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These days, literature is mostly seen as a platform that

allows a writer to “give a voice” to a social group that
previously did not have this voice. This group can be an
ethnic or sexual minority but also a new
generation—feeling itself too young and too different to be
represented by the existing literary tradition. It is
presupposed that a writer who gives a voice to a certain
social group also belongs to the same group. The voice
“given” is their own voice—which at the same time has a
claim to be a “group voice.” Whatever can be said about
the problems that arise when an individual voice becomes
at the same time recognized as a group voice, there is a
more serious issue concerning the relationship of this new
voice-writing to the literary tradition.

Indeed, if we remember the tradition of the great

European novel—let’s say, from Balzac, Dostoyevsky, and
Jane Austen to Thomas Mann—it becomes obvious that
the novelists belonging to this tradition avoided having a
voice. Instead, they created a literary space in which the
voices of others could be heard. They withdrew their own
voices to be able to present the “human comedy” in which
every social group had its part. The writing was dictated by
an interest in others—and not by an interest in the writer’s
own social group. This shift of writing from an interest in
Boris Groys others to an interest in “sames” becomes especially
striking when we compare it with current theoretical

Internet as Novel discourses that concentrate on the problems of otherness.

But where has the old novelistic tradition gone?

Today, the internet has replaced novels by writers like

Balzac and Dostoyevsky. The internet is where we go to
find out what others think and feel. However, if the internet
is the only classical novel of our time, the question
emerges: Is this a good novel or a bad novel? Is it a better
novel than the novels of Balzac and Dostoyevsky, or not as
good as these?

Of course, there is an important difference between the

internet and Dostoyevsky’s novels: the internet is a novel
that is written with the participation of its users, of its
readers. These readers can influence the space that
individual voices get on the internet by distributing likes
and dislikes among them—or simply by clicking certain
voices and thus increasing their popularity. The voices
that readers like get greater space, and the voices they
dislike get smaller space. This seems like a fair game.
Indeed, why do some voices get so much space in the
novels of Dostoyevsky even though they are obviously
unpleasant—and other voices get less space or are totally
ignored? It is obvious that this concerns the authoritarian
regime of authorship, in contrast to democratic public
opinion. However, this deficit is excusable. In the times in
which Dostoyevsky wrote his novels there was no
internet—and thus no possibility to analyze and evaluate
the public reaction to individual voices.

