Marxism and the Philosophy of Language

TLDR

The translation comments on the emerging field of creative arts research, arguing against practice‑led research that merely imitates the scientific method. The poem dramatizes and extrapolates Bakhtin’s ideas from Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, proposing that the 1917 revolution is no more foundational than any other verbal experience. Part 1 examines Bakhtin’s claim that experience exists only within signs, illustrated by the discursive nature of extreme hunger. Parts 2–3 extend Bakhtin’s claim that inner speech is.

Abstract

My poem dramatises and extrapolates upon key and passing ideas in the writings of the Soviet philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, particularly his 1929 text Marxism and the Philosophy of Language . Part 1 explores Bakhtin's argument that experience only exists within signs, following his example of the discursive nature of experiences of extreme hunger. The poem suggests a likely implication of those necessarily guarded arguments: that the 1917 revolution was no more foundational than any other verbal experience. Parts 2 & 3 similarly extrapolate from Bakhtin's writings, particularly those that relate to his extraordinary assertion in Ch.1 of Marxism as to the dramatic nature of 'inner speech' (i.e. the thesis that when any individual ponders an issue to him or herself, their cogitation is not in the form of a monologue, but rather a sequence of distinct voices that propose and rejoin, dialogically). The poem concludes by suggesting that the poetry of science is a function of scientists' dramatic problematisation of prior conceptions, which opens up a space of irreconcilable dialogue between those conceptions and some new persuasive set of facts, thus generating a desire to know / resume monologue. A prose translation of the poem is appended. This translation also contains some comment on the new field of creative arts research, including a polemic argument urging the field to eschew the attempt (a.k.a. practice-led research) to imitate all stages of 'the' scientific method. Rather it should be taking its lead from the poetic moments within otherwise scholarly / scientific texts like Bakhtin's, imagining the sorts of art that might generate similar intellectual and emotional experiences in its audiences.