BaIIlin's Ivon

AulIov|s) Bevnadelle MeIev

Souvce FaciJic Coasl FIiIoIog, VoI. 32, No. 1 |1997), pp. 105-120
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Bakhtin's
Irony
Beradette
Meyler
Although
the word
irony rarely appears
in his earlier
writings,
Mikhail Bakhtin's works center around the
subject,
a center which it
might
be
said,
he could not
hold,
if it could ever indeed have been
grasped.
The terms
"heteroglossia," "polyphony,"
and
finally
"dialo-
gism,"
which
pervade
various
texts,
all
embody types
of
irony,
and
Bakhtin's "Notes Made in
1970-71,"
one of his final
compositions,
refers
to the issue
repeatedly.
Nor does
irony
constitute
solely
the
subject
of
Bakhtin's
inquiry;
if we are to side with Friedrich
Schlegel's
idea of it
as infinite
indeterminacy,
Bakhtin's own
slippery employment
of terms
could be
categorized
ironic as well.
These
may
be
accepted
as
conceivable,
even obvious
points.
The
question
remains as to how we can benefit from Bakhtin's addition to
the literature of
irony,
the issue of how his
response
contributes to the
discourse. As his
writings
are often taken to
bridge
the
gap
between
text and
world,
one
might
assume that Bakhtin could
provide
some
type
of
political
context for
irony.
Paul de
Man, however,
in his
essay
"Dialogue
and
Dialogism,"
demonstrates the deficiencies inherent in
an
overly
social or
metaphysical conception
of
dialogism
and reveals
the
danger
of
reducing dialogism
"as a
metalinguistic (i.e., formal)
structure to
dialogism
as a
recognition
of
exotopy" (110),
in other
words,
to the hermeneutic
dialogue
indicated in the title. The
sugges-
tion that Bakhtin's
dialogue
can confirm a certain humanist ideal of
intersubjectivity
or Marxist
conception
of the social is also
dispelled
in
Thomas Dana-Cohen's article
"Reading
a Blind Parataxis
Dostoyevsky
(Nietzsche)
Bakhtin."
If, then,
we are to reclaim the
political potential
of
irony
in
Bakhtin,
the
argument
must
proceed along
new
paths.
To
glean
indications of what this avenue of
approach might
be, it is
essential to understand the alternative
interpretations
of
irony
that such
a construal of Bakhtin could
modify.
Three are
exposed
in de Man's
essay
"The
Concept
of
Irony," during
a discussion of "the
way
in which
irony
is
being
defused."
Significantly,
the first and last are
attempts
that
Bakhtin has
already, fairly explicitly,
discarded. The former
perspective
"reduces
irony
to an aesthetic
practice
or artistic
device,
a Kunstmittel"
(169).
This is the
strategy
of containment that Bakhtin
perceives-per-
haps inaccurately-in
the
lyric poem,
which he therefore dismisses
from the
compass
of
dialogism.
The latter
"insert(s)
ironic moments or
105
Beradette
Meyler
ironic structures into a dialectic of
history" (170).
Such an
interpreta-
tion,
flattening
the
paradox
inherent in
irony by postulating
its resolu-
tion
through
time,
Bakhtin demonstrates
inadequate
in
understanding
the
polyphony
of
Dostoevsky's
novels.1 The third means of
reducing
irony
that de Man details is one that he himself had
employed
in "The
Rhetoric of
Temporality,"
that of
"reducing
it to a dialectic of the self
as a reflexive structure."
According
to this
account,
we could see de
Man's
self-critique
in "The
Concept
of
Irony"
as itself
ironic,
or
interpret
Bakhtin's continual semantic modulations in the same
way.
This,
how-
ever,
would have the evident
disadvantage
of
relegating
the
referent,
here the
concept
of
irony,
to an
entirely
interiorized discourse. While
the
attempt
to define the
object
of discussion
conventionally may
ultimately
be
impossible,
the radical idealism of de Man's earlier ac-
count also seems in some senses
unsatisfying.
Thus,
paradoxically,
the
only
effective
political reading
of Bakhtin can be achieved
through
eliminating
the
customary
sense of the social in the term
dialogism,
and
additionally extracting
the form from the entire realm of the
personal.
What Bakhtin can add to
irony
is the
abrogation
of
authority
that occurs
through
the
auspices
of
dialogism,
without a
priori implications
of
individual intention.
Schlegel's
remarks in his
Philosophical Fragments prove fairly
useful
in
arrogating
for
dialogism
the status of
irony.
At one
point
he
suggests
that
dialogue
consists in a
string
of
fragments (27),
which his text
confirms are
quintessentially
ironic.
Likewise,
he affirms the
dialogic
antecedents of the
contemporary
novel in
writing
that "Novels are the
Socratic
dialogues
of our
time"(3).
Bakhtin too cites the
importance
of
the Socratic
dialogue
several times as a forerunner of the
novel;
in
"Epic
and Novel" he writes that "We
possess
a remarkable document that
reflects the simultaneous birth of scientific
thinking
and of a new
artistic-prose
model for the novel. These are the Socratic
dialogues"
(The Dialogic Imagination 24),
while the
chapter
"Characteristics of
Genre" in Problems
of
Dostoevsky's
Poetics contains a
lengthy
excursus
on the
subject
of
Socrates,
who
supposedly supplied
a carnivalistic
basis for the
polyphonic
novel. The Socratic
dialogue
then
appears
for
both
Schlegel
and Bakhtin to feed the novel
form,
the
genre
Bakhtin
deems
especially appropriate
for
dialogic expression.
The Socratic
dialogue
as instantiated in
Plato, however,
is also
commonly
conceived the
origin
of the ironic. It is in this context that
the Greek word
"e?ipou"
first
appears,
and as de Man even writes in
"The Rhetoric of
Temporality,"
"Quintilian
described
irony
as
capable
of
coloring
an entire discourse
pronounced
in a tone of voice that did
not
correspond
to the true
situation,
or
even,
with reference to
Socrates,
106
Bakhtin's
Irony
as
pervading
an entire
life"(210).
The idea that Socrates himself is an
ironic man raises a
problem
that
appears throughout
Bakhtin's dis-
course on
dialogism
and
many
discussions of
irony;
this is the issue of
how
strongly irony
must be linked to
personal
intention and the neces-
sity
for
speech
to
supply
its source. Bakhtin himself refers to the ur-text
of Socrates' life as a source for the
multiple
authors of the
genre,
of
which he mentions
ten,
mostly
lost
(Dostoevsky's
Poetics
109).
Socratic
irony appears
for him to be
embodied,
and we are left with the
question
of how to translate that into the "dead"
language
of the
page,
or the
residue
remaining
after the writer is removed.
In
succumbing
to the conclusion that
speech
can retain
priority
over
writing
we would be
committing
the same mistake that Plato
did,
in
purportedly honoring
the oral rather than the inscribed word. For
Derrida,
this
tendency
is
ineluctably
interlinked with Western meta-
physics,
an
important conjunction,
as de Man in
"Dialogue
and Dialo-
gism"
sees this branch of
philosophy appearing
in the more mistaken
accounts of what Bakhtin is
doing (110).
Moreover,
in the
specific
terms
of
irony,
the idea that it could be
personally
constituted
implies
the
possibility
of a certain
control,
one that belies the
entity
itself.
Schlegel,
in "Critical
Fragments"
39,
suggests
the
unsuitability
inherent in this
proposition, writing
that "The
history
of the imitation of ancient
poetry,
especially
as
practiced
in
foreign
countries,
is
among
other
things
useful in
permitting
us to derive most
easily
and
fully
the
important
concepts
of unconscious
parody
and
passive
wit"
(5).
Significantly,
while
Schlegel
does
imply
a
type
of
dialogism, by
which the author
responds
to an
already posited
discourse,
the effects of such a
dialogism
no
longer
remain within the
jurisdiction
of the author. Indeed the
text,
in
implying
its own
predecessors,
closes off external
referentiality
in a
way
that makes the reader cease her hermeneutic
quest;
silence or
laughter replace
the
questions
she would otherwise ask the work.
The
possibility
of
reading "dialogism"
as
personified
in
dialogue
is
only
one of the
terminological quandaries
that Bakhtin
presents
the
interpreter.2
Words that
appear
literal or seem
experientially
based he
displaces
from their definitions
during
the course of the
discourse,
evacuating
their
customary
connotations. Not
only "dialogism"
suc-
cumbs to this
tendency,
but the
phrases "living
word," "accent,"
"laughter,"
"silence," "threshold,"
and various others. This feature
contributes to the
irony
of Bakhtin's own
texts,
which he himself admits
are
contradictory,
and
thereby
resist
monological
construction;
at the
conclusion of "From Notes Made in 1970-71" he claims that "This
collection of
my essays
is unified
by
one theme in various
stages
of its
development"
and continues to note "The
unity
of the
emerging (de-
107
Beradette
Meyler
veloping)
idea. Hence a certain internal
open-endedness
of
many
of
my
ideas"
(Speech
Genres
155).
In the much earlier Problems
of Dostoevsky's
Poetics,
Bakhtin had observed the
way
in which
Dostoevsky juxtaposed
different
stages
of the same
person
or the same idea
synchronically,
a
technique
that Bakhtin himself
appears
to
apply
in his
writing.
Like-
wise,
the comment Bakhtin makes about internal as
opposed
to external
open-endedness
is reminiscent of
Schlegel's
remarks on the
power
of
the
fragment
form;
since most works are
internally fragmentary,
he
considers it reasonable to demonstrate this
quality
in
stylistic compo-
sition as well.
"Dialogism"
should then be construed in several differ-
ent
ways
since Bakhtin
problematizes
the conventional means of verbal
derivation and evolution.
Schlegel,
too,
parodies
this in "On
Incompre-
hensibility," writing
that "Common sense which is so fond of
navigat-
ing by
the
compass
of
etymologies-so long
as
they
are
very
close
by-probably
did not have a difficult time in
arriving
at the conclusion
that the basis of the
incomprehensible
is to be found in
incomprehen-
sion"
(32-33).
In order to arrive at
possible
alternatives to the
already posited
perspectives
on
"dialogism,"
let us examine the
origins again,
now
from the more restricted
vantage point
of the individual
question
and
response,
the isolated
irony.
The term that Plato
employs,
"e'pou,"
while itself
describing
a
person,
is derived from the verb
"EVpco,"
which
designates "saying, speaking,
or
telling." Originally
the middle
form,
which in Greek carries the
implication
of a self-reflexive
act,
was
synonymous,
but in Ionic
prose
its
meaning apparently
altered,
becom-
ing
"to cause to be told
one,
to ask."
