Mikhail Bakhtin

Between Phenomenology and Marxism

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by Michael F. Bernard-Donals

Cambridge University Press

Due/Published December 1995, 205 pages, paper

ISBN 0521466474

As Bernard-Donals suggests, the work of Mikhail Bakhtin does not fall neatly under a single rubric, because its philosophical foundation rests ambivalently between phenomenology and Marxism. The theoretical tension between these two positions creates philosophical impasses in Bakhtin's work, which have been neglected or ignored in previous studies of Bakhtin. He examines developments in phenomenological and materialist theory, providing a contextualized study of Bakhtin, a critique of the problems of contemporary criticism, and an original contribution to literary theory.