Review article / Rapport critique

Forschungsbericht

Voloinov between Marx and Saussure

Critical observations*

Jonathan Hall
The Bakhtin Centre, Sheffield

This new and very welcome bilingual translation of Voloinovs (18951936)

Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (henceforth: MPL) comes with an in-
teresting annex containing reports on the work of the Institute for the Compara-
tive History of the Literatures and Languages of the West and East (ILJaZV) for
19251926 and 19271928, as well as Voloinovs essay What is Language? (Chto
takoe jazyk?). The latter is translated, with more respect for Saussurean categories
than Voloinov had, as Quest-ce que la langue et le langage?. This scholarly text
of MPL, in both the Russian and the facing page in French, contains in brackets
the pagination for the 1930 second edition published in Leningrad. This is use-
ful for bibliographical research. However, Patrick Sriots long critical preface is
supported by numerous quotations in French from his and Tylkowski-Ageevas
translation in this volume while his pagination refers the reader to the original
Leningrad publication. This strange editorial decision makes it time-consuming
and tedious to locate the places in Voloinovs argument from which these often
short quotations have been extracted.
In the opening section of his long introduction, Patrick Sriot states that its
purpose is to be closer to the Leningrad of 1929 than to the Paris of 1977 (p.14).
While taking account (tenant compte), he says, of the intervening 80 years of
work on the key issues of alien discourse, Sriots approach is actually a polemical
settling of accounts with all of the approaches to Mixail Mixajlovi Baxtin (1895
1985) and Voloinov in those intervening years, which he describes tellingly as
quatre-vingt ans de mconnaissance [80 years of misrecognition]. Unlike Julia

* On the occasion of: Marxisme et philosophie du langage: Les problmes fondamentaux de la

mthode sociologique dans la science du langage. Par Valentin Nikolaevi Voloinov. Nouvelle
dition bilingue traduite du russe par Patrick Sriot et Inna Tylkowski-Ageeva. Prface de Pa-
trick Sriot. Limoges: Lambert-Lucas, 2010. Pp. 599. ISBN 978-2-915806-70-0. 49,00 (PB).

Historiographia Linguistica XXXVIII:3 (2011), 343354. doi 10.1075/hl.38.3.04hal

issn 03025160 / e-issn 15699781 John Benjamins Publishing Company
344 Jonathan Hall

Kristevas (b. 1941) attempt in the 1960s to make Baxtin, in her own words, un
interlocuteur de la thorie contemporaine des annes 19601970, et non pas un
objet du pass, the stated aim of Tylkowski-Ageevas and Sriots translation is the
opposite: to achieve a systematic reinsertion (une remise en contexte systma-
tique) of Voloinovs work into the intellectual and social context from which it
emerged (p.15). The key to this goal of historical fidelity is to be the refusal of all
anachronisme (p.16), by which Sriot means the retrospective imposition of later
thinking about language, society, and consciousness upon a thinker who could not
have read the later works by such key thinkers as Emile Benveniste (19021976).
Sriots historical reading of Voloinov is explicitly focused on describing him
in terms of what he was not (p.16). Just as Baxtin was not a promoter of democra-
cy or of feminist thought, so Voloinov was not a prcurseur of Michel Pcheux
(19381984), Michel Foucault (19261984), or Jacques Lacan (19011981). Nor
was his work an anticipation de la pragmatique, de la sociolinguistique ou de
la thorie de lnonciation (pp.1617). However, there is a significant shift in
this move from a justifiable denunciation of those who project specific contem-
porary beliefs (either their own or those of their antagonists) onto Baxtin and/or
Voloinov, and the denial of historical antecedence, or even a degree of anticipa-
tion, which some might justly claim to find in the work of either thinker. Sriot
dismisses all such claims as evidence of a misleading effet de reconnaissance
(p.63). But a precursor is not a prophet, and it is surely legitimate to read his-
torical developments retrospectively. This does not necessarily impose those later
developments onto the past thinker in question. Whatever the virtues or vices of
Kristevas re-reading, it at least showed an alertness to the danger of historicism,
which condemns its objects to being mere objects of purely philological under-
standing, to cite Voloinovs own expression for the elimination of all dialogism
from the activity of reading.
However, there are undeniable advantages in attempting to observe a scrupu-
lous historical respect for the originating context, and the virtue in Patrick Sriots
critical attention to the sources (or most of them) for Voloinovs and Baxtins
thought is that it undoubtedly questions the uncritical, often hagiographic appro-
priation of these thinkers by contemporary commentators, of left or right, religious
or liberal relativist, both in the West and in post-Soviet Russia itself. Here Sriots
concern, not only with the source material but also with Voloinovs immediate
social, institutional and intellectual milieu is often valuable and instructive. More-
over, it is at one with a general trend in Baxtinian scholarship nowadays, which is
increasingly aimed at illuminating the previously obscured issues of intellectual
provenance. This field of historical research is very rich and is still being worked by
many specialists, including Patrick Sriot himself. If there is any common thread
linking these research endeavours, it is not to be found in any explicit ideology, but
 Voloinov between Marx and Saussure 345

