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[Dmitry Khanin]

    I think professor Morson is taking things a little too far: "The offense
is not just to Caryl, but to all of us." It was certainly not my intention
to offend Professor Morson whose work I always admired. I realize now that
some of my witticisms ("the laws that Morson and Emerson have jointly
discovered are as good as the law of gravity, even better") could have
rubbed his ego the wrong way. I'm sorry about that. I thought it was funny.
I wouldn't have said it had I known it would cause so much grief. Despite
professor Morson's warning, I'm still searching for those underlying
motives. Well, it was really Belinsky who started it.
    As to Caryl Emerson's book, I believe that she transgressed the
boundaries of a strictly academic discourse and, respectively, opened
herself to an equally transgressive criticism. I thought she spoke about
Russia and the Russians in a condescending and hostile tone. When she
reported someone's gossip about Russian Bakhtinists looking for the best
bidder for Bakhtin's tapes, that was a cheap shot. The librarians whose
reputation she destroyed in passing worked all their lives collecting
information about Baktin and continue doing their work in the situation of
Russia's growing impoverishment. How do you think those people felt? I know
them and how hurt they were.
    A word about Emily Tall's remark. She wrote: "The American scholars (or
those who have adopted American [academic] cultural norms) are trying to be
polite, respectful, and argue the issues." I think that academics everywhere
try to be polite, respectful, and argue the issues. Lots of Russian scholars
probably would be as shocked by my "trashing of Emerson's book" as Ms. Tall
apparently was. On the other hand, I'm sure that at least some Americans
enjoyed my irreverent criticism. So, let's not use those devisive
definitions. I basically agree with much of what Andrew Wachtel said. There
is a lot of covert hostility between Russian (including Russian emigres) and
American Slavists.  On one occasion, a nice American professor told me at a
conference: "You know, I just hate all of you." She smiled and left.


Dmitry Khanin


----- Original Message -----
From: Gary Saul Morson <g-morson at nwu.edu>
To: <SEELANGS at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 1999 10:20 AM


> Frankly, I don't think Caryl Emerson needs to be defended, and if she did,
> she could do it herself.
>
>         But there is a more important issue involved.   It is one thing to
> criticize a scholar's work  on scholarly grounds -- it makes errors, its
> argument is unpersuasive, there are gaps in logic, etc.    But it is quite
> another to do so by alleging motives.   This form of argument is wrong not
> only because a Prof. Khanin can have no idea what the motives really were,
> but also, and more importantly, because even if the motives are bad, the
> argument might still be right (and vice versa, for that matter). If
> Einstein had the worst motives for E = mc2 or Bakhtin for describing
> Dostoevsky's novels as polyphonic, that is entirely irrelevant to whether
> their theories are correct.   Prof. Knanin's SEEJ letter disturbs me not
> because it criticizes Caryl, but because of its mode of argument, which, I
> think, is fundamentally hostile to what scholarship is all about and
> therefore causes damage to the profession.   The offense is not just to
> Caryl, but to all of us.
>
> Gary Saul Morson
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Gary Saul Morson
> Frances Hooper Professor of the Arts and Humanities
> Professor of Slavic Languages
> Kresge Hall
> Northwestern University
> Evanston, IL   60208-2206.   847-491-3651
> -----------------------------------------------------------