LAUGHING BENJAMIN AND MELANCHOLY BAKHTIN: PROBLEMS OF AN UNELECTIVE AFFINITY

• Authors: Beasley-Murray T.
• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

The author of the study shows some of the ways in which the thought of Benjamin can be brought alongside that of Bachtin. He impugns the ossified conceptions of both thinkers and tries to compare their thinking through their temperaments. He examines two crucial aspects of their thought - laughter and seriousness/melancholy - often emphasized by some strands of critical literature to the extent of emptying their thought of any substance. The apparent incommensurability between these two personalities (Bachtin the theorist of carnival laughter and Benjamin the melancholic) may be, according to the author, reconsidered to double effect. First, looking at unelective affinities might present both thinkers in a new transforming light; second, such a reillumination may save them from their depolitization at the hands of over-serious or over-jolly academics and reveal in them the potential for joyful but serious political action.

Keywords

EN

BACHTIN M.; BENJAMIN WALTER; CARNIVAL LAUGHTER; DEPOLITIZATION; MELANCHOLY; UNELECTIVE AFFINITIES

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovak Review. A Review of World Literature Research
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 73-79
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Beasley-Murray T.

• T. Beasley-Murray, Ustav svetovej literatury SAV, Konventna 13, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovak Republic

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

08SKAAAA04108014