in their shared professional suspicion of hagiographic simplification, and a desire

to prevent, or even to reverse, the false appropriations of the so-called Bakhtin
Circle by present ideological interests of whatever stripe.
Sriots forensic debunking of the allegation that Baxtin was the real author of
the works originally published under the names of Voloinov and Pavel Nikolaevi
Medvedev (18911938), and of the propagation of that myth in the West and in
post-Soviet Russia, is exemplary. He goes on to make the wider point that even the
commonly accepted term, the Bakhtin Circle, is misleading because it attributes
a leadership role to Baxtin which he simply did not have. In so doing, it assigns a
corresponding subordinate role to the others by reducing them to the level of mere
disciples or even voiceless mouthpieces. This is hagiography in action, and the
denial of authorship to those others is its extreme expression. Sriot is concerned
that the other thinkers in the group should be given their due, particularly Moisej
Samojlovi Kagan (19212006) who appears to have been a greater source of in-
spiration to the rest than Baxtin.
The defence of Voloinov as the real author of MPL is part of Sriots com-
mitment to historical fidelity, but it is by no means a defence of the validity of
Voloinovs arguments, either as they stand in their own terms or as the basis for
an ongoing critical dialogue. On the contrary, the larger part of his long introduc-
tion is devoted to demonstrating that Voloinovs thought does not live up to the
promise in the books main title, for two main reasons. Firstly, it is said to be devoid
of the conflictual dialectics and the concern with class characteristic of any version
of Marxist thought whatsoever. Secondly, it completely misunderstands the true
nature of Saussures langue as a system of differential signs, which Voloinov at-
tacks as a product of abstract objectivism in philosophy. Sriot extends this criti-
cism to allege that Voloinov failed to understand the nature of science in general
as requiring the production of models from a specific point of view (pp.86 and
9192). Clearly, these charges need to be assessed by any reader of this new bi-
lingual translation, and the provocation of such reassessments is perhaps one of its
aims. But the problem is that this introductory essay contains absolutely no refer-
ence to anything in Voloinovs work which might be considered of some value
for todays readers. This essay is not a critique but a total rejection, and it raises
the unavoidable question of the whole point of the painstaking work of producing
a new translation. Is its proclaimed accuracy merely aimed at demonstrating that
Voloinov has nothing of value to say to us? At the close of his introduction, Sriot
partly answers this question by invoking the interests of the professional historian.
And yet there is another discourse at work (p.93):
Et pourtant, en historiens de la linguistique et de la smiotique, nous lavons lu
avec dlectation [!]. Son univers intellectuel mritait dtre explor. Beaucoup
346 Jonathan Hall

reste faire pour explorer ses autres liens avec le monde intellectuel de son lieu et
de son temps, en particulier avec Vygotski.
[And yet, as historians of linguistics and semiotics, we have read him with delight
[!]. His intellectual universe was worth exploring. There is still much to be done to
explore his other links with the intellectual world of his time and place, especially
with Vygotski.]