Significantly,
this
history
of the
form
implies
a mutual imbrication between statement and
question;
an
inquiry
is also a
positive
act that in some
way
contains its own answer.
This
type
of
question
is
precisely
that which occurs in Plato's Socratic
dialogues,
texts renowned for the occlusion of the interlocutor from the
discussion in
any
more than a nominal sense.
Indeed,
most of the
dialogues
are so
programmed
that after the
subject
has been
initially
introduced,
Socrates'
respondent
is
only permitted conciliatory
com-
ments of
affirmation;
many
of the
questions
could almost be taken as
rhetorical if another
person
were not
present.
Similar situations
appear
in
investigating
that
aspect
of
dialogism
Bakhtin dubs
"microdialogue."
This is
dialogism
not on the level of the
event but in terms of each individual word. Bakhtin writes of it in
Problems
of Dostoevsky's
Poetics that
"Dialogue
has
penetrated
inside
every
word,
provoking
it in a battle and the
interruption
of one voice
by
another. This is
microdialogue"
(75).
Here it is the internal reflection
of Raskolnikov that he
points
to,
something
that can be
expressed only
108
Bakhtin's
Irony
textually.
All the nuances of
thought
that
supposedly
occur within
Raskolnikov's consciousness are
expressed through
unanswered
ques-
tions and exclamations.
Thus, too,
in Marxism and the
Philosophy of
Language,
the exclamation "Well!" is followed
by
silence rather than an
explicit response. Dialogism
is in both cases a
linguistic phenonemon,
by
which tonal variations occur
through
marks on the
page.
With these
indices,
the ideas of silence and
laughter,
elsewhere
important
to
Bakhtin,
are drawn into the
text,
and tone
itself,
a word
seemingly
derived from
speech although
current in
literary
criticism,
is
interpre-
ted as an
aspect
of
writing.
This shift from the situation of the
dialogue
to the construction of
the text itself occurs
through
the
auspices
of the
"rejoinder."
Bakhtin
writes that
"Every thought
of
Dostoevsky's
heroes
(the
Underground
Man, Raskolnikov, Ivan,
and
others)
senses itself to be from the
very
beginning
a
rejoinder
in an unfinalized
dialogue" (Dostoevsky's
Poetics
32)
This
preoccupation
with the
rejoinder
carries over into
many
of
Bakhtin's
texts,
and
proves quintessential
for the
understanding
of
literary irony.
Indeed,
the ironic or
dialogical
sentence can be conceived
either as an answer that concains the
question preceding
it or a
question
implying
its own answer. The idea of the
rejoinder
itself seems to
indicate the first half of this
conclusion,
and we will soon see it enacted
in the context of The Merchant
of
Venice,
while the second
part
is
supported by
the nature of the Socratic
dialogues.
The result is that the reader is
positioned oddly
in relation to the
ironic
text,
a connection that Bakhtin
attempts
to indicate
through
the
dual
concepts
of "silence" and
"laughter"
which he
conjoins
several
times in "From Notes Made in 1970-71." While both of these elements
explicitly originate
in a human
context,
as Bakhtin
signals through
the
statement that "Silence is
possible only
in the human world
(and
only
for a
person)" (Speech
Genres
133-134),
silence does in fact invade the
text in the
guise
of
irony,
which Bakhtin describes as "a form of silence"
(134).
The silence concomitant with
irony
is that of the
reader,
who has
already
been accounted for
through
the
dialogism
of the work. Her
voice has been silenced
by
the
operations
of the
text,
and a
discontinuity
occurs between sentence and
receiver,
one which can be
bridged only
through laughter.
This
laughter
is
not, however,
external to the
irony,
but contained within
it,
as Bakhtin
suggests
in his
repeated
character-
ization of
irony
as "reduced
laughter,"
and extends not
only
over the
precipice
of the ironic
moment,
but also the "thresholds" and "borders"
that Bakhtin discusses. In all these cases it is
constructive,
allowing
the
reader to reconstitute an idea within her own framework.3
109
Beradette
Meyler
Shakespeare's
Merchant
of
Venice
provides
a relevant
example
of the
rejoinder,
and demonstrates its
political applicability,
but before treat-
ing
the
specifics
we must
investigate
Bakhtin's reluctance to include
Shakespeare's
work within the
categories
of the
dialogic
or
polyphonic.
Far from
dismissing
the
playwright
out of
hand,
Bakhtin writes exten-
sively
on
Shakespeare,
in Problems
of Dostoevsky's
Poetics
praising
him
for his carnivalistic
origins,
and even almost
granting
him some
poly-
phonic qualities.
He cannot
fully
allow him
these, however,
since he
excludes almost all drama-with the
exception
of medieval
mystery
plays-from
the realm of the
polyphonic.
Reasons for this include the
idea that dramatic
unity
allows
only
one character to maintain a
fully
formed
voice,
and the
feeling
that Aristotelian catharsis results in
monologic
closure. The strictures of classical
tragedy against
which
these
objections speak
are
notoriously
not maintained in
Shakespeare
though,
much to the
dismay
of classical French critics. The stance of
Shakespeare's
villain is
frequently
fleshed out as
fully
as his
hero's,
and
antitheses are not
always
reconciled at the conclusion of his
plays.
Dissenting
from Bakhtin's
surmises,4 however,
is
hardly
as interest-
ing
as
discerning
the ultimate source of his
prejudice against
drama,
a
perspective
rooted in
polyphony
conceived
according
to the
Schlegel-
ian idea of
irony
as
permanent parabasis.
