Art and Answerability, written in 1919, is Mikhail Bakhtin’s first published essay. This early text, written when the author was only 24 years old, is usually recognised as significant for two principal reasons. First because the questions it poses will continue to resonate throughout Bakhtin’s subsequent work. Second because it is part of a series of early texts that were re-discovered following the author’s death in 1975 and whose English translations have only been published between 1990 and 1993. These texts have become highly relevant in establishing the philosophical foundations for Bakhtin’s later work which had by then been absorbed outside of Russia into various disciplines, including, to a very limited extent, architecture and design.

The central thesis of the essay states that “art and life are not one, but they must become united in myself—in the unity of my answerability” (Bakhtin “Art and Answerability” 2). What is identified here by Bakhtin is the fundamental split between culture (art and science) and life as it is actually experienced, or in other words, the split between theory and practice. The only possible unification of these two, he argues, occurs in individual responsibility. One must answer to theory for what they have experienced in practice, as one must answer to practice for what they have done in theory. This is what Bakhtin calls “two-sided answerability”. Bakhtin here enters the debate on a contentious issue at the time, namely the debate on “art for art’s sake or art for life’s sake.” Bakhtin explicitly argues for art for life’s sake, saying that art for the sake of art squarely falls into the realm of “theorism” since it negates the actual and real experience of life from which it has inescapably drawn. Indeed, in Bakhtin’s Neo-Kantian critique, there is no pure vantage point within the mind of an individual from which one is able to understand and create. There is rather an “impure” vantage point that is invariably defined by the experience of being and the experience of the other (Bakhtin “Author and Hero”).

As Clark and Holquist have noted, Bakhtin will throughout his lifetime continue to address the same issues as set in his early work (Clark and Holquist “Bakhtin”). His position may vary and be refined over time, but the questions themselves remain constant. His better known concepts of dialogism, carnivalesque, and heteroglossia are all, in a way, derivatives of his early work on ethics, aesthetics, and the architectonics of the act.

Most references to Bakhtin’s thought in architectural studies have drawn mostly on the carnivalesque and also to a smaller extent on his theory of dialogism. These have been relevant in addressing social issues related to space, for example in theorising the subversive act in public spaces (Shields “Places on the Margin”) or in seeing how a construction process involving multiple designers may be negotiated through dialogue (La Marche “Surrealism’s unexplored possibilities”). Still, Bakhtinian concepts, as far as I understand it, have yet to be introduced significantly into architectural theory and practice. Reading Bakhtin’s early texts allows us to address this issue by understanding the ethical and aesthetic philosophical foundations of his later, more well known theories. This may well offer an approach to social issues in the built environment that is more familiar and more relevant to architectural discourse as it may also shed new light on current discussion on the relation between practice and theory in architectural research.

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References:

Bakhtin, M. M. “Art and Answerability.”  Art and Answerability : Early Philosophical Essays. Eds. Michael Holquist and Vadim Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.

—. “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity.”  Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays. Eds. Michael Holquist and Vadim Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.

Clark, Katerina, and Michael Holquist. Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge, Mass. ; London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1984.

La Marche, Jean. “Surrealism’s Unexplored Possibilities in Architecture.”  Surrealism and Architecture. Ed. Thomas Mical. New York ; London: Routledge, 2005. 273-89.

Shields, Rob. Places on the Margin : Alternative Geographies of Modernity. International Library of Sociology. London: Routledge, 1991.

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See also:

Bakhtin, M. M., Michael Holquist, and Vadim Liapunov. Toward a Philosophy of the Act. 1st ed. ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993.

Çaliskan, Sevda. “Ethical Aesthetics / Aesthetic Ethics: The Case of Bakhtin.” Journal of Arts and Sciences (2006).

Habermas, Jürgen, Nick Crossley, and John M. Roberts. After Habermas : New Perspectives on the Public Sphere. Sociological Review Monographs. Oxford, UK ; Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing : Sociological Review, 2004.

Haynes, Deborah J. Bakhtin and the Visual Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Nollan, Valerie Z. Bakhtin : Ethics and Mechanics. Rethinking Theory. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2004.

Todorov, Tzvetan. Mikhail Bakhtin : The Dialogical Principle. Theory and History of Literature. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984.