It is not his work, we are told, but his universe that calls for further historical ex-
ploration. The unexpected, and doubtless ironic delight springs out here because,
if there is indeed any pleasure to be derived from this text, it is said to arise from
reading Voloinov as a historical specimen of interest to experts, and certainly not
as a co-thinker or partner in ongoing dialogue. In that respect, there is simply no
discovery to be made. But there is nonetheless an intense dialogue going on within
this essay. In his global attack on Voloinov, Sriot is not simply indulging in a
rather pointless attack on a straw man. The true object of the polemic is not the
long dead Voloinov, whose thought is denied any value throughout; it is rather
those who injudiciously continue to take him seriously, and have done so since
the 1970s. It is this polemical dialogue which gives the shape, tone, meaning (and
dare I add delight?) to this critical history. Moreover, it is this provocation which
makes his introduction, and this new bi-lingual translation itself, indispensable
reading.
Bilingual texts are inherently anti-authoritarian. Here translators do not re-
serve the final word (Baxtin) for themselves, since they implicitly agree to submit
all their decisions and judgements to critical examination. It is regrettable that this
procedure is not more widely followed in the Anglophone world, where some-
times execrable translations acquire a false authority which becomes widespread
and almost unavoidable. This translation is excellent, and because of that excel-
lence it enables Patrick Sriots stringent criticisms to be tested against the text,
even by those whose knowledge of Russian may not be totally fluent (i.e., the in-
tended readers of any bi-lingual text). Although it is possible to quibble on occa-
sions, this translation easily passes the test of a dual reading. If disagreements or
counter-readings then arise, they can be considered genuine differences of opin-
ion (although they may also be genuine examples of stupidity!). Dialogue there-
fore becomes possible, rather than being stifled on the familiar grounds of the
alleged inaccessibility of the source material to all but the specialist. By the same
token, this openness also means that contemporary readers who persist in finding
value in Voloinovs work, have to concede that in Sriots polemical dialogue with
them there is a case to be answered.
One of the striking absences in Patrick Sriots otherwise thorough and in-
formative attention to the intellectual provenance of Voloinovs thought, is the
 Voloinov between Marx and Saussure 347

lack of reference to the Hegelian terminology deployed by Voloinov, and to the

argument that the moments of abstraction in thought, effected by the Saussurean
cut which founds the difference between synchronic and diachronic linguistics,
are not simply false (as Sriot reads him as saying consistently), but have to be
included and superseded by a return to the concrete, meaning, in this instance,
language in use, or re/parole. The noticeable tendency in the translation itself
to render the Russian moment as lment, or a cognate expression, supports this
effacement of the Hegelian dynamic.1 Sriot emphasises on many occasions that
for Voloinov abstract and abstraction mean false or unreal. Of course, dialec-
tics tended to become an empty buzz word in the Soviet Union, increasingly in
the service of monological conformity. Sriot, perhaps understandably enough,
disregards the claim to a dialectical theory which would transcend the opposition
between the systemic abstraction introduced by Saussure, and the Romantic con-
cept of becoming (stanovlenie) with its roots in Humboldts linguistic energeia,
coupled with the idea of the basis of linguistic development in subjective creativity
to be found in Croce, Vossler and others. Sriots judgement is unequivocal: Mais
il est difficile de parler ici de dialectique dans la mesure o, de Saussure il ne re-
tient rien: le rejet est total [But it is difficult to speak of dialectics here, insofar as
he retains nothing from Saussure. His rejection is total] (p.61).
Admittedly, Voloinovs purported dialectics is at best intermittent, and is
moreover marred by his own polemical reduction of the rationalist Genevan school
of abstract objectivism to being little more than curators who can only investigate
and teach already dead languages. He makes a rather too polemical use of Marrs
improbable longue dure history in this context. The vilified philologists are not
only the inheritors of the warriors and priests who founded all human culture
through conquest; they are also the pale epigones who perpetuate it, but in the
inert repetitive forms of an established and conservative civilisation (pp.271273).
Along with the Nietzschean myth of heroic founders, recalling the blond beasts of
the Genealogy of Morals, there is here the Romantic idea of the eternal tragic strug-
gle between Culture and Civilisation, in which the creative revolutionary impulse
inevitably gives way to the stifling conformism which it has created. This myth
may have had a particular resonance with the consolidation of Stalinism in 1929.
Despite the absurdity of the mythical formulation, however, it does posit society as
riven by contradiction between the hegemonic and the subordinate. Moreover, the
myth of a heroic foundation by conquest is not only Nietzschean. The same narra-

