Formalism

Realism and Art. By Jakobson; Rabelais and his world. By Bakhtin

Saussure, Volosinov, Jakobson, Bakhtin

Formalism attempts to find the object of a science of literature. Saussure –the father of structuralism- also posed this problem. To this purpose he put forward a methodological distinction between langue (the system of rules governing the relation of speech utterances) and parole (speech utterances themselves). He proceeds to recognise the former as the proper object of linguistics. This poses the problematic question later faced by formalism of whether the level of linguistic analysis was to be diachronic (an analysis of historical change and development of language) or synchronic (an analysis of language as a static system of rules, as it exists at any point in time). Saussure discards the diachronic level of analysis since, in line with his search for scientificity, he can see no way for the structure of langue to be explained with reference to determinations which lie outside of it. To all arbitrary conventions that regulate the relation of the signifier to the signified and which make meaning possible, the philological source and historical genesis of parole are insignificant.

Volosinov is one of the main exponents of Russian formalism, who tried to solve the problem of diachronic analysis in linguistics. He accuses Sassaure of being unable to account for ‘change’ and for the polysemanticity of the word. Volosinov also introduces the idea of the relation between speaker and listener as constitutive of meaning. He asserts that the use and meaning of language are reciprocally determined by ‘whose word it is and for whom it is meant’.

More importantly, in trying to found a science of literature, formalism posits the question of what makes a text literary. The interesting answer, which was later to influence a whole range of literary and theatrical productions, was that it is its ability to defamiliarise experience. The concept of defamiliarization is crucial both for its inherently relational nature and also for its ability to convey the sense of literariness as a function rather than an essence.

Against realism: Jakobson (Realism in Art)

Defamiliarization does not reveal the world as it really is but merely constitutes one distinctive form of cognition amongst others. Literature then is also a practice of transformation of existing forms of cognition that shape our perception of the social world. This is crucial since the aim is to ‘return the object from “recognition” to “seeing”, as well as to break with the primacy of the role assigned to the author in literary criticism. Hence, against realism and ‘reflection theory’, Jakobson asserts that the text signifies reality rather than reflecting it.

Literature then needs to be regarded as a historical rather than aesthetic category.

Bakhtin’s work concentrates on the Reinassance and folk homour. He analyses forms of defamiliarization from within politically and ritualised ‘discrowning’ of official ideology. Bakhtin moves beyong formalism and stresses the importance of diachronic analysis in a materialist understanding of literature.

Later on with Roland Barthes, the Tel Quel group, and more importantly through Brecht use of defamiliarization technique in theatre, formalism is reviseted, even though its methodological and theoretical preoccupations are dismissed as Kantian.

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