Mikhail Bakhtin: Between Phenomenology and Marxism (Literature, Culture, Theory, Series Number 11)

Exploration of the ambivalent philosophic foundation of the work of Bakhtin and contemporary critics. 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 contextualized study of Bakhtin, a critique of the problems of contemporary critics, 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

The work of Mikhail Bakhtin does not fall neatly under a single rubric, because its philosophical foundation rests ambivalently between phenomenology and Marxism. The theoretical tension between these two positions creates philosophical impasses in Bakhtin's work, which have been neglected or ignored in previous studies of Bakhtin. Michael Bernard-Donals examines developments in phenomenological and materialist theory, providing a contextualized study of Bakhtin, a critique of the problems of contemporary criticism, and an original contribution to literary theory.