I am Mikhail Bakhtin

Mikhail Bakhtin died three years before I was born.  1895-1975 (Lived for eighty years)

Was born in Russia- old nobility

Taught school when revolution began.

Lived through the Revolution

Exiled by Stalin

Thought of himself as an intelligentsia, whose job was to interpret his society for his society.
Looked for meaning in text.

Was considered an invalid since 29 years old due to leg disease

Believed that art was orientated towards communication

Popular humor and folk tradition. 

Identity is shared by all

Philosopher.

First published works:  Toward a Philosophy of the Act

Decentralized the work of Kant

*architectonic model of the human psyche which consists of three components: “I-for-myself”, “I-for-the-other”, and “other-for-me”.

1. I both actively and passively participate in Being.

2. My uniqueness is given but it simultaneously exists only to the degree to which I actualize this uniqueness (in other words, it is in the performed act and deed that has yet to be achieved).

3. Because I am actual and irreplaceable I must actualize my uniqueness

Second published works: Art and Responsibility

*Dialogism: emphasizes the relation between an author and his work, the work and its readers, and the relation of all three to the social and historical forces that surround them.

*Unfinalizability- People can not be fully understood, or labeled. (Finalized)old

*Polyphony- many voices

(it is the unfinalizability of individuals that creates true polyphony).Polyphonic truth

Bakhtin was accused of participating in the Russian Orthodox Church's underground movement. The truthfulness of this charge is not known, even today. Consequently, during one of the many purges of artists and intellectuals that Stalinconducted during the early years of his rule, Bakhtin was sentenced to exile in Siberia but appealed on the grounds that, in his weakened state, it would kill him. Instead, he was sentenced to six years of 'internal exile' in Kazakhstan. (Wikipedia)

Third work to be published was misplaced: On the Question of the Methodology of Aesthetics in Written Works

And the next manuscript that he wrote was destroyed during a German invasion.

 Osteomyelitis- 29. lost a leg 53 years old.

1940- Lived in Moscow and wrote Rabelais and His World  during WWII

***He submitted a controversial dissertation on Rabelais , but couldn't get anything done with it until war was over.  His dissertation created a division in the scholars of Maxim Gorky Literary Institute

*Was refused his doctorate, and his book wasn't published until 1965.

Finally, he returned and became head of Russian and World Literature.

*Rabelais was a french writer who wrote Political Satires (Satires on Spanish Catholic virtues ...The Inquisition) Laughter.

* Rabelais was a major French Renaissancewriter, doctor and humanist. He is regarded as an avant-garde writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, dirty jokes and bawdy songs (Wikipedia).

Bakhtin's book on Rabelais is considered "A parable and a guide book for his time" and also, "A contribution to historical poetics" (Helene Iswolsky)

***Carnival-the concept in which distinct individual voices are heard, flourish, and interact together

For Bakhtin, carnival is associated with the collectivity. Those attending a carnival do not merely constitute a crowd; rather the people are seen as a whole, organized in a way that defies socioeconomic and political organization.^[19] According to Bakhtin, “[A]ll were considered equal during carnival. Here, in the town square, a special form of free and familiar contact reigned among people who were usually divided by the barriers of caste, property, profession, and age”.^[20] The carnival atmosphere holds the lower strata of life most important, as opposed to higher functions (thought, speech, soul) which were usually held dear in the signifying order. At carnival time, the unique sense of time and space causes individuals to feel they are a part of the collectivity, at which point they cease to be themselves. It is at this point that, through costume and mask, an individual exchanges bodies and is renewed. At the same time there arises a heightened awareness of one’s sensual, material, bodily unity and community.^{[21] (WIkipedia)}

***Dialogical imagination- is a compilation of four essays concerning language and the novel.

The larger context in which Bakhtin situates his discussion of rhetoric suggests the possibility of a dialogized or dialogical rhetoric that views all human activity and all human discourse as a complex unity of differences. This dialogized or dialogical rhetoric is not only a multiplicity and diversity of voices, a "heteroglossia," but an act of (and an active) listening to each voice from the perspective of the others, a "dialogized heteroglossia." Its purpose is to test our own and others’ ideas and ourselves and thus to determine together what we should think and how we should live. Its characteristic forms are the expression, juxtaposition, or negotiation of our individual and our cultural differences. This dialogical rhetoric follows a line of development from Socrates rather than Plato and Aristotle through Bakhtin’s reading of Rabelais and Dostoevsky to contemporary African-American, feminist, and postcolonial theory. This rhetoric would bring to the rhetorical tradition several concepts developed in Bakhtin’s work and in contemporary cultural theory: context, utterance, and dialogue as a broad concept applicable to all human discourse; polyphony, heteroglossia, and carnival; and dialogue as a subset of human discourse distinct from monologue and from traditional rhetorical theory and criticism.(Zappen)