While the most
illuminating
incarnation of
dialogism
in Bakhtin is
microdialogue,
his statements
about
polyphony
shed
light
on the nature of
irony
in
longer
narratives.
This version of
irony depends
on a
type
of extended
synchronicity, by
which numerous
phases
of an idea or a
person
are
juxtaposed
simulta-
neously.
Instead of
dialecticizing,
one of the
techniques
for
defusing
irony, polyphony represents
concomitant contradiction.
Intriguingly
Bakhtin observes in
Dostoevsky,
whose work constitutes the
prototype
of
polyphony, many aspects
that de Man sees in
Stendhal,
whom he
considers the ironic novelist
par
excellence. Not least of the similarities
are the two writers'
approaches
to
time;
de Man observes in "The
Rhetoric of
Temporality"
that "We
readily grant
[Stendhal]
irony,
as in
the famous Stendhalian
speed
that allows him to
dispose
of a seduction
or a murder in the
span
of two brief
sentences,"
while Bakhtin com-
ments in Problems
of Dostoevsky's
Poetics on "the
catastrophic
swiftness
of
action,
the 'whirlwind
motion,'
the
dynamics
of
Dostoevsky" (29).5
Polyphonic
contradiction is
present
in classical
tragedy,
but
only
at its
commencement;
in a drama such as
Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannos,
the
conflict between the
protagonist's unacknowledged past
and his
pres-
ent state is resolved when he
eventually incorporates
both facets into
his final self. Rather than
remaining
unfinalized,
as both
Schlegel's
permanent parabasis
and Bakhtin's
polyphony explicitly
are,
this
type
110
Bakhtin's
Irony
of
tragedy
achieves closure and
simultaneously
instates a certain
monologic
social context.
Such
ideological monologism
is to some extent
dispelled
on the
levels of both
microdialogue
and
polyphony during
the course of
Shakespeare's
Merchant
of
Venice. Several
exchanges
between the Mer-
chant
Shylock
and the Christian characters of the
play
demonstrate the
social
significance
Bakhtin's
concept
of
rejoinder
could
entail,
while the
conclusion of the
play
leaves the
question
of
control,
in some
senses,
unresolved. Act
I,
scene iii commences with a
rejoinder,
one that
implies
the existence of a
prior original
statement without
specifically citing
it.
The
exchange
between
Shylock
and Bassanio reads
Shy.
Three thousand
ducats,
well.
Bass.
Aye
sir,
for three months.
Shy.
For three
months,
well.
Bass. For the which I told
you,
Antonio shall be bound.
Shy.
Antonio shall become
bound,
well.
Bass.
May you
stead me? Will
you pleasure
me? Shall I know
your
answer?
Shy.
Three thousand ducats for three
months,
and Antonio bound.
Bass. Your answer to that.
Shy.
Antonio is a
good
man.
Bass. Have
you
heard
any imputation
to the
contrary?
During
the course of this
"conversation,"
Shylock singles
out elements
of a
preceding question
that Bassanio asked and
repeats
them,
ironi-
cally appending
the ironic Volochinov "well" to each. Instead of assent-
ing
as Socrates' interlocutors would have
done,
he creates a certain
resistance
through repeating
the demands and transforms himself into
the
interrogator
with the discomfort he occasions. Bassanio's state-
ments
begin
to assume the form of
answers,
although
no additional
question
has been
asked,
and he even
responds
to
Shylock
with the
gesture
of assent
"aye
sir." After the third
repetition
when he realizes
that his
prior attempts
at communication have
failed,
Bassanio
poses
a
series of
rapid-fire inquiries,
as
though rephrasing
could make all the
difference. At the conclusion of the
passage,
the
power
situation has
altered to such an extent that
Shylock
is the individual who must be
refuted;
whereas at the
commencement,
he would
hardly
have
pos-
sessed the moral
authority
to
impugn
Antonio's
character,
at the end
his
technique
of
echoing
and
altering
the words of
Bassanio,
and
by
extension,
the rest of his Christian
community,
has allowed him to
suggest-although
he
quickly
disavows this
interpretation-that
An-
tonio
may
be less than a
"good
man."
Through repeating
Bassanio's
words he
ironically
resists the control that conventional
question
and
111
Beradette
Meyler
answer,
supposed "dialogue," imposes,
and shifts the discourse
by
means of the same words.
Such a
repositioning
occurs
continually throughout
The Merchant
of
Venice,
during
which
Shylock incessantly adopts
the words of Paul's
letters,
employing against
Christian Venetians the rhetoric of the Chris-
tianized
Jew.
During
the famous "I am a
Jew"
speech, Shylock employs
the Pauline
proposition
of universal brotherhood to refute the
prejudice
of Paul's own Christian
successors,
and even uses
language
derived
directly
from Paul's statements in The Acts
of
the
Apostles.
"I am a
Jew"
(III, 1, 52)
echoes Paul's
proclamation
that "I am a
Jew,
born at Tarsus
in Cilicia ... "
(Acts
22:
3),
while his
inquiry
"if
you prick
us do we not
bleed?" recalls the voice
emanating
from heaven that demands of
Paul-who at the time was still one of Christ's
persecutors-"Saul,
Saul,
why
do
you persecute
me? It hurts
you
to kick
against
the
pricks"
(Acts
26:
14).
Likewise,
the
meaning
of the terms "sad" and "content"
are called into
question through
the
auspices
of Pauline intertexts
throughout
the
play.
