Dialogism vs Dialectism

At times, I need to write down the theoretical boring stuff, that somewhat are at the foundation of most of what I write. Write them down again, that is. Phrasing and rephrasing will hopefully help me get to the core of these things. Plus, as far as I can see, hardly anyone ever reads these theoretical posts anyway, so the risk of someone being bored by the repetition is hardly that large. I tried to explain something with my introduction to this blog, now I'm kinda trying to explain it again. And it probably won't be the last time either...

This time, it's because I read an interesting piece on Modern Classical Music some time ago. Actually, I found it because Simon Reynolds wrote about it. If you need a primer on what I think is perhaps the most essential discussion facing the art-world at the moment, go read it. It's on the question of heterogenity and 'too much freedom'. To put it simply and less eloquent than Reynolds and Davidson: The artists of today has too many choices, too much inspiration, so their art ends up eclectic but somehow inessential. It's all new and exciting, but it doesn't really do anything. This is all fair game, and I agree, that a lot of modern art, litterature, music and film seem to be new for new-ness sake, without anything essential to say. Where I think they are unfair, though, is what Davidson indicates when he ends his piece by saying: What they badly need is a machine to rage against and a set of bracing creative constraints. I think this is unfair, because it's a conclusion that doesn't follow from his earlier points. Davidson doesn't write a lot about what is missing, but the one time he does, he states on two works, that: Both works abound in sonic beauty, yet they lack, say, Messiaen’s violent awe at a landscape’s revelations. But this isn't describing something Messiaen was against, this is something he was in awe of, it would be more precise to describe it as something he was for.

And I find this emblematic when a lot of - older - people write about what I kinda think is my generation (warning, I'm going to set up a strawman here...). They say we aren't against anything, without really backing it up. It's unfair, because it paints us as lazy. How, with the state of affairs of today, can we be so passive? Neoliberalism, two wars, economical breakdown, tea party, so many things to be against, and we are not fighting against any of it. Well, back in their days, they were truly political and trying to change the world. But as I said, it's not that we lack things to be against, what we lack is true, strong alternatives. We lack something to be for. And obviously, I'm for a lot of things. I'm for love, truth, treating other people decently, warm cups of tea, Romanian Cinema, writing about stuff on the internet. Yet most of what I'm for is either rather vague or rather personal... Hardly any of it can function as the basis for what many in the elder generation is looking for: Collective Action. I think young people of today is for and against as many things as their predecessors, but since each has their own little thing going, it hardly looks like a lot.

Mikhail Bakhtin, the guy I spoke about in the introduction, also used the word Dialogism to explain himself. In his great essay Discourse in the Novel, he explained the way novels work. They are heterogeneus, mixing together all different kinds of words, speech, language. But a novel does not mix things to make the linguistic strands do battle with each other, but just to have them relate to each other. This way, the novel in itself works against authoritarianism, which is always trying to make language as homogenous as possible. Therefore dialogism is naturally opposed to any kind of authoritarian power, it will perhaps always be a force of freedom of possibility. Yet what Bakhtin never stated explixitly - and probably couldn't have done if he wanted to, he was writing this in Soviet Russia, after all - is that Dialogism is also seemingly opposed to Dialectism. Dialectism was described by Hegel as being the force behind history. A thesis meets it's antithesis and they melt together into a synthesis of the two. Karl Marx then wrote a political version of that, where the proletariat and the bourgoisie was supposed to struggle, and then a communist society would be born out of that (this is obviously massively simplified). But in that way, dialogism undercuts the mindset and philosphy behind marxism and class-struggle.

At times, it feels like that's what these - older - commentators abhor in the new generation. To be perfectly frank, it often seems as if they are angry/dissapointed that we are ambivalent about marxism. Yet we do still believe in socialism, I do at least, it's just that I feel that if it becomes the only allowed alternative to the establishment, well then that is almost just as suffocating. I don't believe in dialectism anymore, and I don't really believe in any big ideas. And I don't believe in importance. What I believe in is small but great ideas. And feelings. Some people think that dialogism amounts to little more than postmodernist relativism, just taking all kinds of stuff and mixing them together. And while that is definitely a danger, it doesn't have to be that way.



Last year, my two favorite albums was Slow Six - Tomorrow Becomes You and Yellow Swans - Going Places. The first of these could have been included in Davidsons piece: They are from New York, they are classically trained, and they play a somewhat new hybrid of a lot of things. Going Places was a very abstract noise record, that was first on Popmatters list of 'Best Experimental Records 2010'. Yet, if you go to these two records looking for importance, forward thinking and avant-garde newness, well then you'll probably leave dissapointed. Slow Six are basically Do Make Say Think with violins instead of guitars, and while that - and the influence from Steve Reich - make them somewhat original, the album would hardly be anything special if that was all they had. No, what I love about this album is that it seems to describe love and longing quite profoundly, in a somewhat original way. The pieces switch between being polyrythmic and in weird meters, and more 'normal' parts. They sort of switch between playing against each other and with each other, for me illustrating a struggle for people to find and fall in sync with each other. And Yellow Swans is all about leaving the known world behind, and finding your footing again somewhere else, illustrated by songtitles such as Opt Out and New Life.



What these albums do, is to Opt Out in the search for originality and avantgarde importance. They are not grounded in any kind of idea of the 'future', they are not grounded in any struggle against anything. They are grounded in feelings, and the elements on the album have been chosen to best support these feelings. This is art without creative constraints or rage against anything. This is mixing and matching bits and pieces, all in service of something grounded in feelings. That might be a basis for dialogic art to grow out of, though these records are probably too homogenous to be there yet. All in all, though, this is something I'm very much for.

Bakhtin's essay on 'Discourse in the Novel' can be found in the collection 'The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin', 1981, Texas University Press. Edited by Michael Holquist and translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. It can be bought here, here or here.