Today, if we want we can know that a certain artistic or

literary voice is liked, for example, by white women having

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Mikhail Bakhtin
two children and living in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas
but not liked by Black men having no children and living in
urban Miami, Florida. Yes, that is what we now know. But
we do not know why these people like or dislike what they
like or dislike. It seems that they do not have any specific
reasons for their taste—or in any case they are not asked
about these reasons. It is reason enough that they are
what they are. The most surprising thing, though, is the
readiness of readers to apply these statistical methods to
themselves. They begin to believe that they like certain
texts because these texts are written for them—and
people like them.
Thus, statistical methods work. These methods can even
predict if people will like or dislike a particular voice—but
they cannot explain why people like or dislike it. They like
a literary voice in the same way they like a certain sort of
coffee or tea—without feeling themselves obliged to
explain their taste. Kant famously argued that there is a
difference between a taste in food and taste in art and
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literature: when I prefer a certain food, I do not expect
from others that they share my taste, whereas in the field
of art I want others to agree with my taste. This is why I try
to persuade them to join my aesthetic—and, for that
matter, also political—judgment. And I do so by using
speech.
Of course, we are far away from the epoch of the
“enlightened society” that was described by Kant. Today,
we know that it makes no sense to persuade people to
change their tastes. Firstly, it is impossible and, secondly,
it is not clear why this should be so important. But does
that mean that today the only way to react to any artistic
and literary voice is to like or dislike it—thumbs up or
thumbs down? This brings us back to the old pre-Socratic
days in which the public followed the speeches of famous
Sophists—and silently liked or disliked them. The Socratic
revolution was born precisely from a decision to break this
silence—to ask questions, to formulate
counterarguments, to involve the voices of lonely speakers
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in a discussion. And, thus, to elucidate what the
speech-givers were actually saying. The goal of the
Socratic revolution was not to give a voice to people who
were previously silent but to make understandable the
voices that were already present in the public space.
Socrates himself did not pretend to have a voice. He only
interrogated the voices of others.
It is easy to say that Socratic dialogues offer a model for
organizing public space—as a place where all discourses
will be discussed and answered by all. Socrates—at least
as presented by Plato—could create such a space
because he did not pretend to have his own voice, opinion,
or knowledge. But who is able to take such a neutral, zero
position in public space and become an organizer of
public discussion without having any desire to intervene
into it? The government? That is absurd. Of course, the
government has a certain voice—and also has every
reason to make this voice be heard. Academia? It follows
the intellectual fashions—and must do so because it has
to prepare students for life in a society that is shaped by
those fashions. The internet? It seems to be neutral but, in
fact, it is manipulated by algorithms that prefer certain
discourses to others, certain voices to others. In some
cases these preferences are obvious; in some cases they
are less clear, but still they direct the attention of readers
to some voices and divert it from others. And even if the
internet were as neutral as the consciousness of Buddha,
we would still assume that it had a hidden bias.
After all, Socrates also failed to persuade the public of his
neutrality and was sentenced to death. And, indeed, his
questions always followed a certain strategy. Socratic
dialogues had nothing to do with the “fair competition of
ideas.” Rather, they demonstrated that their protagonists
did not quite understand themselves and their own ideas.
These protagonists felt that there was a certain truth
inside them and they tried to give voice to this truth, but
they could not even persuade themselves of this truth—let
alone others. Socratic dialogues never lead to any
consensus or even a temporary logical conclusion. They
are instead interrupted by the suggestion to go have
dinner or take a rest. Thus, Socratic dialogues never seem
to be finished, concluded; they always contain the
potentially infinite perspective of their continuation.
Indeed, when somebody—as a reaction to the “voice” of
the other—says, “I like it” or “I do not like it,”
communication ends. After such a reaction there is
nothing more to say. The voice of the other dies even
before this other dies. But when, instead, somebody asks,
“But what did you actually mean by that? Could you
explain?”—the conversation goes further. Does such a
conversation lead to a commonly accepted truth? Hardly.
But it does something different: it makes a voice not only
likable but understandable. And that means: this voice
becomes separated from its bearer. Indeed, what does it
mean when I understand the discourse of another? It
means: I can continue it. I can argue as this other would
argue. Here the voice of the other survives them.
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This was the privilege of classical literature which,
following Socrates, was polyphonic and demonstrated not
one voice but many voices in their interactions. My earlier
reference to Dostoyevsky was not accidental. Mikhail
Bakhtin, who introduced the notion of the polyphonic
novel, used Dostoyevsky’s novels as his primary examples.
Bakhtin had a Marxist background and believed that the
individual voices of the protagonists of Dostoyevsky’s
novels were not “fictional” but taken from the social reality
of their time, reflecting the social positions of their
prototypes. But, unlike Tolstoy or Balzac, Dostoyevsky was
not very interested in describing the specific social
conditions that determined the “ideologies” of his heroes.
In his novels he creates a utopian, transparent space of
discussion and ideological confrontation that would be
impossible in “real life,” where the participants in such
discussions would be isolated by obscure, “unsaid” social
conventions—and remain silent. This utopian, polyphonic
situation allows us, as readers, to identify with
Dostoyevsky’s heroes—to position ourselves in this
utopian space of communication and conflict, instead of
merely liking or disliking this or that individual voice. In this
sense, Dostoyevsky’s novels function in the same way as
Socratic dialogues.
Literary space opens up the possibility for transparent
communication that “real,” social space precludes. As I
previously argued, no political authority can be “neutral”
enough to organize a transparent, “polyphonic” space of
communication in which every individual voice has a
chance to enter into dialogue with others. Of course, it
would be naive to believe, as Bakhtin sometimes suggests,
that an author can reduce their own voice to zero—and
thus open space for a totally free-flowing discussion. But
such a requirement is, in fact, superfluous. The literary
space of the novel is constructed in an explicit,
transparent way. In a novel there are no hidden, vested
interests in the success of this or that particular
protagonist, no hidden algorithms that manipulate the
attention of the reader. Every reader understands what
Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, or Balzac wants to say. But every
reader can also share their genuine interest in the voices
of others—an interest that opens a utopian, polyphonic
space in which a multiplicity of different voices can be
heard and confronted. Thus, any reader can—at least in
their imagination—enter this utopian space and begin to
contradict some voices and find other voices persuasive.
Nowadays, it is the absence of this possibility to enter the
space of a novel that makes literature based on the
principle of “one author, one voice” so monotonous and
depressing.
X
Boris Groys is a philosopher, essayist, art critic, media
theorist, and an internationally renowned expert on
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Soviet-era art and literature, especially the Russian

avant-garde.

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