Hearing Voices

Alan Jacobs' portrayal of Mikhail Bakhtin so impressed me that I decided to read an excerpt from Discourse in the Novel. In it, Bakhtin discusses the flaws of other modern readings of the novel. He accuses other theorists of looking at the novel as a one-sided composition with only stylistic features and a plot. He contends instead that the novel's language and content interact in dialogue with outside social voices-- heteroglossia. This heteroglossia-- which comes from professional, social, literary, and genre-related contexts-- creates and influences the text, even as the text influences the sources that shaped it. According to Bakhtin, the language of the novel is a bundle of both centripetal and centrifugal forces, both directing the interpreter away from the written text and holding the novel together as a unified whole.

After I had taken time to understand Bakhtin's theory, I found his ideas fascinating. I must admit that I also enjoy the ability to look back and compare his ideas with those of his predecessors, his contemporaries, and his successors.

Bakhtin's method of interpreting the novel certainly seems more plausible than that of the Formalists, who appear to take language out of its fuller context by proclaiming the affective and intentional fallacies. However, Bakhtin's emphasis on the influence of outside voices upon a text does resemble T.S. Eliot's belief that tradition and experience are necessary ingredients present in the creation of new literature. Although Bakhtin lambastes the Russian formalists, I think he could find common ground with them if he tried, assuming their theories parallel those of Eliot.

Perhaps my earlier exposure to postmodern literary theory explains why the thought that novels reflect and are shaped by multiple, perhaps conflicting voices does not startle me. Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia appears decades before American and French critics began studying the existence of intertextuality, and his idea that the text and its outside influences "create" each other seems virtually identical to the tenets of postmodernism. I don't see how Bakhtin's ideas could have escaped the eyes of the more recent poststructuralist and postmodern theorists.

I did disagree with Bakhtin's assertion that poetry does not partake in heteroglossia, however. Some aspects of his argument against the presence of "alien discourse" within poetry seemed feasible, but I think his exclusion is reductive. I wonder about the cultural connotations that collide in the world of bilingual Mexican-American poetry, since the language of this sub-genre can display a multiplicity of social and chronological voices. My disagreement extends into the universal sphere of poetry. Don't social pressures and other outside voices influence poets as well as authors? The idea that the poet only uses the untainted language inside him or her seems presumptuous and misinformed. I would like to see Bakhtin offer concrete evidence pointing to the socially independent nature of the poet's internal language. He writes that "the poet, should he not accept the given literary language, will sooner resort to the artificial creation of a new language specifically for peotry [rather] than to the exploitation of actual available social dialects." I wonder what Bakhtin thought of Wordsworth and other Romantics, who did reject the literary language of the day in favor of "actual available social dialects." Although Coleridge contends that Wordsworth's poetry is not identical to spoken prose, the English Romantic movement revolved around writing in the language of the commoner-- plain, simple, and unadorned. Bakhtin blames the absence of heteroglossia from poetry on the existence of rhythm. I found this assertion weak since the presence of rhythmic structure doesn't automatically sift through the poet's mind and throw out language shaped by outside social voices. Wouldn't the words that fit into the established rhythmic pattern flow from the poet's mind, which doesn't function in a social vacuum?

Despite my objections, I still value Bakhtin's insights, and I can testify to his influence in the world of modern literary criticism. His theory of heteroglossia has opened doors-- even if the language used to describe it exists in the midst of others' voices.