1. Cf. Le Dictionnaire Robert: Chez HEGEL, le moment dialectique dsigne non seulement
ltape entre la thse et lantithse, mais la force [] qui mne de lune lautre. [In HEGELs
thought, the dialectical moment designates not only the stage between thesis and antithesis, but
the force [] leading from the one to the other.]
348 Jonathan Hall

tive also provides the basis for Hegels dialectic of the Master and the Bondsman,
in which a concealed reversibility means that the master is actually dependent on
the recognition of the bondsman (which Kojve, Hippolyte, and recently iek
in The Sublime Object of Ideology [1989], relate to Marxist theories of subordina-
tion). Whether the idealist myth is consistent with Marxism is an open question,
but it certainly accords with much empirical evidence of the role of conquest in
the formation of national languages (including English, for example), and with the
Gramscian idea of hegemony, developed partly through his contacts with Russian
linguists. Indirectly, this calls into question Sriots assertion that Voloinovs ideas
had nothing to do with those of Antonio Gramsci (pp.57, 64, and 80).
Patrick Sriot rightly points out that Voloinovs denunciation of Saussurean
linguistics as a system of normatively identical forms fails to note that the system
in question is defined by Saussure in his Cours as a system of differences without
positive terms, in a key passage which Voloinov does not quote. Accordingly,
Voloinov affirms that the Saussurean sign is bereft of all flexibility, and this gives
no space for discussing the signifier/signified dyad which will be so central to later
structuralist, post-structuralist, and even post-modernist readings of texts and
cultural productions. But Sriots basic charge here is that Voloinov simply mis-
understood Saussure because he was a sociological empiricist who failed to under-
stand that the science of linguistics founded by Saussure, like any science, did not
rest on the naive concept of a one-to-one relationship between scientific theory
and objective reality (pp.8889 and 9192). His counter-argument, that a science
models its object by constructing it from a theoretical point of view, is undoubt-
edly the nub of the matter, but it is far less certain that Voloinov did not under-
stand that point. Indeed, his inattention to Saussures insistence on the principle of
internal differentiation within la langue, constructed or modelled by abstraction
from the otherwise unsystematisable chaos of le langage, may well have been be-
cause that internal play did not affect what was for him the main issue, namely the
ontological status of the system derived through the process of abstraction.
There is no space for pursuing these issues here, beyond noting that they are
very much alive today, particularly with the fading of the structuralist paradigm.
But Galin Tihanovs observation that the prevalent neo-Kantianism was develop-
ing towards Hegel for its own internal reasons is very important for understanding
the historical sources. This was supported from another, perhaps suspect direction
by Lenins injunction in the Philosophical Notebooks, also published in 1929, that all
Marxists should turn back to a thorough study of Hegel (Tihanov 2000:268270).
There are no references to this in Sriots account of the intellectual background or
his footnotes. The relevant point to be made about Voloinovs attempt to outline
the basic problems of the sociological method in the science of language (the sub-
title of this work) is that, at its most interesting (and not at its weakest polemical
 Voloinov between Marx and Saussure 349

