Bakhtin

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895–1975) was a Russian philosopher, literary theorist, and semiotician whose work on language and culture has had a lasting impact across the humanities. Born in the Russian Empire, he lived and worked in Soviet Russia, with his most influential ideas developed in the mid-20th century and later widely disseminated in the English-speaking world.

Bakhtin is best known for developing dialogism, the view that meaning emerges through the interaction of social voices and textual voices. He argued that literature embodies multiple voices rather than a single authorial consciousness, a stance often described as polyphony. He also introduced influential concepts such as the carnivalesque, which highlights subversive humor and social inversion in popular culture; the chronotope, the inseparable intertwining of time and space in narrative; and heteroglossia, the coexistence of diverse languages and ideologies within a single work.

His major works include Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (1929–35), a study of Dostoevsky’s stylistic and ethical complexity; Rabelais and His World (1965), an analysis of carnival culture and social critique; and The Dialogic Imagination (Four Essays, English translations published in the 1980s), which gathered core elements of his theory of language and literature. Although much of his work circulated locally during his lifetime, Bakhtin’s ideas subsequently influenced literary theory, linguistics, anthropology, and cultural studies, shaping discussions of voice, genre, and the social life of texts.

Bakhtin’s circle, a network of scholars and students including Valentin Voloshinov and Pavel Medvedev, helped develop and disseminate his ideas, reinforcing their enduring presence in contemporary theory.