The Norms of Answerability: Social Theory Between Bakhtin and Habermas

AKNOWLEDGMENTS

AKNOWLEDGMENTS The idea for this book began several years ago in conversations about Bakhtin and critical theory with graduate students at York University in Toronto. It travelled to Mexico, Europe and the United States before finally settling in Montreal. Along the way I picked up a long list of debts. First, I would like to thank my friend Brian Singer for sharing his considerable erudition over the years and for showing me the limitations of my arguments with imagination, care, and force.The book’s “tone” originates in our conversations and the fruits of Brian’s insights are evident throughout. Tapani Laine, Bakhtin’s Finish translator , and I have had an ongoing discussion about the problems of reconstructing Bakhtin’s thought and I would like to thank him for lending me his very sensitive “touch” with the texts, teaching me how to look at concepts in terms of local context, and for keeping me abreast with new Russian literature on the subject. Many years ago, and again more recently while working on this project, Fred Evans helped give me the “taste” for travel in philosophy (and other places!), however ill prepared I may be for such a voyage, and I thank him warmly. I am very grateful to Caryl Emerson for her Foreword and for dropping in from cyber space a couple of years ago to offer encouragement and support at a time when it was most needed.Thanks to Louis Jacob who played an important editorial role at the beginning of the project. I learned a lot about social theory from my colleagues at the monthly meetings of the “Montreal School” of sociology (Le groupe interuniversitaire d’étude de la Postmodernité) and about Bakhtin and social theory through exchanges with Michael Gardiner and Craig Brandeis. xix At International Bakhtin conferences, I was most inspired by the generosity and good humour of Anthony Wall, Vitaly Makhlin, Nicolai Nicolaev and David Shepard. Thanks also to Brian Poole who was always willing to share his unpublished materials and research. Hans Joas offered very valuable advice on an earlier version of the chapter on Mead and Bakhtin, and Wolgang Knöbl, Frederick Vandenbergh and the late Cary Bocock each provided me with thoughtful commentary and criticisms of an earlier draft of the manuscript. Regina Wenzel provided the brief translations of Simmel from the German in Chapter Four and Christine Swartz helped me through a reading of the German version of Simmel’s text. I am responsible for any translations from the French that appear unless otherwise indicated. I have a very personal sense of gratitude to offer ma copine de vie and collaborator Marie Cusson, not just for her emotional support but for her exemplary intellectual courage and creative talent. Other very special freinds, Chantal Collard, Jean-François Côté, John Jackson, and Domminique Legros, each challenged me in their own way to reach for higher levels (however much we may disagree on the details!). In the end, this work would not have been possible without the students who always encouraged my uneven attempts to introduce Bakhtin’s work into the world of social theory. In particular, I would like to thank Shanna Braden, Christine Ramsey, and Kathy White whose own work on Bakhtin helped shape my thinking. Thanks to Mark Lajoie and Sandra Song who helped correct an earlier draft of the manuscript and Kathy White who edited the second draft and offered pertinent advice on the book’s conceptual development. Finally, thanks to Kathy Allen and Michael Craig for preparing the index and especially for the warmth and good humour of their company. This book draws on parts of previously published essays in which I attempt to think through a variety of theoretical, cultural and political issues against the foil of Bahktin’s and Habermas’s core ideas. The fragments from these essays have been extensively rewritten, extended and reorganized for the book. I achnowledge the following publishers for their permission to include parts of these texts: “Bakhtin and Habermas: Toward A Transcultural Ethics,” Theory and Society: Renewal and Critique (Vol.24/6, 1995); “Action and Eros in the Creative Zone;” Dialogism: An International Journal of Bakhtin Studies (Issue 4, 2 000) “Looking Back on the Subject: Bakhtin and Mead on Reflexivity and the Political” in Craig Brandist and Galin Tihanov’s Materializing Bakhtin:The Bahktin Circle and Social Theory (Macmillan, 2000); and “The Norms of Answerabilituy: Bakhtin and the Fourth Postuxx Acknowledgments [18.217.220.114] Project MUSE (2024...