Bakhtin and Religion: A Feeling for Faith

Suzan M. Felch and Paul J. Contino, eds. Bakhtin and Religion: A Feeling for Faith. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001. 272 pp. Index. $79.95, cloth. $22.95, paper.Bakhtin's position as a religious thinker has long been acknowledged in studies of his life and work. In the last two decades research in this area yielded a number of articles and books that discuss theological aspects of Bakhtin's oeuvre. The present volume builds on these earlier studies, focusing on Bakhtin's work in its entirety. It offers a commendable diversity of approaches and topics and addresses audiences from several areas of scholarship, including Russian and comparative theology, literary criticism, and Russian culture. This fascinating exposition of Russian Orthodox spirituality reflected through the prism of Bakhtin's thought proceeds in a roughly chronological order, from earlier to later works.The collection consists of an Introduction, seven articles, Afterword, and Appendix. The opening discussion of the religious dimension of Bakhtin's work and thought belongs to Alan Jacobs. His article, "Bakhtin and the Henneneutics of Love," concerns itself with the theological approach to literary criticism. Jacobs turns to Bakhtin's ethical convictions and discusses their reliance on Christian concepts of charity, love, kenosis, ascetic self-abnegation, and answerability. Through the comparison of Eastern Orthodox and Western aspects of these concepts the author demonstrates both the idiosyncrasy and orthodoxy of Bakhtin's position, placing it in the context of Christian theology. Within this discussion Jacobs brings 'love' to the fore as a fundamental principle of Christian teachings and expounds the importance of 'loving attentiveness' for textual interpretation. He discusses 'charitable hermeneutics' as an ethical act and considers Bakhtin the successor of St. Augustine in exposition and application of this theological concept.Pechey's article, "Philosophy and Theology in 'Aesthetic Activity,'" delves into the world of Bakhtin's aesthetics to show how the latter endorsed the fundamental concepts of Russian Orthodox, i.e. mystical, theology in his works. The author posits that Bakhtin strove to "free aesthetics from its subordination to epistemology in Western philosophy" (p. 48) and that he did it by means of theology. Through the functional similarities between the Scriptures and the novel-both facilitate elevation of the mundane into the spheres of high spirituality-Pechey addresses a remarkable aspect of Bakhtin's thought, his "modernization of spirituality" (p. 59).Coates' "The First and the second Adam in Bakhtin's Early Thought," engages the importance to Bakhtin's philosophy of the Christian concept of binary tension. As she analyzes Bakhtin's endorsement of the two Adams, the Fall and the Incarnation in such early works as "Toward a Philosophy of the Act," "Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity," and "Problems of Dostoevsky's Art," the scholar addresses her philosophical endeavor of overcoming the ontological predicament of the Christian worldview. She proposes for this role the redemptive act of Incarnation and discusses it in conjunction with the concept of kenotic self-emptying. Coates concludes that for Bakhtin, the redemption of the world is not an act which was finalized once and for all by the crucifixion, but rather an ever unfolding process.Averintsev's "Bakhtin, Laughter, and Christian Culture" (the Russian original appeared in 1992) turns to one of Bakhtin's best-known pieces, "Rablais and His World." Averintsev claims to take Bakhtin's dialogical path to revisit the latter's exposition of the "culture of laughter" yet this claim is rather modest. In fact, Averintsev thoroughly problematizes and revises Bakhtin's treatment of laughter in application to Christian culture. He sets out to analyze philosophical premises of laughter, approaching it in the totality of its aspects: physical, spiritual, psychological, emotional, and cultural. …