points), it invokes the dialectic as a way of moving beyond the limitations (not
just the falsehoods) of the systemic rationalism of the Saussurean revolution. That
is why he argues for a need for a theoretical mode which can move back from
the moments of abstraction to their concrete realisation, in order to understand
their reciprocal interaction within this totality more fully. It is undoubtedly true
that Voloinov presents the issue in terms of the contrast between the Romantic
schools concern with creativity and becoming (in which, like Baxtin he assigns
the creative or transformational function to social dialogism) and the abstract
systematicity whose origins he traces back to the Enlightenment and Cartesian
philosophy. But it is Patrick Sriot who translates that into a conflict between the
philosophical traditions of France versus Germany (with Bergson as an example
of the unfortunate dominance of German irrational and Romantic energeia over
the besieged rationalism of France). Setting aside Voloinovs numerous explicit
criticisms of Vosslers subjective individualism, Sriot presents him as a follower
of Humboldt and Vosslers Romantic anti-empiricism, which he merely recasts
in Marxist terminology. In Voloinovs references to totality, contrasted with the
mechanical aspect of rationalistic systems, Sriot detects the organicism charac-
teristic of the reactionary face of German Romanticism and its notorious heritage.
But here the absence of references to Hegel and Hegelianism in both text and foot-
notes is telling. In 19th-century science, biological thought was not initially an
affirmation of the enclosed unities of state, race, or culture which it became later.
It was above all a way of putting the arrow of time, which is to say becoming and
irreversibility, into scientific rationality. This applied to both the natural and the
human sciences, and in complex ways the reckoning of time and transformation
had to include the position of the observer too. Whether Voloinovs attempted
dialectic is successful is certainly debatable, and there is a large unaddressed ques-
tion of the relationship between his dialectics and Baxtinian dialogism, but his use
of dialectical thought cannot be assessed if it is not even acknowledged, except to
be dismissed.
Near the end of his essay, Patrick Sriot asks: Comment construire une tho-
rie de la connaissance de ce qui nest pas ritrable? [How is it possible to con-
struct a theory of knowledge of the unrepeatable?] (p.92). The question is rhe-
torical, meaning that Voloinov fails to do so. But he gives no space to Voloinovs
dialectical formulation of the problem on page 332. There he carefully outlines
the constitutive relationship between the iterable abstract momenty (translated on
the opposite page as lments) and the unique or specific situation to which the
utterance struggles to be adequate, arguing that to focus on the non-iterable (or
unrepeatable) alone would make us poor dialecticians (de pitres dialecticiens).
This attempt to formulate the relationship of the abstract to the concrete as dialec-
tical may be mistaken perhaps, but it is not an argument which amounts to saying
350 Jonathan Hall

that the systemic abstraction is false, and it is certainly not as simple-minded as

Sriot asserts.
While it is true that Voloinov sometimes polemicises against the illusions
that he finds in the proponents of systemic abstract objectivism, it is also true that
he grants a measure of validity to such abstractions conducted for specific pur-
poses. For example, to quote the French translation (p.265):
Toute abstraction, pour tre lgitime, doit tre justifie par un objectif thorique
et pratique dtermin. Une abstraction peut tre fconde ou strile, elle peut tre
productive pour certains objectifs et certaines tches, et ne pas ltre pour dautres.
[To be legitimate, any abstraction must be justified by a determinate theoretical
and practical objective. An abstraction may be fruitful or sterile; it may be pro-
ductive for particular objectives and tasks, while not being so for others.]

It is arguable that Voloinovs abstrakcija refers to the process of abstracting and

not to the abstracted object (so the indefinite article in the French and English
above may rather miss the point), but in either case, it is difficult to see why this
is not an acceptance of the need for modelling in the human sciences, although
his view of the aims of the Saussurean project (the theoretical and practical study
of dead foreign languages preserved in written documents) is totally inadequate.
Despite this polemical and provocative reading based on Marrs longue dure his-
tory, the positive point made by Voloinov is that such abstract modelling is not
false but inadequate for understanding language as process. Voloinovs dialecti-
cal mode of argument should be understood as an attempt to overcome the gap
opened up by Saussures founding statement that the dynamics of change must be
separated from the properly scientific synchronic smiologie and relegated to a
secondary diachronic linguistique de la parole.
Patrick Sriot also argues that Voloinovs naive sociological empiricism,
which is in reality a mere recasting of the ideas of Vossler, makes him blind to class
conflict and leads him to focus exclusively on the individual as a fully integrated
member of his group. This is in turn an unproblematic unity (p.81):
MPL est une transcription fidle de loeuvre de Vossler en termes sociologistes.
Ainsi, la voix individuelle reproduit les accents idologiques, qui sont par l-
mme des accents sociaux, qui aspirent une reconnaissance sociale.
[MPL is a faithful transcription of Vosslers opus into sociological terminology.
Thus the individual voice reproduces the ideological accentuations which are
ipso facto social accentuations which aspire to social recognition].2

2. As always, Sriots page reference is to the 1930 publication, but the corresponding pages in
this volume are pp.159161.
 Voloinov between Marx and Saussure 351

