Trashing - a Dismal Art or a Gay Science?

[Dmitry Khanin]

    I know, I know. Everyone thought it was over and then there is yet
another round. Well, I do feel that I have to reply to my opponents. After
all, isn't that what we are supposed to do in a truly dialogical world?
    My critics said a lot of bad things about trashing. Helena Goscilo (by
the way, I'm very sorry for misspelling her last name in a previous letter
but you have to admit it's a ... difficult one) compared me to a garbage
man. Thank you very much, Helena. I was touched. Now Nina Perlina reminds
everyone with respect to my review about "the pernicious practice of
"trashing" books and their creators in the 1930's."  Dr. De Rossa quipped at
the end of his message dedicated to a computer virus: --"If you can't say
something nice, don't say nuthin' at all." That's almost two hundred years
of good advice, n'est-ce pas?)
    Well, really I have to say a couple good words about the virtues of a
good old trashing. For starters, it is seriously underestimated in the
American Slavic studies which could explain why this realm of academic
research lags far behind all other intellectual pursuits in the US.
Nietzsche, of course, tried to create a gay science (Anja and her friends
should not be too disturbed, the word did not have sexual connotations back
then and in any case "there is nothing wrong with it"). Part of the endeavor
was beating up his academic opponents to the pulp or, simply put, trashing.
What do you think Nietzsche would say about a badly written and
self-important book like Emerson's? "Fresh Air!  Fresh Air!" Compared to
Nietzsche's innovative usage of trashing, the kind of trashing I practice
hardly deserves its name. It's time, though, to rehabilitate trashing and
make it part of the academic language. For instance, how should we call
those who pay less than $50 to AATSEEL? Academic trash?  What if you want to
imply that you already know what your opponent is implying? How about "no
trash" ? Things can also be "trash" or "untrash" (no explanations
necessary). The expansions of the "trashing" vocabulary will come naturally.
    Now a few words about Perlina's somewhat convoluted argument. With all
due respect, Ms. Perlina, it is hard to make sense of it. You can't possibly
be talking about everything at the same time. A little trashing is overdue!
Perlina writes: "What Khanin renders as invalid or "apostatic" in Emerson's
book is her unwillingness to move
her research in the direction of the postmodernist simulacrum." I'd be the
first to admit, it sounds very "trash." But what are you actually
saying?  Then you add: "non-relativist view of plurality makes him divert
from his own pluralism." And then the coda: "when Khanin charges Emersaon's
systematization with  opportunism, he bespeaks his unwillingness to read her
study within its genuine context. In a way, Khanin charges not an individual
interpretation, but the entire theoretical creed with lack of
principiality." Translated from the academic mumbo-jumbo, does it simply
mean that I did not understand Emerson's work and attacked a
well-established trend that Emerson represented? The book, in Perlina's
opinion, was not about Bakhtin (it had a misleading title) but rather about
"his creative
answerable "I" which takes part both in the Russian and the American
contexts, yet does not dissolve in any of them." Well, I don't know about
this "creative answerable I."  If that were Emerson's true hero, she was
certainly unaware of it. Do you know what I think? Nina Perlina had to write
a review of Emerson's book. Let's not go into reasons why she (or, for that
matter, Helena Goscilo) thought that she had to do that. We are all familiar
with academic politics.  However, how could Perlina possibly find anything
to praise in that hybrid of naive boasting, pedantic classification, and
high-handed criticism of Russia and the Russians (I never liked the word
"Rusophobia" but really it is quite appropriate for a characterization of
that cantankerous pamphlet).  So Ms. Perlina reinvented Emerson's book and
wrote a review of that made-up masterpiece that exists nowhere but in her
benevolent imagination. It's good enough that Perlina at least recognizes
that Emerson's book has some drawbacks: "I would add that the fundamental
reasons for Emerson's selections and omissions of individual Bakhtin
scholars and their theoretical views need more clarification." No trash!
But that's as far as she goes. If "trashing" were considered, in the spirit
of Nietzsche, as a gay science, not as a   dismal art, Slavists would not be
viewed as being decidedly the "untrash"!




