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Problematizing Global Knowledge Time 133
Chronotope
Luis Alberto Brando
Keywords Bakhtin, science, space, theory,
time
T
he relevance of a concept can be evaluated
not only for its rigor or efficacy at the basis
of a theoretical system, but also by inquir-
ing to what extent, and through which forms, this
concept has been diffused beyond the limits of the
discipline or area of knowledge in which it was
originally proposed. The power of certain
categories is connected to the fact that they allow
themselves to be translated into the languages, and
according to the parameters, of other fields of
knowledge. Considering the transformations that
have occurred in the passage from one field to
another, one can therefore claim that the import-
ance of a concept cannot be disassociated from its
ability to generate images and stimulate metaphor-
ical appropriations.
One of the most evident demonstrations of this
claim can be found in the way that the category of
timespace, introduced in the first decade of the
20th century by the physicist Albert Einstein, was
taken up by Mikhail Bakhtin as a reference for his
concept of chronotope. In the introduction to his
article Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in
the Novel, written in the 1930s, the Russian
thinker defines it thus:
We will give the name chronotope (literally,
time space) to the intrinsic connectedness of
temporal and spatial relationships that are
artistically expressed in literature. This term is
employed in mathematics, and was introduced
as part of Einsteins Theory of Relativity. The
special meaning it has in relativity theory is not
important for our purposes; we are borrowing
it for literary criticism almost as a metaphor
(almost, but not entirely). (Bakhtin, 1981: 84)
If we take the power of influence of their
theories as a criterion, and the fact that they
produce a complex set of discourses that have
been more or less institutionalized, on several
levels of cultural reality, there is no doubt that
Einstein and Bakhtin are among the most
respected names in western thought. It is unlikely,
therefore, that the consonance between the
concepts of spacetime and the chronotope, as
well as the strong effect and the continuing
interest they arouse, is fortuitous. It is more
reasonable to suppose that both concepts express
fundamental questions and problems of physics
and the theory of language, which is to say that
both concepts efficiently synthesize the attempts
to equate epistemological questions considered
central to the 20th century, questions related to
dissatisfaction with the ways available up to that
moment for dealing with notions of time and
space, movement and position, duration and
extension, change and structure, history and
context, possibility and determination.
On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the
concepts of timespace and chronotope play
specific roles in the histories of their respective
areas of knowledge. When these roles are
compared, the discrepancies between the two
terms become clear. The Einsteinian concept
fulfills the function of contradicting common sense
in pre-scientific thought, which conceives space
and time as real things, directly observable by
sense experience, a conception that is to some
extent endorsed by Newtonian physics. At the
same time, it is opposed to Kantian idealism, which
regards space and time as a priori categories. It
should be noted as well that time is incorporated
into space, is one of its dimensions in a four-dimen-
sional space. The Bakhtinian concept acts as the
negation of a formalist tradition, which defines
language in terms of intrinsic data. This is a
question of foregrounding historical factors, under-
stood as those factors that define a given concrete
reality. Although the concept affirms that time and
space are inseparable, it is time that is given
priority, regarded as synonymous with history.
There is therefore a significant difference.
Einsteinian thought explores the consequences of
disconnecting what are considered fundamental
concepts from the experience of the human
senses, which obliges the notion of science to
conciliate radical speculation with the need for an
experimental demonstration of the facts. For
Bakhtinian thought, it is a matter of defending a
positive conception of knowledge, based above all
on the primacy of the notion of history as a
concrete instance of reality to the detriment of
idealistic interpretations, which make use of tran-
scendental presuppositions, especially concerning
aesthetic questions, from which is derived the
great emphasis given to the body as material reality
of the world.
It must be said that the conceptual-metaphor-
ical play developed in Bakhtins work, despite the
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134 Theory, Culture & Society 23(23)
explicit admission of being inspired by Einstein,
does not privilege a debate associated with the
transformations of classical physics within those of
modern physics, but mainly the confrontation
between a Ptolemaic model of language, in which
a unique linguistic consciousness and the
centripetal character of social forces prevail, and a
Copernican model (also referred to as Galilean),
marked by centrifugal forces and by a relative,
plural, dialogic linguistic consciousness. It is
possible to suppose that the Einsteinian inspiration
arises from the appropriation, in a very broad sense,
of the notion of relativity, understood as a generic
opposition to everything intended to be absolute.
In Einsteins theory, however, relativity only makes
sense when the velocity of light is regarded as an
undisputed constant. It is not a question of
opposing relative to absolute, but of determining to
what systems these values can or cannot be applied.
It is tempting to suppose that, in the ambiv-
alence of Bakhtins concept relative to Einsteins,
the ambivalence of a good part of the field of
humanities in the first part of the 20th century is
revealed. This field seeks to claim its scientific
basis in two conflicting ways: in one, by drawing
near to the natural sciences as a model of positive
and socially legitimated knowledge; in the other,
by distancing itself from them through the
attempt to establish theoretical and methodologi-
cal specificity. This duplicity explains why, on a
fairly regular basis, concepts are shared by disci-
plines, even if, owing to the particularities they
take on, they can be regarded as metaphors in
relation to another disciplines theoretical context.
Independently of the degree of fidelity or freedom
in the passage from one context to another, the
concept-metaphors make up a common field of
interest whose theoretical productivity and power
of imaginative suggestion are seen in the develop-
ments appropriate to the limits and openings of
each area of knowledge.
If chronotope is almost but not entirely a
metaphor of space-time, one may ask if such
irrefutable ambivalence does not indicate the very
difficulty of distinguishing the metaphorical from
the conceptual operation. In Bakhtins theoretical
model, the chronotope acts as a concept to which
specific features are attributed and, at the same
time, as a metaphor that evokes aspects of the
Einsteinian concept. And yet, a rigorous separation
between the two uses cannot be established either;
to what extent the term aspires to generality, with
its foundational and propositional function, and to
what extent it does not have its own meaning, but
merely operates in a diffuse and suggestive way by
analogy, cannot be defined.
Timespace and chronotope meet, conceptu-
ally and metaphorically, in a common epistemo-
logical field that has selected as a basic problem
the human determination of knowledge, which
includes the debate over the universal and the
particular, absolute and relative, fact and
discourse, what can be demonstrated and what can
be imagined. The thought of Einstein and of
Bakhtin share, even though in different senses, the
tension between the acceptance of a human scale
for knowledge in which its historicity is primary,
to which the limitations and potentialities that
ground it in a specific context are connected and
the transposition of this scale, the search for which
is beyond the human capacity for perception and
conception.
Reference
Bakhtin, M.M. (1984) The Dialogic Imagination.
Ed. Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: University
of Texas Press.
Luis Alberto Brando is an Associate Professor in
the Department of Literary Theory at the Univer-
sidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil.