The Norms of Answerability

Greg M. Nielsen

Description

Greg M. Nielsen brings Mikhail Bakhtin's ethics and aesthetics into a dialogue with social theory that responds to the sense of ambivalence and uncertainty at the core of modern societies. Nielsen situates a social theory between Bakhtin's norms of answerability and Jürgen Habermas's sociology, ethics, and discourse theory of democracy in a way that emphasizes the creative dimension in social action without reducing explanation to the emotional and volitional impulse of the individual or collective actor. Some of the classical sources that support this mediated position are traced to Alexander Vvedenskij's and Georg Simmel's critiques of Kant's ethics, Hermann Cohen's philosophy of fellowship, and Max Weber's and George Herbert Mead's theories of action. In the shift from Bakhtin's theory of interpersonal relations to a dialogic theory of societal events that defends the bold claim that law and politics should not be completely separated from the specificity of ethical and cultural communities, a study of citizenship and national identity is developed.

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Theory on the Borders of Sociology

Syncrisis and Anacrisis: The State of Bakhtin Studies
Creativity and General Sociological Theory
The Bridge between Culture and the Political

1. Diversity and Transcultural Ethics

Disciplinary Orientations
Decentered Subjects and Critiques of Discourse Ethics
The Creative Side of the Normative
The Normative Side of Creativity
Between the Creativity and the Normativity of the Act

2. Communicative Action or Dialogue?

Communicative Action and Moral Development
The Limits of Universal Reason
Dialogism: Mixing the Word and Style

3. The World of Other's Words

Bakhtin and Voloshinov on the Subject of the Utterance
Social and Ethical Worlds of Dialogue in Dostoevsky
The Frankfurt Tradition
Habermas's Break
Genres of Discourse in Literature and in Theory
From Dostoevsky to Calvino
Convergence and Difference

4. On the Sources of Young Bakhtin's Ethics (Kant, Vvedenskij, Simmel, Cohen)

Kant's Three Postulates
Vvedenskij's Fourth Postulate
Simmel's Shadow
Bakhtin and the Formal Ought
Cohen's "Discovery of Man as Fellowman"
Influences and Steps

5. Action and Eros (Kant-Weber-Bakhtin)

Kant: Duties Toward the Body Concerning the Sexual Impulse
Weber: Action, Ethics, and Eros
Bakhtin: The Fourth Postulate and Body-Dialogue
Eros and Action Today

6. Reflexive Subjectivity (Mead-Bakhtin)

Philosophical and Disciplinary Orientations
Between Consciousness and Language: The Ambiguity of Experience
Murder, Confession, and Community
Why the Subject Is Behind Us
Action Inside and Outside the Subject

7. Citizenship and National Identity

On the Dialogue Between Ethnos and Demos
Identity
For and against the Nation

8. A Dialogue on the Nation in Postnational Time

The Nation as a Sociology of Culture: The Quebec Case
Habermas: The Nation as Subjectless Communication
Taylor: The Nation as a Politics of Concession
Kymlicka: On National Minorities
Associational Sovereignty: Fourth Way?

9. Conclusion: On Culture and the Political

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• USSR
• Soviet Union
• Russia
• Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques
• Russie

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791489321
• Langue: English

Extrait

N THE ORMS OF A NSWERABILITY

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N THE ORMS OF A NSWERABILITY

Chapter Title

S OCIAL T HEORY B ETWEEN B AKHTIN AND H ABERMAS

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G REG M ARC N IELSEN

F OREWORD BY C ARYL E MERSON

S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS

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The Norms of Answerability

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2002 State University of New York

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Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Nielsen, Greg Marc, 1953– The norms of answerability : social theory between Bakhtin and Habermas / Greg Marc Nielsen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-5227-1 (alk. paper) -- ISBN 0-7914-5228-X (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Social norms. 2. Sociology--History. I. Title.

HM676 .N54 2002 306--dc21

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F OREWORD A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

C ONTENTS

I NTRODUCTION : T HEORY ON THE B ORDERS O F S OCIOLOGY Syncrisis and Anacrisis: The State of Bakhtin Studies Creativity and General Sociological Theory The Bridge between Culture and the Political

C O : D T E HAPTER NE IVERSITY AND RANSCULTURAL THICS Disciplinary Orientations Decentered Subjects and Critiques of Discourse Ethics The Creative Side of the Normative The Normative Side of Creativity Between the Creativity and Normativity of the Act

C T : C A D ? HAPTER WO OMMUNICATIVE CTION OR IALOGUE Communicative Action and Moral Development The Limits of Universal Reason Dialogism: Mixing the Word and Style

C T : T W O ’ W HAPTER HREE HE ORLD OF THER S ORDS Bakhtin and Voloshinov on the Subject of the Utterance Social and Ethical Worlds of Dialogue in Dostoevsky

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67 69 72

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Contents

The Frankfurt Tradition Habermas’s Break Genres of Discourse in Literature and in Theory From Dostoevsky to Calvino Convergence and Difference

C F : O S Y B ’ HAPTER OUR N THE OURCES OF OUNG AKHTIN S E THICS (K ANT , V VEDENSKIJ , S IMMEL , C OHEN ) Kant’s Three Postulates Vvedenskij’s Fourth Postulate Simmel’s Shadow Bakhtin and the Formal Ought Cohen’s “Discovery of Man as Fellowman” Influences and Steps

C F : A E HAPTER IVE CTION AND ROS (K -W -B ) ANT EBER AKHTIN Kant: Duties Toward the Body Concerning the Sexual Impulse Weber: Action, Ethics, and Eros Bakhtin: The Fourth Postulate and Body-Dialogue Eros and Action Today

C S : R S HAPTER IX EFLEXIVE UBJECTIVITY (M -B ) EAD AKHTIN Philosophical and Disciplinary Orientations Between Consciousness and Language: The Ambiguity of Experience Murder, Confession, and Community Why the Subject Is Behind Us Action Inside and Outside the Subject

C S : C N I HAPTER EVEN ITIZENSHIP AND ATIONAL DENTITY On the Dialogue Between Ethnos and Demos Identity For and against the Nation

C HAPTER E IGHT : A D IALOGUE ON THE N ATION IN P T OSTNATIONAL IMES The Nation as a Sociology of Culture: The Quebec Case

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Habermas: The Nation as Subjectless Communication Taylor: The Nation as a Politics of Concession Kymlicka: On National Minorities Associational Sovereignty: A Fourth Way?

C N : C : O C HAPTER INE ONCLUSION N ULTURE AND P THE OLITICAL

N TE O S B IBLIOGRAPHY I NDEX

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F OREWORD

n his early ruminations on moral philosophy, published only posthu- I 1 mously, Bakhtin announced as part of his work plan for the 1920s an ambitious four-part project. It would begin with the architectonic of the answerable act, that is, with “the world actually experienced, and not merely the thinkable world”; its subsequent parts would discuss aesthetic activity as a performed act or deed (the ethics of artistic cre- ation), the ethics of politics, and the ethics of religion. As it happened, Bakhtin devoted the rest of his life to exploring the first two domains. Neither religion nor politics were appropriate theoretical interests for an independent scholar to pursue in Stalinist Russia. But later scholars have found it hard not to speculate on this unfulfilled agenda. Since Bakhtin’s death in 1975, and even more since the death of Soviet Communism in 1992, the fourth area, “Bakhtin and religion,” has be- 2 come a fertile (if much contested) field of study. And the ethics of politics? For a long time now, a sort of politics has been extracted from Bakhtin’s carnival idea—although this has not been politics of a durable institutional variety, emphasizing as it does the ecstatic revolu- tionary moment over patterns of everyday behavior or civic proce- dures. Only quite recently, with Ken Hirschkop’sMikhail Bakhtin: An 3 Aesthetic for Democracy(1999), has this final “unwritten” part of Bakhtin’s visionary plan begun to receive serious, systematic, non- utopian attention. Greg Nielsen is part of this recent movement. He views politics not as a philosopher or political scientist, however, but as a sociologist. Accordingly, he begins by asking a number of professional questions:

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