Reading Bakhtin

I've been reading back through Bakhtin again, taking notes on what I've been working on -- and I've found a surprising number of thoughts that are useful, or interesting, or just downright beautiful. Sometimes he's even haunting.

So today I'll leave it at a quote from Bakhtin:

“All forms involving a narrator or a posited author signify to one degree or another by their presence the author’s freedom from a unitary and singular language, a freedom connected with the relativity of literary and language systems; such forms open up the possibility of never having to define oneself in language, the possibility of translating one’s own intentions from one linguistic system into another, of fusing “the language of truth” with “the language of the everyday,” of saying “I am me” in someone else’s language, and in my own language, “I am other.” (Dialogic Imagination, 315)

The possibility of speaking in another's language -- now that's an intriguing thought. More on this, on Roy Liuzza's article "The Tower of Babel: 'The Wanderer' and the Ruins of History" (suggested reading from Eileen Joy), and on what else I've been doing in my second two week hiatus in a month.

In other news -- almost winter break!