Why I write

The debates about the existence of theory and its dialectical relationship with the practice of reality have influenced provocative thoughts of philosophy throughout the past several hundred years. From the age of industrialization onward until the late twentieth century, tension of modernity, rooted in rapid changes of the society, had inevitably tied theory with practice since there has been a need for the society to implement ideological thoughts that would, hopefully, rectify the problems of modern life namely the emerging superficial culture leading to the retrogression of our ‘perception of value.’ Without the existence of the ‘idea of theory,’ one could not even speculate that theory has run its course. Theory allows people in that time the possibility to posit and intelligently discuss such propositions however untenable they may be. The only reason people come up with the idea of theory is simply due to the stage of abnormality in the geographical entity where a philosopher belong to; hence, every theory owes its formation to the tension exists in the society. We cannot think of theory as separate from history and criticism. The applicability and its validity of a theory could only be validated in conjunction with its time of existence. Criticism is the third element – and probably the most important element – without it one has no way to navigate himself to the truth. Criticism is the main trust of ‘Critical Theory’ which we are reading in this summer school. Nevertheless, my reason for studying theory is different from the mainstream thoughts about theory. I read theory because I would like to seek my ‘way out’ of the theoretical regime that confines us with a series of concepts that are simply too idealist and impractical. I regard practice of reality an autonomous role that intuitively grow from great minds of theoreticians from which I should learn to transcend my critical thoughts towards the perceptional of value. That is, I do not take theory as a point of departure for any further developmental process of thinking; instead, I use theory as a historical base, as it is indeed something people has already laid out the foundation of thoughts, to instigate a rationalized idea that is appropriate to the particular time and space to which I belong. What is important than the question ‘why I study theory?’ is ‘how I study theory’ for which by critical reading method is the answer. Whether there is still a place of theory in the practice of contemporary lifestyle is still an important question for me to find out.

Taipei, Taiwan 2004

Why did Bakhtin make Doestovsky such a ‘big deal’?

Why did Bakhtin make Doestovsky such a ‘big deal’?

The aim of this short response to Mikhail Bakhtin’s analysis of Dostoevsky’s literature is to draw some attentions to a few key concepts of which we indeed, in advance, need to understand their deep meaning and interpretation embarking on mission to tackle and unfold the intricacy such analysis dealing not only with the unorthodox characteristic of Dostoevsky’s literary techniques, but also Bakhtin’s fundamental yet absurdly complex study of the ambiguous relationship between a man and his world (and the ‘threshold’ between the man and his world). There is a caveat to begin: We are reading a mid-twentieth century analysis of a nineteenth century literature; hence, what we are trying to achieve is not to ‘invent’ the narratives of the narratives, but to simply understand the basic system of interpretation of pre-Existentialism classic texts through the eyes of an hermeneutic rhetorical literature critic.

Then, why did Bakhtin make Doestovsky such a ‘big deal’? The trust of Bakhtin’s argument is that Dostovsky has demonstrated the way to potentially find out about the infinite capability of a man through the process of the reiteration – over and over – of the unfinalizability through the polyphonic narrative as the principal technique. Through the use of various different voices of different arguments and traits, Doestovsky creates a ‘dialectical moment’ (in the literary sense, of course) that allows the readers to explore the infinite corridor of possibilities. Doestovsky’s advocates the very relationship that every person is influenced by other; therefore, the representation of dialectic through polyphonic narrative is by all means the honest symbolization of a very human nature, transcending Doestovsky’s literature to the much higher plateau of the philosophical writing.

There seem to be a number of distinguished features in Dostoevsky’s literature. Here is what we could find merely from Bakhtin’s analysis: Dostoevsky’s novel is not a traditional novel as it does not lead the readers to follow a somewhat linear and predictable storyline in the ‘traditional way.’ Instead, Dostoevsky writes in such a way that he himself, as the author, reveals the different side of human psyche by creating a so-called hero who does not by any measure exhibit himself as a hero in a traditional sense whose action could be predicted through his pre-conceived role, his constructed consciousness, and his homological dimension. In other words, a hero in Dostoevsky’s is not a hero of the world of the author as reflections to the embracing of the world of the readers. A hero here does not conceive himself as an object of the world which other people might have thought hitherto that it is in fact the realm for which he has been created; instead, a hero solely cares only about how he has ‘come’ to be and how he sees himself truthfully – which might sound as existentialistic as it may. Therefore, if we were to actually ‘read’ Dostoevsky’s work, say, Crime and Punishment, we will be poised to be aware of such literary unorthodoxy and to not try to subconsciously foment ourselves to have got succumbed into the trap to believe that what is going on – some could be totally random and outrage – is one of the linear types of expository narration of a conventional nineteenth century literature. Indeed, Bakhtin, as he denotes in the title of his book, finds ‘problems’ in the work of Doestovsky’s – but only that these problems lead to a full discovery of a new form of literary representation that is expressive of the self-consciousness. In Dostoevsky’s own words, he claims that he is a realist whose aim is to cultivate the ‘utter realism’ through literature that seeks to instigate the man-in-man project. This is very interesting because this bold claim is supported by the rigor of Dostoevsky’s non-fictional reason and instances – that of similar to what we know today as psychology.

Here we could also raise a critical question: What is wrong with the traditional literature? Whereas the traditional ‘normal’ (as opposed to the abnormalism, perhaps, of Dostoevsky’s in this context) literature is a form of linguistic performance whose aim is to provide the meaning through accessible narrative, that is, the narrative that has a certain predictable plot pre-made to be followed; Dostoesky’s story does not have a plot. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with the normal literature but what makes Dostoevsky’s so special – also in a quasi-problematic sense – is its very quality in being polyphonic and dialogic, portraying the absolute confession of the author from the deeper level of the souls.

I have to admit that I still do not quite understand the implication of the word ‘hero’ being used throughout the writing of Bakhtin. By any means, it seems nonsense to think that this hero is “a person who is admired for having done something very brave or having achieved something great” (definition from Cambridge Dictionary) since, in our sensibility, there is no way we could see a person which such idiosyncratic characteristic as a central figure in Doetovsky’s work “someone who have achieved something great.” Nevertheless, the definition of ‘something great’ here is neither clear nor direct. If the primary goal of a man is to understand himself, then it could be the case – or one could simply make the case – that it is the epitome of one’s own conception of man in man that makes this central figure a person with a great achievement that makes him a hero.

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