----- Original Message -----
From: nina perlina <perlina at indiana.edu>
To: <SEELANGS at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sent: Monday, June 14, 1999 4:30 PM
Subject: Khanins' book review


> Frankly it is because of my technological backwardness and insufficient
> use of the website publications that I join the discussion of Professor
> Khanin's review of Caryl Emerson's The First Hundred Years of Mikhail
> Bakhtin  so late. As a good old friend and colleague of Caryl, a reviwer
> of her last book (the volume Khanin believes he had "trashed"),  a Slavist
> familiar with many of Professor Khanin's academic writings (I was asked to
> examine his tenure materials and supported his candidacy with enthusiasm),
> and, finally, as an emigre+ from Soviet Russia, I should have add my voice
> to the ongoing exchange much earlier. But surprisingly, my belated
> response wins me a position that can be described as "better later,"  for
> from my standpoint I can see clearly what the entire struggle is about,
> how should one characterize Professor Khanin's position in this battle,
> and what stimulates his ferocious attempt at "epate les academicien"
>         The battle is not about the ability/inability of  Russian scholars
> to acknowledge the fact that American Slavists can "really understand or
> know Russian culture well or deeply enough to write about it
> legitimately," as our colleague Andrew Wachtel believes. Here, one should
> admit, Professor Khanin has made his transition from the Russian to the
> American shore successfully. He is familiar with the language of
> postmodern pluralism and relativism. And if Caryl Emerson, in her turn,
> were not to demonstrate her non-relativizing approach to Bakhtin theory,
> Khanin would, probably, hesitate to "trash" her study. What Khanin renders
> as invalid or "apostatic" in Emerson's book is her unwillingness to move
> her research in the direction of the postmodernist simulacrum.
> Paradoxically, Khanin fails to notice that his assault on Emerson's
> non-relativist view of plurality makes him divert from his own pluralism.
> As an old Bakhtin scholar, I can see how much stress does Khanin add to
> his assured knowledge of what has become well grounded in the newest
> postmodernist interpretations of Bakhtin. Khanin disagrees with Emerson
> because both the bounds and the goals of her study do not fit the
> parameters he has chosen as a model for his  "Bakhtin today." He fails to
> see that "Emerson's 'hero' is not M. M. Bakhtin but rather his creative
> answerable "I" which takes part both in the Russian and the American
> contexts, yet does not dissolve in any of them" (I borrow this explanation
> from my own review of her book). Emerson's reliance on the main principles
> of reception theory makes her book into an interesting discussion of the
> dynamic processes that are developed in the recent Bakhtin studies; with
> the help of reception theory she accumulates and systematizes outside
> contexts through which competent readers read and interpret Bakhtin's
> works as cultural phenomena, and when Khanin charges Emersaon's
> systematization with  opportunism, he bespeaks his unwillingness to read
> her study within its genuine context. In a way, Khanin charges not an
> individual interpretation, but the entire theoretical creed with lack of
> principiality.
>         True, "the first hundred years of Mikhail Bakhtin" cannot be
> limited to the reception of Bakhtin's theories in the post-Soviet human
> sciences of 1980's-90's, and if Khanin were to express his reservations
> about the exceedingly ambitious and somewhat misleading title of Emerson's
> study, I would  agree with him. To this I would add that the fundamental
> reasons for Emerson's selections and omissions of individual Bakhtin
> scholars and their theoretical views need more clarification. But rather
> than claiming several partial reservations about Emerson's study, Khanin
> boasts of "trashing" her entire work. "Trashing" (like recycling) is an
> ideologically bound activity, and the utterance chosen by Khanin brings to
> my mind a remnant from an old, nearly "trashed" context about trashing and
> recycling: shortly before his arrest, Isaak Babel took Ilya Ehrenburg on a
> stroll and showed him a factory that was built to trash books written by
> "enemies of the Soviet people" and to make this "cultural recycling" of
> the old worldviews useful for the spirit of the day. True, Caryl Emerson
> is just a Bakhtin scholar, not a reincarnation of his spirit, but we
> should not forget that many enigmatic aspects of Bakhtin studies owe their
> origin to the pernicious practice of "trashing" books and their creators
> in the 1930's.
> Nina Perlina, Indiana University