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LAUGHING BENJAMIN AND MELANCHOLY BAKHTIN: PROBLEMS OF AN UNELECTIVE AFFINITY |
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Timothy Beasley-Murray |
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The author of the study shows some of the ways in which the thought of Benjamin can be brought alongside that of Bakhtin. He impugns the ossified conceptions of both thinkers and tries to compare their thinking through their temperaments. He examines two crucial aspects of their thought – laughter and seriousness/melancholy – often emphasized by some strands of critical literature to the extent of emptying their thought of any substance. The apparent incommensurability between these two personalities (Bakhtin the theorist of carnival laughter and Benjamin the melancholic) may be, according to the author, reconsidered to double effect: first, looking at unelective affinities might present both thinkers in a new transforming light; second, such a reillumination may save them from their depoliticization at the hands of over-serious or over-jolly academics and reveal in them the potential for joyful but serious political action. |
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Keywords: Benjamin;Bbachtin;carnival laughter; melancholy; unelective affinities; de-politization |
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