Bakhtin and the Visual Arts - Deborah J. Haynes
Here are my notes about Haynes’ reading of Bakhtin. Overall, I think it’s a bit simplified and I probably need to see the original text. Basically, what I’m gleaning here is that Bakhtin provides a nice postmodern framework for reading/making meaning from art and literature, which is quite context-oriented and values interpretation/audience engagement. But a lot of this chapter left me with a “yeah, duh” kind of feeling.
I will identify some key terms that Haynes mentions, which I may revisit in my scholarship later on.
Dialogue/Dialogism - B. uses the term “polyphony” to describe successful dialogic work, which can include “paradoxes, differing points of view, and unique consciousness. To be polyphonic, communication and social interaction must be characterized by contestation rather than automatic consensus.” (297)
Monologic- Monologic art or literature is “empty and lifeless” (296) and is bland and masturbatory, does not provoke response.
Answerability - Bakhtin’s “way of naming the fact that art, and hence the creative activity of the artist, is always related, answerable, to life and lived experience.” (295) “But nearly all art is answerable in the sense that it evolves in relation to history and historical artifacts, to personal experience and reflection, and to identifiable formal issues.” (296) Which boils down to: context matters.
Chronotope - “The concept of the chronotope describes the time/space nexus in which life exists and creativity is possible.” (298, but she cites Bakhtin there too). Basically, the chronotope is a moment in time, which includes situational values, aesthetics, experiences, identities, etc.
Unfinalizability - the concept that an artwork (or thing) is never really finished, in that it continues to be actualized by the people consuming it, making meaning from it, and recontextualizing it.
Small time and Great time: Basically different ways of making meaning within immediate, historical and future contexts. The way an artist or creator intends for something to be received/made meaningful, which may include metaphor or motifs vs. remixing or recontextualizing older content to create new meaning.
Other notes:
For Bakhtin, actions and doing things is what creates meaning, and an orientation, within the world.
Aesthetics: “By unifying nature and humanity (and cognition and action), aesthetics could become the basic for a new approach to philosophy.” (264)