Bakhtin's "Theory" of Genre

Abstract

The originality of Bakhtin's fragmentary and partial theory of literary genre is underlined in this article. Bakhtin's reflexion on genre is very different from that of his Formalist contemporaries. Instead of proposing elaborate typologies or generic categories, Bakhtin more often devotes his attention to showing that a meaningful approach to the topic must be diachronic. From an epistemological point of view, the possibility of exact duplication or repetition of the same generic device from text to text is denied. Each text (or reading of a text) is a new performance in which generic material is reworked and represented. There are affinities, therefore, between the positions of Bakhtin and Fredric Jameson (in The Political Unconscious). Generic categories are useful only if they are seen as diagnostic tools which help us to better understand how texts enter into dialogic relations with each other.

Crafters, explorers, innovators, and co-creators: Narratives in designers’ identity work

“…Furthermore, according to Bakhtin (1981), bringing out the developed meaning based on experience is reliant on language and therefore has an inescapable social dimension. Genres that one realizes or develops are seen as diagnostic tools which help to bring about deeper understanding once they are expressed externally and therefore are related to a comparison with other people and past self; here, understanding is created in the tension between self and others (see Thomson, 1984;McCarthy and Wright, 2007;Bakhtin, 1986). In the present study, we use these genres and chronotopes as units of analysis for studying identity construction within its context by way of experience-based narratives and the characteristics of the temporal and spatial categories represented in the language therein (see Morson and Emerson, 1990).…”

Genre en plot georiënteerde narratief-kritiese eksegese van Evangeliemateriaal: Inleiding tot narratiewe kritiek

“…Die evangelies, acta en apokalips is voorbeelde van narratiewe tekste, terwyl briewe as voorbeeld van 'n redevoering dien. 6 Geoff Webb (2006:38-42), na aanleiding van die literatuurteoretikus Clive Thompson (1984) se navorsing oor Mikhail Bakhtin, meen egter dat die "studie van genres" in wese ("essentially") 'n diakroniese ondersoek is. Webb (2006:38) haal Thomson aan: "[The study of genres is essentially] a diachronic study of how forms enter into combinations with other forms."…”

Why the Hebrew Bible Might Be All Greek to Me : On the Use of the Xenophontic Corpus in Discussions of Biblical Literature

“…12. 15 Bakhtin is useful also in reminding us that all genres are ideological. 16 There is no such thing as a "neutral" genre.…”