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Arts & Communication Bakhtin and Groys: Pop culture and hieratic senses

will be further elucidated with specific examples intended Groys recognized the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche
to suggest avenues for future research, thereby establishing on post-revolutionary Soviet philosophy, particularly
this article’s exploratory nature and its inquiry into the its explorations in The Birth of Tragedy (1872), which
complexities of pop culture. facilitated the development of a certain revolutionary
critique, although not in conventional terms. This is
2. Boris on Bakhtin: Dionysian exaltation particularly evident in the case of Mikhail Bakhtin, whose
and dissolution of the individual cultural theory, according to Groys, is derived from
In several respects, Bakhtin has significantly influenced Nietzschean thought. Bakhtin is also emblematic of those
Boris Groys, a contemporary art critic and media theorist anti-philosophers who, on the margins of Stalinism, “strove
who has even led seminars focused on the work of the to continue the tradition of Russian non-Marxist thought
Soviet philosopher, his relationship with Russian culture, and to examine the cultural situation in the Stalinist Soviet
and his connections to other thinkers such as Derrida – Union.” 14, p. 169
a connection that is far from coincidental, considering In this regard, Groys is not mistaken: due to certain
Bakhtin’s prominent role in the development of postmodern academic interpretations, such as those advanced by Tel
theory. Manuel Fontán del Junco reminds us that, in his Quel and Cultural Studies (particularly in the traditions
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classes, Groys demonstrated that Bakhtin’s concepts of of Kristeva and Williams ), literary criticism has found
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carnival and the polyphonic novel are more valuable than in Bakhtin, a sort of linguistic prophet who revealed the
other categories when addressing the problem of art in ideological character of the sign as an arena of social
general, and of artistic installations in particular. struggle. However, in recent years, we have come to
Bakhtin is also a subject of philosophical inquiry for understand that many hypotheses attributed to Bakhtin
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Groys, who characterizes the Soviet thinker as an “anti- actually belong to Valentin Voloshinov’s Marxism and the
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philosopher.” If philosophy has historically been defined Philosophy of Language (1929) – a philosophical treatise
as the pursuit of truth, several modern thinkers, including that generated considerable interest among left-wing
Bakhtin, operate in a divergent manner, not through critique intellectuals due to the revolutionary agenda it promised.
but through the issuing of directives. What Groys defines as Amplified through translations into various languages and
antiphilosophy refers to a distinctive discourse that, rather the terminological fluctuations among theorists from the
than explaining the nature of reality, seeks to intervene in so-called “Bakhtinian industry,” debates over authorship
it: “The world must first be changed; then it will show its have led to erratic readings of the Bakhtinian corpus,
true nature,” as Groys summarizes his approach. In Groys’ confining it to language studies and to a Marxist tradition
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estimation, Bakhtin belongs to among the esteemed figures with which Bakhtin never openly aligned himself, as we
such as Jacques Derrida, Walter Benjamin, and Marshall have previously discussed at length. 9
McLuhan, due to his profound theorizations on carnival In any case, other Soviet intellectuals also found critical
and popular celebration. perspectives beyond Marxism, for example in Nietzsche’s
Building on Groys’ reinterpretation, I propose to philosophy, which, as Groys elucidates, was combined
delineate two principal threads that illuminate certain with Russian ideology and – paradoxically, as it may seem
aspects of popular culture, conceived as a contentious – with the Orthodox religious tradition. Thus, we can
battleground of meanings – a cultural domain where speak of a certain “Christian reception” of Nietzsche, but
relative hierarchies are displayed, and where bodies it is worth clarifying that neither the German philologist
converge in ideological confrontations that challenge nor the value system of Stalinist culture would have
hegemonies. This interpretation is encapsulated in adhered to this interpretation. It is important to note that
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Rabelais and His World (1984), a work to which Groys in Bakhtin (and in Groys, as will be explained below),
repeatedly returns, demonstrating that Bakhtin’s seminal some reminiscences of Orthodox Catholicism can actually
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study functions as a sociosemiotic theoretical framework be detected, as Kristeva recognized early, pointing
that addresses cultural phenomena as part of an ongoing out a certain unconscious impact of Christianity on the
production of semiosis – a specific social use of signs that humanist language of the carnival theorist.
presages semiotic theory. 15 In a certain sense, one might infer that some Soviet
The first thread involves a contentious cultural intellectuals confronted the totalitarian regime by
treatment of individual subjectivity, considering that advocating the dissolution of the individual subject
“Bakhtin’s carnival corresponds to Nietzsche’s Dionysian through intoxication and the superhuman drive that
mystery, transgressing all that is individual.” 14, p. 185 To fully Nietzsche defined as Dionysian. In that historical
grasp this assertion, we must first acknowledge how Boris context, Nietzschean readings contributed a description

Volume 3 Issue 1 (2025) 3 doi: 10.36922/ac.3978