Antonio
opens
The Merchant
of
Venice with the
assertion "In sooth I know not
why
I am so sad"
(I, i,
1),
then
continually
restates the term "sad" in
metrically prominent places.
In this
context,
"sad,"
as derived from
"satus,"
can denote "filled" or sated as well as
unhappy,
a connotation that will become
extremely important
at the
conclusion of the
play,
when "content" and "contentment" become an
issue. At the end of the trial
scene,
after
Shylock's
intentions have been
thwarted and half his
property
has been allotted to
Antonio,
the latter
concedes "So
please my
lord the
duke,
and all the
court,/
To
quit
the
fine for one half of his
goods,/
I am content"
(IV,
i,
376-8).
Portia then
inquires
"Art thou contented
Jew?
what dost thou
say?"
(IV,
i,
388),
and
here he is more
obviously
forced to
respond, seemingly
without alter-
native,
"I am content"
(IV,
i, 389).
Paul's "Letter to the
Philippians,"
however,
reveals that
even,
and
perhaps especially,
this coerced re-
sponse
refuses to
dispense
with
irony;
while he is
incarcerated,
Paul's
friends
bring
him a
gift, upon
which occurrence he tells them that "I
have
learned,
in whatever state I
am,
to be content"
(Philippians
4:
11),
then later adds "I am filled"
(Philippians
4:
18).
The double
meaning
of
contentment, which,
like
"sadness,"
can indicate
fullness,
becomes
apparent
here,
and the first
irony
surfaces;
although Shylock
has been
deprived
of most of his
resources,
he is
still,
like
Paul,
sated. Addition-
ally,
he has
co-opted
moral
superiority
for himself
through asserting
that he is
"content;"
while this scene
emphasizes
the
money
that the
play's
Christians will
obtain,
Shakespeare
has
Shylock,
the
supposedly
usurious
Jew,
wreak his
revenge by playing
the
poor
Christian better
than
they
themselves are able to. This
type
of
struggle against authority
112
Bakhtin's
Irony
constitutes the
political aspect
of
microdialogue
that Bakhtin can
give
us.
The
polyphony
of
Shakespeare's play
is also achieved
through
ref-
erence to other earlier
discourses,
those of the source
tale,
Giovanni's
"I1 Pecorone,"
and Marlowe's
play
The
Jew of
Malta. The last scene in
which
Shylock
is
present
on
stage
combines both narratives without
deciding
between them and thus endows his fate with a fundamental
ambivalence. When
Shylock
discovers that he can neither obtain a
pound
of Antonio's flesh nor
monetary recompense,
he
attempts
to
depart empty-handed,
as does the character from Giovanni's
story.
He
is not
permitted
to leave at this
point,
however,
and receives a sentence
similar to that of Barrabas at the
beginning
of the
Jew of
Malta. At the
end of the scene he is
supposed
to
sign
a statement
sealing
the terms of
his
punishment,
but this closure never
happens
on
stage; Shylock
instead
pleads
sickness and instructs them to send the deed to him. The
two sources are thus combined
equally,
and at the end of the
play
neither is
self-evidently
the substrate. The
plot's suspension
ensures
that
Shylock
will not be
entirely
assimilated into the Christian world at
the
conclusion,
and
yet
another form of ironic resistance becomes
apparent.
II
The
dispersal
of
significance
characteristic of Bakhtin's own terms
furnished an
apt
aside in the first section. Here those shifts in
emphasis
will become central to an
explication
of Bakhtin's attitude towards
irony,
which cannot
entirely
be contained within the formal element.
The
apparently
extra-textual terms that he
employed-living
word,
accent,
etc.-are not
superfluous
to his
conceptual
schema,
or
merely
present
to contrast with their
genuine
textual
employments.
Instead,
they
indicate that
dialogism surpasses
the distinction between content
and
form, and,
in
fact,
the traditional delimitations of
linguistics
itself,
and
partakes
instead of a rhetorical element as
strong
as that
espoused
by
a de Man. Rather than a rhetoric that
merely overlays
an
underlying
meaning,
Bakhtin
espouses,
and himself
enacts,
a rhetorical function
that
presides
over semantics as well as textual surface.
Intriguingly,
de Man
himself,
through
a
reading
of Bakhtin that
overly
literalizes his
statements,
has
denigrated
the theoretician for one
of the
checkpoints
on his
trajectory
towards rhetorical
irony
of true
force.
By imputing
to him a
strongly anti-tropological
stance in "Dia-
logue
and
Dialogism,"
de Man
ignores
the
import
of Bakhtin's
objec-
tions to the
lyric,
based on the same
rejection
of
irony
as kunstmittel that
113
Beradette
Meyler
de Man
performs
in "The
Concept
of
Irony."
Since Bakhtin
frequently
seems to be
depicted
as some sort of serious social
reformer,
it is not
surprising
that de Man
might
(at
least in his own ironic
fashion)
underestimate Bakhtin's
personal
ironic
potential.
This
tendency, per-
haps particularly pronounced
in the Russian version of his
writings,6
appears
at the commencement of Problems
of Dostoevsky's
Poetics,
where
prior
critics,
the
dialogical
voices,
are
quoted,
then
interrupted by
Bakhtin's own authorial
interjections,
sometimes
taking
the form of
particles
or
phrases
that he elsewhere7 describes as tools of the ironic
novelist's trade.
Likewise,
as we have
already
observed,
the terms used
in Bakhtin's accounts have been
adopted
from discourse about
speech
or
space,
but altered to fit the author's own aims. Rather than examine
the
implications
of
dialogism
from a
supposedly objective
remove,
Bakhtin
employs
it within his own
oeuvre,
taking seriously
his asser-
tion that
Every socially significant
verbal
performance
has the
ability
... to
infect with its own intention certain
aspects
of
language
that had
been affected
by
its semantic and
expressive impulse, imposing
on
them
specific
semantic nuances and
specific axiological
overtones;
thus,
it can create
slogan-words,
curse-words,
praise-words
and so
forth.
("Discourse
in the Novel"
290)
The
perspective
on
lyric poetry
that de Man himself
critiques,
as well
as all the similar views
espoused,
are
qualified
in the footnotes to
"Discourse in the Novel"
-
unrealistic
idealizations,
they
are intended
to serve an
argumentative purpose.8
De Man's label
"dogmatically
explicit"
and characterization of Bakhtin as
"unambiguously
as-
sert[ing]"
in
"Dialogue
and
Dialogism"(111), appear slightly
less men-
acing
when
juxtaposed
with the footnote "It
goes
without
saying
that
we
continually
advance as
typical
the extreme to which
poetic genres
aspire;
in concrete
examples
of
poetic
works it is
possible
to find
features fundamental to
prose
...
"
("Discourse" 287).
If Bakhtin's
extended discussion of the
lyric
and the function of the
trope
within it
is not to be taken
completely seriously,
the
question
surfaces,
as it did
in
discussing tragedy,
as to
why
he raised the issue at all. The answer
is
provided by
his statements on the
subject,
which discuss the
unity
of
the
lyrical poem
and reveal the
logical
coherence of its form.
Bakhtin's remarks on
poetry
all center around the thesis that the
trope's potential
is
fully
fulfilled
through
the
poem,
and all word
play
remains
strictly
within the bounds of the
lyric's
artificial
unity.
This
conception
accounts even for the most obvious
paradox
within the
poem,
as Bakhtin
speaks
of "a tension-filled
unity
of
language
...
achieved in the
poetic
work"
("Discourse" 298),
and states that "The
world of
poetry,
no matter how
many
contradictions and insoluble
114
Bakhtin's
Irony
conflicts the
poet develops
within
it,
is
always
illumined
by
one
unitary
and
indisputable
discourse"
(286).
Through
these
categorizations,
he
reveals that a word
may
be used with double and
opposing meanings,
but all those connotations have been
manipulated by
the author into a
perfectly logical paradoxy.
Such confinement within the
purely
formal
realm,
Bakhtin deems
inadequate
for
dialogism,
and
by
extension
irony,
and he
replaces
it with a scheme
accounting
for content as
well,
although
not
according
to a hermeneutic model.
Before
describing
this
alternative,
let us examine the
logical concept
of
irony
to which Bakhtin
reacts,
exemplified by
certain remarks of
Schlegel,
and included in Kenneth Burke's account.
During
the Philo-
sophical Fragments, Schlegel frequently
lauds and creates
paradox,
cat-
egorizing
it as the
well-spring
of
irony;
section 46 from the "Critical
Fragments" encapsulates
this
pervasive
sentiment in the
pithy
maxim
"Irony
is the form of
paradox.
Paradox is
everything simultaneously
good
and
great" (6).
For
Schlegel, "paradox,"
not
merely
a
fuzzy feeling,
fulfills a distinct
logical paradigm,
one into which he allows us a
glimpse through
his statements about the
analytic
and
synthetic,
two
pillars
of modern
logic.
In
describing
the two
poles, Schlegel expresses
a
greater affinity
for the
synthetic, praising "synthetic people"
above
analytic
ones;
at one
point
he writes that "We are closer to the Romans
and can understand them better than the
Greeks;
and
yet
a real
feeling
for the Romans is much rarer than for the
Greeks,
because there are
fewer
synthetic
than
analytic people"
(6).
The
analytic
writer,
according
to
Schlegel,
observes the reader as he
is;
and
accordingly
he
makes his calculations and sets
up
his machines in order to make
the
proper impression
on him. The
synthetic
writer constructs and
creates a reader as he should
be;
he doesn't
imagine
him calm and
dead,
but alive and critical. He allows whatever he has created to
take
shape gradually
before the reader's
eyes,
or else he
tempts
him
to discover it himself. He doesn't
try
to make
any particular impres-
sion on
him,
but enters with him into the
deepest symphilosophy
or
sympoetry.
(14)
Although Schlegel
lauds the
synthetic,
contradiction and
paradox
emerge
from the
negation
of the
analytic,
a circumstance that should
accord the latter some
significance.
In "The
Concept
of
Irony,"
de Man
supports
this
notion,
asserting
that for
Fichte,
(under
Schlegel's
influ-
ences),
a
synthetic judgment, maintaining
the likeness of two
disparate
objects, implies
the
negation
of an
analytic. Through
an
approach
akin
to Grice's idea of conversational
implicature,
de Man demonstrates that
suggesting
the
similarity
of two entities makes no sense unless
they
are
different in some
respects (18).
The
apotheosis
of the
synthetic
would
then,
for
Schlegel, actually
be the
negation
of the
analytic,
or the
115
Bernadette
Meyler
contradictory
that
ensues,
the
paradox
that is
pre-eminently
ironic;
as
he writes in the "Athenaeum
Fragments,"
"An idea is a
concept per-
fected to the
point
of
irony,
an absolute
synthesis
of absolute
antitheses,
the continual
self-creating interchange
of two
conflicting thoughts"
(33).
