The Norms of Answerability: Social Theory Between Bakhtin and Habermas

by Nielsen, Greg Marc; Emerson, Caryl

• ISBN13: 9780791452288
• ISBN10: 079145228X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-01-01
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

Greg M. Nielsen brings Mikhail Bakhtin's ethics and aesthetics into a dialogue with social theory that responds to the sense of ambivalence and uncertainty at the core of modern societies. Nielsen situates a social theory between Bakhtin's norms of answerability and Jurgen Habermas's sociology, ethics, and discourse theory of democracy in a way that emphasizes the creative dimension in social action without reducing explanation to the emotional and volitional impulse of the individual or collective actor. Some of the classical sources that support this mediated position are traced to Alexander Vvedenskij's and Georg Simmel's critiques of Kant's ethics, Hermann Cohen's philosophy of fellowship, and Max Weber's and George Herbert Mead's theories of action. In the shift from Bakhtin's theory of interpersonal relations to a dialogic theory of societal events that defends the bold claim that law and politics should not be completely separated from the specificity of ethical and cultural communities, a study of citizenship and national identity is developed. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Greg M. Nielsen is Associate Professor of Sociology at Concordia University and Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought at York University

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
Acknowledgments	xix
Introduction: Theory on the Borders of Sociology	1	(3)
Syncrisis and Anacrisis: The State of Bakhtin Studies	4	(7)
Creativity and General Sociological Theory	11	(7)
The Bridge between Culture and the Political	18	(5)
Diversity and Transcultural Ethics	23	(26)
Disciplinary Orientations	27	(4)
Decentered Subjects and Critiques of Discourse Ethics	31	(5)
The Creative Side of the Normative	36	(6)
The Normative Side of Creativity	42	(4)
Between the Creativity and Normativity of the Act	46	(3)
Communicative Action or Dialogue?	49	(18)
Communicative Action and Moral Development	50	(6)
The Limits of Universal Reason	56	(3)
Dialogism: Mixing the Word and Style	59	(8)
The World of Other's Words	67	(22)
Bakhtin and Voloshinov on the Subject of the Utterance	69	(3)
Social and Ethical Worlds of Dialogue in Dostoevsky	72	(5)
The Frankfurt Tradition	77	(3)
Habermas's Break	80	(1)
Genres of Discourse in Literature and in Theory	81	(2)
From Dostoevsky to Calvino	83	(3)
Convergence and Difference	86	(3)
On the Sources of Young Bakhtin's Ethics (Kant, Vvedenshij, Simmel, Cohen)	89	(20)
Kant's Three Postulates	93	(1)
Vvedenskij's Fourth Postulate	94	(2)
Simmel's Shadow	96	(3)
Bakhtin and the Formal Ought	99	(3)
Cohen's ``Discovery of Man as Fellowman''	102	(4)
Influences and Steps	106	(3)
Action and Eros (Kant-Weber-Bakhtin)	109	(16)
Kant: Duties Toward the Body Concerning the Sexual Impulse	110	(2)
Weber: Action, Ethics, and Eros	112	(5)
Bakhtin: The Fourth Postulate and Body-Dialogue	117	(5)
Eros and Action Today	122	(3)
Reflexive Subjectivity (Mead-Bakhtin)	125	(18)
Philosophical and Disciplinary Orientations	129	(1)
Between Consciousness and Language: The Ambiguity of Experience	129	(4)
Murder, Confession, and Community	133	(1)
Why the Subject Is Behind Us	134	(2)
Action Inside and Outside the Subject	136	(7)
Citizenship and National Identity	143	(24)
On the Dialogue Between Ethnos and Demos	147	(3)
Identity	150	(5)
For and against the Nation	155	(12)
A Dialogue on the Nation in Postnational Times	167	(34)
The Nation as a Sociology of Culture: The Quebec Case	172	(11)
Habermas: The Nation as Subjectless Communication	183	(5)
Taylor: The Nation as a Politics of Concession	188	(8)
Kymlicka: On National Minorities	196	(2)
Associational Sovereignty: A Fourth Way?	198	(3)
Conclusion: On Culture and the Political	201	(8)
Notes	209	(16)
Bibliography	225	(16)
Index	241