Neo Kantianism in Cultural Theory
Bekhtin, Derrida and Foucault

Craig Brandist

Nous sommes tous néokantiens. Michel Foucault 1

In the 1980s and early 1990s, when poststructuralism set the agenda in cultural theory and shaped the way in which theorists from other traditions were received, the work of the Bakhtin Circle was often seen as anticipating contemporary concerns to a quite uncanny extent. While some adopted Bakhtin as a poststructuralist avant la lettre, others seized on Bakhtinian ideas as an alternative way of dealing with the very issues poststructuralism had raised without disappearing into the poststructuralist void of Derrida's `outside text' or partaking of Foucault's metaphysics of power. Gradually, it became apparent that despite a reiterated adherence to the `concrete event' and `social context', Bakhtinian theory was itself as thoroughly anti-realist as the poststructuralists themselves.

Few were prepared to search for the grounds of perceived correspondences in intellectual history, partly because, in a common effort to maintain a politically radical public profile, all three theorists kept their own philosophical sources well out of sight. Indeed, despite Foucault's above-mentioned invocation of neo-Kantianism, the extent to which he or Derrida realized the traditions behind their own ideas is unclear, since they only considered their immediate theoretical ancestors. Bakhtin was rather more aware of his place in intellectual history and it is recent research into the sources of his ideas that has made the current investigation possible.2 I shall argue here that these three figures share roots in a common philosophical tradition: neo-Kantianism, specifically that of the Marburg School.

Few in the Anglophone world are primed to recognize neo-Kantian traits in cultural theory these days. Sustained works on neo-Kantianism in English are rather scarce, and those that trace its influence on social and cultural theory have focused on the influence of Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert on Max Weber. The Marburg School's influence on Durkheim via Charles Renouvier (1815-1903), Léon Brunschvicg (1869-1944), Octave Hamelin (1856-1907) and Emile Boutroux (1845-1921) has been given much less attention than the influence of Comte and Spencer.3 Whilst a recent upsurge of interest in the work of Georg Simmel has given rise to work on his sociological writings, his distinctive and no less influential forays into neo-Kantianism and Lebensphilosophie have been rather less well served. The work of the late Gillian Rose is a notable exception, providing learned assessments of the traces of both Baden and Marburg School neo-Kantianism in some areas of classical sociology, Western Marxism and poststructuralism.4 Many of Rose's critiques are, however, little more than sketches, and the unfamiliarity of neo-Kantian ideas - coupled with her own very dense, Hegelian proclivities and juridical focus - mean that her work has not been widely received.5

Bakhtin studies have, however, bought neo-Kantianism and the philosophies it spawned back into focus, allowing us to reassess recent intellectual history and better diagnose the malaise afflicting much contemporary theory. While the Baden School has been relatively well served by translations in English, with the exception of the work of Ernst Cassirer and the late Jewish writings of Hermann Cohen, that of the Marburg School remains largely untranslated. The earliest translated work by Cassirer, Substance and Function, marked the beginning of his divergence from the School and his convergence with a specific variety of neo-Hegelianism.6 Bakhtin began reading the central Marburg School texts quite early, encouraged by his friend Matvei Kagan, who had studied in Marburg under Cohen and Paul Natorp and with Cassirer.7 In the 1930s, Bakhtin followed Cassirer towards Hegel, and also maintained a definite connection with key elements of the Marburg method. The Marburg influence on Derrida and Foucault come via different routes - including Husserl, Heidegger, Brunschvicg and classical sociology - so materializes in different ways. There are definite points, however, where the shared heritage is apparent.

When Roy Bhaskar notes that Derrida has an `unfortunate tendency to elide the referent in the semiotic triangle ... which deconstructs his own practice which cannot thereby be theoretically sustained', it is the neo-Kantian basis of the method that has been identified.8 Even the corporeally insistent historical works of Foucault and Bakhtin are rather different to the materialist works they once appeared. The subtitle of Foucault's 1963 The Birth of the Clinic illustrates this well: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. The book deals with the production of an object of knowledge according to `new forms of the mathematical a priori', a consideration of which also brings his methodological opus, The Order of Things, to a close. In the case of both Bakhtin and Foucault, the body is a historically changing object of knowledge. In the Renaissance the individual body is a microcosm of the universe, with life and death having a cosmic significance. Over the next two centuries the individual life is separated and the cosmic co-ordinates lost.9 This is the way the transformation of perception - medical and otherwise - occurred, and all other considerations are beyond knowledge. This characteristic `bracketing' is clearly stated in the following comment by Bakhtin:

Three centuries ago the `whole world' was a unique symbol that could not be adequately represented by any model, by any map or globe. In this symbol the `whole world', visible and cognised, embodied-real, was a small and detached patch of earthly space and an equally small and detached chunk of real time. Everything else unsteadily disappeared into the fog, became mixed-up and interlaced with other worlds, estranged-ideal, fantastic, utopian. The point is not that the other-worldly and fantastic filled-in this impoverished reality, combined and rounded reality out into a mythological whole. The otherworldly disorganized and bled this present reality.10

The world literally was that symbol, bled and disorganized by mythical thinking. The symbol did not represent the world badly, but it was the world itself. That symbol could not be represented, it could not appear for itself but existed only in itself. Culture had no self-consciousness because the power of mythical thought was sufficient to prevent any such objectification. To understand the nature of these intellectual enterprises we must turn to their philosophical roots.

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