The Philosophical Affiliations of Mikhail Bakhtin and Jacques Derrida: from Kant to Phenomenology

This book deals with the common intellectual sources of Bakhtin and Derrida, and their varying responses to a range of philosophers. Previous comparisons have been made in terms of their possible contributions to literary theory, but this work argues that they are better understood as philosophers, working in a variety of philosophical traditions, and grounded in a number of shared intellectual roots. It therefore examines in turn the understanding of Kant, neo-Kantianism, Hegel, German Romanticism, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Lebensphilosophie, phenomenology, Heidegger, and Cassirer in the the writings of Bakhtin and Derrida. An extended conclusion treats the Davos debate between these last two figures, ad how Bakhtin and Derrida were received and used during the development of literary theory. This leads to an investigation of how recovering the philosophical affiliations of Derrida and Bakhtin may help reinvigorate an interdisciplinary methodological movement.