The
logical
framework
upon
which
Schlegel's irony
rests,
encapsu-
lated in the claim that
"Philosophy
is the real homeland of
irony
which
one would like to define as
logical beauty" (5), corresponds
to the
spirit
in which he exalts
poetry
as the
only truly
ironic
genre.
These are the
postulates
that Bakhtin
speaks against
in his
works,
but
they
do not
entirely
exhaust
Schlegel's perspective
on
irony,
as his own
fragments
tend to
present
a
paradox
that is then itself
undermined,
and the
very
idea of
"permanent parabasis"-the
act of
stepping
outside the dra-
matic
frame-inherently
transcends the
logical,
as we shall see. For the
moment, however,
the issue becomes how to
escape
this
logical system,
and what valid alternatives
might
be
presented.
Contemporary questioning
of the
analytic/synthetic
divide,
includ-
ing
the
critique
of W.V.O.
Quine,
may
be able to assist in this
respect.
In "Two
Dogmas
of
Empiricism"
and Word and
Object,
Quine
expressed
doubts about the
validity
of the
distinction,
caviling
with the
premise
that
anything,
even the
analytic,
can be
completely
invested in the
formal
sphere
without
disruption by empirical
or material forces. While
investigating
the definitional nature of the
analytic,
Quine
encounters
the issue of
synonymy, upon
which definition
depends,
and in discuss-
ing
it
incorporates
his modified notions of
meaning
and reference. In
"On What There
Is," Quine
had
already
revealed that
meaning
is not
dependent
on
reference;
providing
the
example
of the
"Morning
Star"
and
"Evening
Star,"
both of which
phrases
describe the same
object,
but which
appear
in
distinctly
different
contexts, Quine
renames mean-
ing "significance"
and delineates its
separation
from reference. This is
relevant for
synonymy,
since context becomes
all-important,
and two
terms must be situated in similar situations to be
definitionally equated.
Such a
relationship
reflects back on the
analytic,
as the same
word,
when
occurring
in different
contexts,
may
maintain
entirely disparate
significances.
Quine's schema,
which Bill
Martin,
following
Michael
Dummett,
dubs "the context
principle"
(Martin 129),
is
expanded
in
Word and
Object,
as the
philosopher
discusses
intralinguistic
and inter-
linguistic
translation. He
opines
that,
although
a
phrase
in a
foreign,
or-to take
up
Bakhtin's
terminology-merely differently
accented
language, appears
to refer to one
thing,
it
may really designate
another;
this
slippage
is, however,
impossible
to
discern,
unless one can com-
prehend
the entire network of related
beliefs,
or
"sentences,"
surround-
116
Bakhtin's
Irony
ing
it. As a result of this
indeterminacy,
Quine
postulates
that "radical
translation" is
impossible.
The
indeterminacy
that
Quine
thematizes returns us to
irony,
the
realm of the
undecidable,
which has now been
transmogrified
from the
logical
into the rhetorical.
Writing
in a similar
vein,
Niklas
Luhmann,
in "The
Paradoxy
of
Observing Systems," distinguishes logical
and
rhetorical forms of
paradox,
then asserts that the two have now been
assimilated
through contemporary systems theory;
since
logical
mod-
els are seen to constrain
only
within a certain
specific
framework,
and
different levels of the
system may
introduce diverse
logical
schemas,
the line
present
between the two
paradoxes
has
gradually
faded. Para-
dox in the new
multiplex
of
systems
occurs when inter-level boundaries
are
crossed,
and elements from two frames are
compared.
This is
precisely
the effect that Bakhtin observes in
irony, describing
in numer-
ous
places
the deficiencies inherent in
construing
it
only
from a
logical
point
of view.
The
defusings
of
irony
as dialectic of the self and
kunstmittel,
for
Bakhtin,
fall into the
category
of the
excessively logical.
To the
genuine
operations
of
Dostoevsky's dialogism,
Bakhtin
juxtaposes
the
overly
contained
quality
of
logical
relations,
writing
that "Both dialectics and
antinomy
are in fact
present
in
Dostoevsky's
world. The
thinking
of his
characters is indeed sometimes dialectic or antinomic. But all
logical
links remain within the limits of individual
consciousnesses,
and do
not
govern
the
event-interrelationships among
them"
(Problems of
Dostoevsky's
Poetics
9).
Since
logic depends
on an
internally
coherent
system
which divides the world into an inside and an
out,
it cannot
provide
an
appropriate
interactive
model,
and in
dialogism
"a con-
sciousness . . . cannot concentrate on itself and its own
idea,
on the
immanent
logical development
of that
idea; instead,
it is
pulled
into
interaction with other consciousnesses"
(32).
Bakhtin's
irony
relates the
constituents of various
frames,
developing paradox only among
those,
so that the contrast is indirect. This contextual
discrepancy
motivates
his
emphasis
on
laughter,
both in its
capacity
as
bridge
between ele-
ments,
and as "a
specific
aesthetic
relationship
to
reality,
but not one
that can be translated into
logical language...
(164).
Rather than
merely
postulating
an alternate
logic
that
might
affect other
systems,
Bakhtin
describes how one
operates
in the
specific
context of
Dostoevsky's
work.
