction between I and other. Finally, Bakhtin believes that this relationship is embodied in the form of literary works and their language, which transforms our everyday experience of the world into language and narrative that embodies 'historical becoming', the form history takes when it is ethical. Bakhtin's linguistic turn in the late 1920s focuses on how a new novelistic style infuses social language with this historical sense: double-voiced discourse recreates language as what Bakhtin calls 'social heteroglossia', which teems with historical becoming. But double-voiced discourse is always reliant on new kinds of narrative form, which probe and shape the'languages' of the novel. Bakhtin's work from the late 1930s onwards is a sustaned effort to describe and specify the narrative forms that convey historical becoming.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Context
  • Ken Hirschkop, University of Waterloo, Ontario
  • Book: The Cambridge Introduction to Mikhail Bakhtin
  • Online publication: 21 October 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316266236.003
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  • Context
  • Ken Hirschkop, University of Waterloo, Ontario
  • Book: The Cambridge Introduction to Mikhail Bakhtin
  • Online publication: 21 October 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316266236.003
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Context
  • Ken Hirschkop, University of Waterloo, Ontario
  • Book: The Cambridge Introduction to Mikhail Bakhtin
  • Online publication: 21 October 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316266236.003
Available formats
×