Trashing Caryl Emerson's recent book on Bakhtin?

[Andrew Wachtel]

It seems to me that very little thought has gone on in this discussion
about what is at stake here.  The question is not, nor should it be,
whether people have the right to dislike other people's books.  I think
that they do have that right and that there is nothing wrong with
publishing negative, even sharply negative reviews, particularly of the
work of senior scholars in the field.  Nothing terrible is going to happen
to Caryl Emerson or to me if someone trashes one of our books in public.

The question is, what are the grounds for the trashing?  In this instance,
I think that what is happening is not merely a case of one scholar
disagreeing with or disliking what another scholar has written (although
there is some of that going on).  Rather, what is coming out is the much
more disturbing fact that the more American scholars and Russian scholars
of Russian literature and culture have the chance to interact, the more
convinced each group seems to be that the work of the others, in the main,
is worthless.  While there are certainly many exceptions, Russian scholars,
overall, do not believe that Americans really understand or know Russian
culture well or deeply enough to write about it legitimately.  And American
scholars generally believe that most Russian scholars aren't well enough
attuned to or interested in how literary and cultural studies have been
practiced in this country for the past couple of decades and therefore
can't say anything interesting.

The result is a constant series of turf wars revolving around who has the
"right" to say what and why.  This, of course, is hardly what was
envisioned when the official barriers to intercultural scholarly
intercourse disappeared a decade or so.  Ideally, we would agree that each
approach has something to recommend it, and attempt to merge the best of
the two.  It would be acceptable as well to agree to disagree, and
recognize that while we may not exactly like what our colleagues are doing,
we can respect it.  The worst version is constant sniping, which simple
makes everyone look foolish.

Andrew Wachtel
Herman and Beulah Pearce Miller Research Professor
Chair, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL 60208-2206