Introducing
the idea of the
"carnival,"
to which he ascribes a
specific [anti-]logic (133),
to characterize
Dostoevsky's
novels,
he
claims
they
are
"paradoxical
from the
point
of view of life's normal
logic,"
and delineates their dream-like
qualities.
117
Beradette
Meyler
Through suspending
the
analytic,
or more
precisely, renouncing
an
exclusively logical perspective
on
irony,
Bakhtin clouds the
clarity
of
the distinction between form and
content,
as he reveals
through
the
assertion that
"Dialogic relationships
are reducible neither to
logical
relationships
nor to
relationships
oriented
semantically
toward their
referential
object"
(Dostoevsky's
Poetics
183),
and
proceeds
to subsume
the
logical
within the realm of the
rhetorical;
this combination is
epito-
mized in Bakhtin's comments about
logical particles
in "Discourse in
the
Novel," as he describes situations where "The
logic motivating
the
sentence seems to
belong
to the
author, i.e.,
he is
formally
at one with
it;
but in actual
fact,
the motivation lies within the
subjective
belief
system
of his
characters,
or of
general opinion" (Dialogic Imagination
305),
and ones in which "Subordinate
conjunctions
and link words
('thus,'
'because,' 'for the reason
that,'
'in
spite
of' and so
forth),
as well
as words used to maintain a
logical sequence
('therefore,'
'conse-
quently,'
etc.)
lose their direct authorial
intention,
take on the flavor of
someone else's
language,
become refracted or even
completely
reified"
(305).
The terms Bakhtin cites are
precisely
those that
Quine
notes as
furthest from
empirical
confirmation,
but still
subject
to the
pull
of
outside influences. These influences are what Bakhtin demonstrates
permeate language
and,
in the
process
of their incessant
struggle,
create
irony.
Notes
1. See
"Dostoevsky's Polyphonic
Novel" in Problems
of Dostoevsky's
Poetics.
2. One
important
reason that
dialogism
in Bakhtin cannot
entirely encapsulate
a
longing
for the
recovery
of
speech,
is that the novel serves as its source. While the
epic
was
traditionally
recited,
drama is
performed,
and
lyric poems
can be read
aloud,
the novel is much less conducive to such re-enactment.
3.
"Laughter"
in
Bakhtin,
like "wit" in
Schlegel,
is
intimately
associated with the
ironic,
but
hardly
constitutes an
unequivocal expression
of
joy.
In Problems
of
Dostoevsky's
Poetics,
Bakhtin associates
laughter
with the
camivalistic,
writing
that
"Deeply
ambivalent also is carnival
laughter
itself.
Genetically
it is linked with the
most ancient forms of ritual
laughter.
Ritual
laughter
was
always
directed toward
something higher...
All forms of ritual
laughter
were linked with death and
rebirth,
with the
reproductive
act,
with
symbols
of the
reproductive
force. Ritual
laughter
was a reaction to crises in the life of the world and of man
(funeral laughter).
In
it,
ridicule was fused with
rejoicing."
(127)
Akin to Aristotelian
catharsis,
as a
type
of
reversal,
the "crisis" is
everywhere
identified as the source of
laughter;
a
metaphor
for
discontinuity,
like the terms "border" or
"threshold,"
the
"crisis,"
whether
positive
or
negative,
must be
negotiated,
and the
metaphor adequate
for such use is
118
Bakhtin's
Irony
that of
"laughter."
As
expressing
a
juxtaposition
of the
incongruous,
"crisis" also
becomes a version of
irony.
4. Marvin Carlson's article "Theater and
Dialogism" attempts just
such a dis-
agreement
with
Bakhtin;
taking exception
with Bakhtin's
exceptions
with
drama,
Carlson demonstrates the
ways
in which the
concept
of
dialogism
could be
applied
to the theater.
Unfortunately
he literalizes
dialogism
too
much,
and discusses it in
terms of the actual verbal
performance
of a
play, ignoring
the fact that Bakhtin's
"living
voice" is not
actually living,
but
incorporated
into the novelistic text.
5.
Instituting yet
another link between
irony
and
"crisis,"
Bakhtin describes this
speed
elsewhere in Problems
of Dostoevsky's
Poetics as "crisis
time,
in which a moment
is
equal
to
years,
decades,
even to a 'billion
years'...
"
(169-170).
6.
Although
I am not
qualified
to comment on the
Russian,
examination of the
text led me to observe that some
punctuation
and the
quantity
of
qualifiers
differed
between
original
and
translation,
tending
towards a flatter
feeling
in the
English.
7. In "Discourse in the
Novel,"
Bakhtin discusses "the subordinate
conjunctions
and link words ... as well as words used to maintain a
logical sequence"
(305),
that
become indices of a
space
between author and character in ironic novels.
8.
Responding
to de Man's debate with
Bakhtin,
Matthew Roberts concurs in
"Bakhtin and de Man" that "the
essay
which de Man takes as 'the
major
theoretical
statement' of the Bakhtin
canon,
while
probably
the best known to an
English-speak-
ing
audience,
is nevertheless
only
one such statement
among many
over
fifty years
of
highly
diverse,
even
heterogeneous theorizing.
In several
respects (including
the
crucial
opposition
of novel and
poetry)
the
essay represents
a rather extreme
'novelocentricity'
in relation to Bakhtin's earlier and later texts"
(Roberts 116).
The
tameness of his
statement, however,
suggests
to the reader that de Man himself
may
have been
exaggerating
for ironic effect.
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Caryl
Emer-
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1981.
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