Mikhail Bakhtin: biography of this Russian linguist

Who was Mikhail Bakhtin and what was his life and intellectual legacy in linguistics? Let's take a look.

Mikhail Bakhtin's name is not very well known.. In fact, he himself did not wish to become a famous person and always surrounded himself with a halo of mystery and anonymity, either by his own will and desire or because the political situation in his native Russia did not allow it.

In spite of this, the truth is that in his time he became a great point of reference and even created a group of intellectuals and artists who revolved around Bakhtin. Moreover, after the fall of the Soviet Union, his work became more widely known and became popular in the First World.

Of course, the figure of this philosopher of language, literary theorist and critic is of great interest today, especially his theory of dialogism. In this article see a biography of Mikhail BakhtinThe book, with his life and his contributions to the study of language and literature.

Brief biography of Mikhail Bakhtin

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (also spelled Bakhtin or Bakhtine) was born on November 17, 1895 in Oryol, former Russian Empire. He was a member of a declining aristocratic family. Due to the profession of his father, who was a bank manager, Bakhtin moved several times during his childhood, living in cities such as Vilnius and Odessa.

At the age of 9, he began to manifest the symptoms of an osteomyelitis that would accompany him throughout his life and cost him his life. which would cost him the amputation of a leg several decades later. This first experience with suffering, especially with the fact that his body was severely affected, marked him for life and influenced his work.

Formation and post-revolution period

Bakhtin began his studies at Odessa University between 1913 and 1916, but later moved to St. Petersburg/Petrograd University to study philosophy and literature. moved to the University of St. Petersburg/Petrograd to study philosophy and literature until 1918. until 1918.

After the Russian Revolution, Bakhtin had the opportunity to establish contact with great cultural figures of the time. He met with scholars, philosophers, thinkers and artists of various arts who, as time went on of various arts who, with the passage of time, would form what would come to be known as "Bakhtin's circle".

The Bakhtin circle

This circle, as its name indicates, was centered on the thought and work of Mikhail Bakhtin, and its members were united by their interest in German philosophy. This group organized public lectures, evening dialogues and plays.

In the circle the social and cultural problems facing Soviet society were addressed from a philosophical perspective.. Although the Russian Revolution promised great liberation for the proletariat at first, over time the new regime degenerated into Stalin's dictatorship.

The work of Bakhtin and those involved with him focused on social life in general, emphasizing how artistic creation was occurring at that time as a form of expression of the concerns and worries of society. Special importance was given to how language reflected the conflicts between the new social classes that arose as a result of the change of government.

According to the circle, language production is, or at least should be, dialogic in that it is a social interaction. That is, just as in a normal conversation between two people, who speak and listen to each other, the powers and the people should engage in dialogic communication.

Traditionally, the most powerful classes, whether economically or politically, try to impose a single discourse, trying to define it as the exemplary one, which also implies trying to impose a single vision.This also implies trying to impose a single vision. On the other hand, the less favored classes only receive a message given in the form of a monologue, an imperative. In other words, they have no say in how government should be run or, in the most serious cases, they risk being "silenced".

Stalin's era: exile and literary production

During the regime of Iósif Stalin several maneuvers were carried out to put an end to any critic of the government of what was already the well-established Soviet Union. Bakhtin's circle was the victim of this persecution, and several of its members were executed. Mikhail Bakhtin himself suffered these interventions, but to his "good fortune" he was simply exiled to Kazakhstan.

Despite his prolific literary activity and his great knowledge, the fact that he was persecuted by the Stalinist government caused him great disrepute when he returned to public life in the when he returned to public life in the 1940s.

During those years he worked on a thesis focused on laughter, which later became one of his most important works, Rebelais and his world. This work is one of Bakhtin's great contributions to a more parodistic type of literature.

Despite the bad reputation he had acquired for being critical of the regime, he gradually regained prestige and years of intense literary production were to come, living in Moscow during the 1940s.

Last years

After living in Moscow, Mikhail Bakhtin moved to Saransk, another Russian city, where he had the opportunity to work as a teacher in an institute specializing in pedagogy in the region. From 1957 to 1961 he worked as head of the department of Russian and world literature, until his health problems led to his death.until his health problems forced him to retire.

Bakhtin died on March 7, 1975 in Moscow, Russia, aged 79.

Work and thought

Bakhtin's work is encompassed within Russian formalism. During the 1920s his work focused mainly on ethics and aesthetics.

Among the great works of this Russian theorist, four works stand out that are crucial to understand Bakhtin's complex theory:

1. Toward a philosophy of the act

Although this essay has not been completely recovered, it seems that in it Bakhtin explained his particular way of understanding how human beings understand and interpret the world around them.

This work suggests what would later become characteristic of this Russian author's ethical and moral vision. In it he defends the ideas that explain the understanding of each human being as a unique being.

According to what has been recovered from the work, it explains how people understand that we act both actively and passively in our own existence, whether physical or emotional.

It also stipulates that our perception of uniqueness exists only to the extent that we think about it, and that, since we are irremensurable beings and that, as we are irreplaceable beings, we must actualize this idea that we are unique.

These premises are complex and, as his literary career evolved, he was able to specify more precisely what all this meant.

2. Problems of Dostoyevsky's poetics

In this work he argues that, on an individual level, people are not completely definable on the outside. According to the idea behind this explanation, it is not possible to describe a person in a certain way if one is not that person, since one cannot feel aspects such as his or her emotionality.

According to Bakhtin, Dostoyevsky, in his works, tried to portray the characters of his works in a way that was contrary to what many writers did, avoiding treating them as if they were objects that could be approached from different perspectives.

In addition, it is thanks to Dostoyevsky's work that Bakhtin proposed the concepts of polyphony and dialogism..

Polyphony, referred to in the literary field, is the fact of exposing several characters in a novel and having them explain their internal world, without the need to resort to the narrator or the main character, if there is one.

3. Rabelais and his world

This is a work in which he analyzes the social system of the Renaissance focusing on language. His objective was to see what was the balance between the language that was allowed at that time and that which was not.

4. The dialogic imagination

This work, which is posthumous, is a collection of essays by Bakhtin. a collection of essays by Bakhtin in which he deals with issues related to language.. It introduces and details concepts such as heteroglossia, dialogism and chronotope.

The term dialogic, especially related to Bakhtin's dialogism and which has become the most outstanding idea of his long professional career, is somewhat complex to explain. It refers to the fact that the information handled by two people who are having a conversation is not static.

People, in their communicative interactions, modify the meanings of the words they use, either because the receiver wants to give it a specific meaning or the receiver wants to give it a specific meaning.The meaning of the words they use, either because the receiver wants to give them a specific meaning or because the receiver misunderstands them. Also, words can be used in an alternative way to the meaning they are socially assumed to have.

Heteroglossia refers to the fact that there are different registers between people. This is especially applicable to novels, in which the register of the characters and that of the narrator do not necessarily coincide in aspects such as the use of colloquialisms, solemnity, use of the first and third person....

Finally, chronotope is how references to space and time are made in language and discourse. That is, what are the terms and expressions used to describe and indicate places and times, either in the novel or in an article about a real event.

Bibliographical references:

• Todorov, T. (2010). "Jakobson y Bajtin", in La experiencia totalitaria. Barcelona, Spain, Galaxia Gutenberg.
• Morson, G. S. and Emerson, C. (1990) Mikhail Bakhtin. Creation of Prosaics, Stanford, USA, Stanford University.
• Holoquist, M. (1991) Bakhtin and his World, London-New York, UK-USA, Routledge.