He cites the objections from the Marrists to Voloinovs description of the sign as
ideologically neutral in support of his own view that Voloinov is not a Marxist in
any recognisable sense, and that he makes no reference to the class struggle:
Ce nest que dans la premire partie que le marxisme est discut, avec lide que le
signe idologique est larne de la lutte des classes (MPL, p.27). Mais en mme
temps le signe est neutre (MPL, p.18).
[It is only in the first part that Marxism is discussed, with the idea that the ideo-
logical sign is the arena of the class struggle (MPL, p.27). But at the same time,
the sign is neutral] (MPL, p.18).3

As Russian has no definite article, the arena of class struggle (larne de la lutte
des classes), might just as well have been rendered as an arena (une arne ),
which seems closer to Voloinovs argument that the sign becomes (stanovitsja/
devient) such an arena. But it is the little mais between Sriots two selected quo-
tations which is more significant. They are set in a rhetorical contrast to make
Voloinov seem absurdly self-contradictory rather than a theorist of contradic-
tions within a single field of encounter (edinstvo) which is necessary to dialecti-
cal understanding (and to dialogism too, in fact). In the first of these references,
Voloinov makes a distinction between the word as an ideological sign and all
other ideological signs whose meaning is more fixed. So when he discusses the
neutrality of the word, he does so to argue for its greater degree of flexibility. Ad-
mittedly, the relative fixity of the other kinds of sign is not fully clarified, but the
idea of the linguistic sign as an arena of class struggle in the second reference is
perfectly clear. Moreover, it puts Voloinov quite close to Gramsci, despite Sriots
affirmation to the contrary. Here Voloinov relates the idea of linguistic refrac-
tion (perelomlenie)4 within the sign to the indisputable fact, for a Marxist anyway,
that single communities are inwardly divided by conflicting interests, while none-
theless speaking (communicating) in a common language (p.161):
La classe ne concide pas avec la collectivit smiotique, cest--dire avec la collec-
tivit qui utilise les mmes signes dchange idologique. Les diffrentes classes
utilisent une seule et mme langue. Par consquent, dans chaque signe idolo-
gique sentrecroisent des accents dorientation diffrente (raznonapravlenniye ak-
centy) . Le signe devient larne de la lutte des classes.

3. The equivalent page references for this volume are p.161 and p.139, respectively.

4. Galin Tihanov notes Voloinovs originality here: It is important to stress that endowing
language (and hence literature) with the power to refract, not merely reflect reality signifies a
major departure from the prevailing Marxist view of that time, in which language and the super-
structure were afforded a largely passive status (Tihanov 2000:98).
352 Jonathan Hall

[A class does not coincide with a semiotic collectivity, that is to say with the col-
lective which makes use of the same signs of ideological exchange. The different
classes use one and the same language. Consequently, within each ideological sign
there is an interplay between accents bearing different intentions. The sign be-
comes the [or an?] arena of class struggle.]

The most obvious semiotic collectivity would be the nation, all of whose mem-
bers use the same national language (normally, at least, although Tsarist Russia
was a notable exception), even though they are divided by class and, it could be
added, by age, gender, status, caste, and smaller group identities too. One might
object that not all these differences are necessarily dialectically opposed in mutual
struggle. Or, to put this in Baxtinian terms, dialogical interplay and dialectical bi-
polarity are not necessarily the same. But Voloinovs stronger point here is that
even within the minimal social group, whose members may communicate co-op-
eratively like good Habermasians, the linguistic signs used will still be inevitably
fissured inwardly by the ongoing social struggles. Sriots assertion that Voloinov
does not even deal with symbolic violence (p.57) is very wide of the mark.
It is certainly true that Voloinovs account of the mobility of the sign has
nothing to do with the instability of the signifier/signified dyad which has re-
cently become somewhat overused in much of our radical deconstruction as it
dispenses with the old ideas of historical agency. For Voloinov, by contrast, the
multiple overdetermination of the sign, and its potential for development, are a
consequence of the social struggles conducted through it (p.161):
Cette pluriaccentuation sociale du signe idologique en est une composante essen-
tielle. En fait, ce nest que grce cet entrecroisement des accents que le signe est
vivant et mobile, capable dvoluer.
[This pluriaccentuation is an essential component of the ideological sign. In fact,
it is only because of this accentual interplay that the sign is alive and mobile, and
capable of evolving.]

