Bakhtin Ethics Rhetoric

Abstract

This essay evaluates the early phenomenological work of Mikhail Bakhtin and makes the case that the rhetorical dimension of that work cannot be understood outside the context of ethics, and argues that the connection between rhetoric and ethics poses certain problems for scholars who have taken up his language philosophy as rhetorical in more or less orthodox terms. Because his ethics and rhetoric are founded on the idea of non-coincidence, the outcomes of Bakhtin’s rhetoric and ethics are rather less felicitous than most scholars have so far understood. It is also the case that this ethico-rhetorical language theory is particularly apt for a world after Auschwitz, because it is suggestive of a testimonial rhetoric. After surveying some of the ways Bakhtin’s work has been taken up as rhetoric and the problems attendant to the ways it has been taken up, we suggest how his work can and should be seen as rhetorical and ethical at the present conjuncture and explore the rhetorical and ethical dimensions of Bakhtin’s work in the context of his ethics. We conclude by suggesting how Bakhtin’s ethico-rhetorical theory and its testimonial dimension may be particularly well suited to a post-1945 world.

Keywords:

• answerability
• engagement
• ethics
• excess
• rhetoric
• testimony

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Bernard-Donals

Michael Bernard-Donals is a Professor in and Chair of the Department of English and Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison ([email protected]).

Matthew Capdevielle

Matthew Capdevielle is a doctoral candidate in English composition and rhetoric, University of Wisconsin-Madison ([email protected]).