Toward a Philosophy of the Act (University of Texas Press Slavic Series)

137 Pages·1993·4.24 MB·English

by  M.M. Bakhtin

Toward a Philosophy
oft he Act
MICHAEL HOLQUIST.
• • • • • • • •
TOWARD A PHILOSOPHY OF THE ACT·····
UNIVERSITY OF TfXAS PRfSS SLAVIC SERIES, NO. 10
MICHAEL HOLQUIST
General Editor
M. M. BAKHTIN
TOWARDA
PHILOSOPHY
OF THE ACT
TRANSLATION AND NOTES BY
VADIM LIAPUNOV
EDITEDBY
VADIM LIAPUNOV & MICHAEL HOLQUIST
UN I V E R SIT Y 0 F T E X ASP RES S, AU S TIN •••••••••••
Cop\'right © 1993 lw the L'niversit\, of Texas Press
All rights reser\'ed
Printed in the United St,nes of AmeriCl
Third paperback printing, 1999
Requests te)r permission to reproduce m,nerial trom this work should be sent to
Permissions, Universit\' of Texas Press, Box -819, Austin, TX -8-15--819,
@ The paper used in this publiCltion meets the minimum requirements of
American ;-.Jeltion,,1 StaIlli.lrd te)r Inte1rl1ution Sciences-Pernunence of P,'per te)r
Printed Librar\, Materi"ls, ANSI Zj9,+8-198+,
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLlCATION DATA
Bakhtin, M, ,\1. (Mikh,lil ~\ikh,liIO\ich), 189,-19-',
I K tilosotii poStlIpk.1, English I
Toward a philosophl' of the ,lct / lw ~L ~L Bakhtin ; transLnion ,md notes b\'
V,ldim Liap"n{)\' ; edited bl' \',ldim Li,lp"no\' ,1I1d Michael HolqlIisL - 1St cd,
p, cm, - (L'nil'ersit\' of 'I'e x,I S Press SLn'ic series; no, 10)
Incilides bibliogr,lphical reterences ,1I1d index,
ISBN 0-292--653+--, - ISBN 0-292--0805-X (pbk,)
L Act (Philosophl') 2, Ethics, " Commlinication-l\\oral ,1I1d ethic,ll
aspects, +, Literelture-Philosophl', I. Li,lpUn()\', V,ldim, 193,'-
II. Holquist, Michael, 193'- Ill. Title. 1\', Series,
BI05,A35B3+13 1993
128' ,4-dc20 93--'5-
• • • • • • • •
CONTENTS
FOREWORD (fll
MICHAEL HOLQUIST
TRANSLATORJS PREFACE
VADIM LIAPUNOV
INTRODUCTION TO THE RUSSIAN EDITION ,x;xi
s. G. B 0 C H A R 0 V
TOWARD A PHILOSOPHY OF THE ACT /
NOTES 77
INDEX /0/
()
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
MICHAEL HOLQUIST
FOREWORD
In his long life under Soviet rule, Bakhtin experienced the whole
range of effects an author can produce, from censorship, imprison
ment, and banishment to fame and adulation. The shock of his arrest
during Stalin's terror made him extremely cautious in later years. It
was with the greatest difficulty that a group of young admirers in the
early 1960s convinced him to publish again. And it was only after he
achieved international acclaim as a result of these publications, and
at a time when he knew his death was imminent, that he confessed
to his supporters the existence of a cache of his earliest writings.
They were hidden away in Saransk, where he lived after returning
from his official exile in Kazakhtstan. His young friends were ecstatic
in 1972 to learn that Bakhtin had, throughout his many moves, man
aged to keep with him some of his earliest writings. But when they
went to the Mordovian capitol to retrieve the manuscripts, they were
horrified to discover them packed away in a lumber room, where rats
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... .
and seeping water had severely damaged the crude student notepads
in which Bakhtin alwavs wrote his books.
After a long period of decipherment and retranscription by yet
another devoted band of young disciples, the notebooks were found
to contain the fragments of two important projects Bakhtin had un
dertaken at the outset of his career, when he still thought of himself
as working in the tradition of German philosophy. The larger of the
two manuscripts was published as Art and Answerability by the Uni
versity of Texas Press in 1990.
The smaller fragment is here published as Toward a Philosophy of
the Act, translated and annotated by Vadim Liapunov, whose work
on the 1990 volume received universal acclaim. The appearance of
the present book is an important event for at least two audiences:
the increasingly growing number of those who are interested in
Bakhtin as the foundational figure in dialogism, a thinker in his own
right, and the even larger number of those who are concerned with
questions bearing on the relation of philosophy to literary theory,
particularly those occupied by the problematic relation of aesthetics
and ethics.
For the first group, this text is required reading because it is the
earliest of Bakhtin's sustained works, dating from 1919-1921. He was
in the midst of all the hardships and exhilaration created by the Rev
olution's after-effects in Nevel and Vitebsk. There were shortages of
food and extraordinary chaos all around, but intellectuals and artists
were given a field day. There were several orchestras, staffed by ref·
ugees from the former imperial conservatory in St. Petersburg; the
art school was enlivened by disputes between Chagall and Malevich.
And there were endless public lectures, staged debates, and orga
nized discussions that drew large crowds who wrangled about the
eternal questions of God, freedom, justice, and politics. Although
Bakhtin even at this time suffered from severe osteomyelitis (and
complications arising from a bout of typhus), he was young, vital,
and fully engaged in several projects, both private and public.
Toward a Philosophy oft he Act is the result of one of those projects.
The original manuscript of the present volume was difficult to read
not only because of the ravages of time, but because, for the most
• •• TOWARD A PHILOSOPHY OF THE ACT
(JIll
part, it was written in haste, with some clearer sections in his wife's
script, when she took dictation during periods when his bone disease
kept Bakhtin from writing in his own hand. In the faded scrawl we
can see the race between the occurrence of ideas and their feverish
transcription. This volume provides a chance to see Bakhtin in all the
heat and urgency of thought as it wrestles with itself. In Toward a
Philosophy oft he Act we catch Bakhtin in the act-the act of creation.
This text further sharpens the profile of Bakhtin's whole career
insofar as it demonstrates the depth of his early involvement in the
professional discourse of philosophy. More precisely, it reveals new
filiations between the themes that first appear here and will guide
Bakhtin's thinking throughout the course of his long life. The topics
of "authoring," "responsibility," self and other, the moral signifi
cance of "outsiden ess," "participatory thinking," the implications for
the individual subject of having "no-alibi in existence," the relation
between the world as experienced in actions and the world as repre
sented in discourse-these are all broached here in the white heat of
discovery. These themes will be present in more lucid form and
specificity in later works, but their suggestiveness and scope will
never be greater than they are in the present volume. We are here at
the heart of the heart, at the center of the dialogue between being
and language, the world and mind, "the given" and "the created"
that will be at the core of Bakhtin's distinctive dialogism as it later
evolves.
One way to establish the distinctiveness of this work is to contrast
it with the project it is seeking to criticize and correct. Much has
been made of the youthful Bakhtin's interest in the Marburg school
of Neo-Kantianism. What these pages make clear is Bakhtin's obses
sion not so much with Hermann Cohen and his followers as with
Kant himself. We know that during the time he was working on
Toward a Philosophy oft he Act, Bakhtin incessantly read, debated, and
lectured on Kant, as he would continue to do after his return in 1924
to Petersburg. Put very crudely, this text is an attempt to detranscen
dentalize Kant, and more particularly to think beyond Kant's for
mulation of the ethical imperative.
Kant argued that ethics could be grounded on the principle that
FOREWORD •••••••••••••••••••••••••