Again, composante essentielle (essential component) unnecessarily plays down the

dynamic implications of ochen vazhniy moment (a/the very important moment)
in the Russian text. But the truly original aspect of this argument occurs when
Voloinov notes that this capacity to evolve can be blocked by the reactive struggle
of the dominant ideology as it struggles for absolute hegemony. Under such cir-
cumstances, which from a Marxist perspective are normal in class society, this
repression of alternative possibilities produces the refraction, no longer as alterna-
tive possibilities but as distortions in the field of the actual (ibid.):
Or, ce qui rend le signe idologique vivant et changeant est aussi ce qui en fait un
milieu qui rfracte et dforme lexistence. La classe dominante tend (stremitsja)
 Voloinov between Marx and Saussure 353

donner au signe idologique un caractre ternel, au-dessus des classes, touffer

ou rendre invisible (zagnat vnutr) la lutte des valuations sociales qui sy d-
roule, le rendre monoaccentu.
[Now, that which gives life and mutability to the ideological sign is also what
makes it a medium which refracts and distorts existence. The dominant class
tends (stremitsja) to give the ideological sign an eternal character, above the class-
es, to stifle or to make invisible (zagnat vnutr) the struggle between the social
evaluations taking place within it, to make it monoaccentual.]

The translators choice of tend for stremitsja (strives) weakens Voloinovs idea
of inward struggle. However, the apparently inaccurate rendre invisible for zag-
nat vnutr (to drive inwards) is fully justified, because Voloinov is referring to a
struggle within discursively organised signs that are already constitutive of inward
consciousness. Voloinovs enquiry has brought him to a different perspective here,
and his struggle is apparent too. What the would-be hegemonic ideology seeks to
make unavailable to consciousness (i.e., invisible) in pursuit of its own unchal-
lenged monological dominance, is not just the opposing viewpoints and evaluations
but the very existence of the struggle (borba/lutte) itself. It was Voloinovs earlier
antagonist Freud who argued that the internal censor, like the actual external censor,
had not achieved its task until it obliterated the traces of its own censoring activ-
ity. Here Voloinov produces a reverse account of the unconscious. Whereas Freud
had argued that the displacements of metaphor and metonymy (i.e., refractions) are
the strategies which enable the repressed contents of the unconscious to achieve a
measure of indirect expression, bypassing the vigilance of the censorship, Voloinov,
who had no time for such bourgeois concepts as the unconscious, is nonetheless
brought to the point of giving it articulate theorisation but from the other side. Here
the unconscious is actively produced by the censorship, i.e., the ideology struggling
to impose or maintain its dominance, because in this very drive to silence (or make
invisible) its opposing other, it creates the distortions and misrecognitions which
it needs. This is a version of ideology as activity, not as prior structure, and its pro-
duction of misrecognitions in the course of its struggles has more in common with
the arguments of Gilles Deleuze (19251995) and Flix Guattari (19301992) in
their Anti-Oedipe (1972)5 than with Freud. At the same time, unlike the Marxist
Voloinov, they argue that there is no such thing as ideology, meaning in all prob-
ability the various versions of ideology as a single structure which were predominant
at the time, and still are.

5. Cf. Deleuze & Guattari (1972:136137) in particular. There the displacement which pro-
duces guilty misrecognition in the subject addressed by the law is the strategy which secures
its dominance.
354 Jonathan Hall

Voloinov is an uneven thinker, and Patrick Sriots historically based criti-

cism does much to help the modern reader understand his apparent idiosyncrasies
as part of the wider trends of his time. Paradoxically, however, his unremitting
belittlement confers upon his target a consistency which he does not have. More
importantly, it denies the ways in which his writing is still capable of provoking
new perspectives which do not conform to quite a number of the established or-
thodoxies of our time.

References
Deleuze, Gilles & Flix Guattari. 1972. LAnti-Oedipe: Capitalisme et schizophrnie. Paris: Les
ditions de Minuit.
Tihanov, Galin. 2000. The Master and the Slave: Lukcs, Bakhtin and the ideas of their time. Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press.
Zizek, Slavoj. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London & New York: Verso.

Authors address:
Jonathan Hall
The Bakhtin Centre
University of Sheffield
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield S3 7RA
Un ite d Ki ngd om
e-mail: jonathanraehall@gmail.com