Comment on Groys ’ essay “ Between Stalin and Dionysus : Bakhtin ' s Theory of the Carnival ”

This comment focuses on Groys’ understanding, or misunderstanding of Bakhtin’s polyphonic novel and, in particular, the polyphonic author. Groys argued, on the one hand, that there is no author for Bakhtin’s polyphonic novel as there can be no author inside of the polyphonic novel and there is, according to Bakhtin, no one outside of the novel. He argued, on the other hand, that there is a superauthor outside of the polyphonic novel who controls all what happen in the novel. Then, he compared the super-author to Stalin, arguing that Bakhtin’s view on polyphonic novel justifies the totalitarianism of Stalin’s regime. Groys’ view of the polyphonic author comes from his failure to grasp the unique characteristics of Bakhtin’s polyphonic author who exists simultaneously in and out of the novel and has two roles.


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relations with the "people" in the novel.So, this author is characterized by Groys not as just an "author," but as the "super-author".As the transcendental one, the super-author directs the "people" in the novel.

Bakhtin's view on the author of polyphonic novel
I think that Groys' arguments are based on his misunderstanding of Bakhtin's view on the author of the polyphonic novel.Contrary to Groys' arguments, the author of the polyphonic novel is inside of the novel, and simultaneously is outside of the novel, not transcendentally but dialogically relating with the individuals in the novel.This feature, that is, the author plays two roles simultaneously, is the important characterization of the author by Bakhtin. Morson & Emerson (1990) pointed out this feature clearly.
The polyphonic author, in short, necessarily plays two roles in the work: he creates a world in which many disparate points of view enter into dialogue, and, in a quite distinct role, he himself participates in that dialogue.(Morson, & Emerson 1990, p.239) Bakhtin himself describes these two roles as an organizer and a participant as the following quote shows.
The entire work would have been constructed by him as a great dialogue, but one where the author acts as organizer and participant in the dialogue without retaining for himself the final word… (Bakhtin 1984, p.72)The term "organizer" would be better than the term "creator" to describe the role played by the author outside of the novel, as the author outside of the novel does not create the world of novel transcendentally as Groys' super-author does, but organizes the novel by presenting some stimulating problems to the individuals in the novel and provoking them to generate their voices.Bakhtin analyzed Dostoevsky's case, saying that Dostoevsky presented the adventure plot to the individuals in the novel.
In Dostoevsky, the adventure plot is combined with the posing of profound and acute problems; and it is, in addition, placed wholly at the service of ideas.It places a person in extraordinary positions that expose and provoke him, it connects him and makes him collide with other people under unusual and unexpected conditions precisely for the purpose of testing the idea and the man of the idea, that is, for testing the "man in man".(Bakhtin 1984, p. 108) The adventure plot provided by the author Dostoevsky provokes the characters to generate new voices from them.The new voices are unique responses of the characters to the unexpected situations of the adventure plot.They must be new and unexpected to the author.This author, although he/she exists outside of the novel, has dialogic relations with characters.
There is one more important way in which the polyphonic author relates with characters dialogically: listening to various possible voices of the characters.According to Bakhtin, listening is another important way for Dostoevsky to relate dialogically with his characters.the reigning dominant ideas (official and unofficial), as well as voices still weak, ideas not yet fully emerged, latent ideas heard as yet by no one but himself, and ideas that were just beginning to ripen, embryos of future world views.(Bakhtin 1984, p. 90) It should be noted that Bakhtin emphasized that Dostoevsky listened not only to the loud and already recognized voices, but also to latent, possible voices.He could listen even to voices whose speakers themselves had not yet noticed.Dostoevsky as the author could bring out the voices which were not only new for Dostoevsky but also for the speakers themselves.Though Bakhtin does not explain explicitly, listening would be used both for the author who is outside of the novel to organize it and the author who is inside of the novel and participates the dialogue with characters.
So, Bakhtin's author of the polyphonic novel exists simultaneously both inside and outside of the novel.The author sometimes provokes the characters to generate new voices, and sometimes to listen to characters to bring out the new voices from them.The author is not the transcendental super-author who just direct the "people" in the novel, but a dialogic author who relates dialogically with the individual characters in the novel.

Lesson for the dialogic pedagogy
Groys' failure to understand the unique feature of Bakhtin's polyphonic author is not irrelevant to the research of the dialogic pedagogy.In the dialogic pedagogy, the teacher should be given his/her rightful place in the dialogic classroom.I believe that Bakhtin's view on the author of the polyphonic novel is useful to characterize the place and work of the teacher in the dialogic classroom.The teacher who organizes the dialogic classroom can be compared to Bakhtin's author of the polyphonic novel (Lensmire, 1997;Miyazaki, 2013).
I have been showing the effectiveness of the comparison between Bakhtin's polyphonic author and the dialogic teacher by examining the thoughts and the classroom lessons of the Japanese dialogic pedagogy (Miyazaki, 2010;Miyazaki, 2013;Matusov & Miyazaki, 2014).In such classrooms, the teacher plays two roles.The teacher organizes the class as the arena on which students experience the dialogue with other students.Simultaneously, the teacher participates in the dialogue with the students.Within the teacher's work to organize the class to be dialogic, it is most important to discover and present the questions on the learning contents that can challenge students to generate their new, unexpected voices.Japanese practices show that such a question should be an authentic one in the sense that not only students but also the teacher doesn't know their answers.This is a sort of the question Miyazaki (2013) named an "unknown question".Teacher's presentation of this type of question to students is comparable to the polyphonic author's presentation of adventure plot to the characters of the novel.
Another work of the dialogic teacher is listening to students' possible voices, which is also comparable to another work of Bakhtin's polyphonic author, that is, listening to the latent, not yet fully emerged voices of the characters.In the case of the teacher, most important listening is to discover questions in students' utterances that are new and unexpected to the teacher and are latent for the students themselves.The teacher does listen to students' questions in the dialogue in which the teacher herself participates.The teacher brings out the latent questions from students and makes them explicit to the students, and new dialogue develops from the new questions.As the discovered question is new to the teacher, it is another sort of an "unknown question".
Dostoevsky possessed an extraordinary gift for hearing the dialogue of his epoch, or, more precisely, for hearing his epoch as a great dialogue, for detecting in it not only individual voices, their dialogic interaction.He heard both the loud, recognized, reigning voices of the epoch, that is, Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal | http://dpj.pitt.eduDOI: 10.5195/dpj.2017.220| Vol. 5 (2017) DB:50