Excerpt FSA

Polyphony and Objectivity

Linda Kraeger

= Gr= ayson Co= unty Co= llege

Following leads from Mikhail Bakhtin’s explication of Dostoevsky’s polyphonic method, I argue that this meth= od serves as a model for objectivity in the social and behavioral sciences and helps resolve the traditional insiders–versus–outsiders debate.=

The polyphonic method demonstrates that objecti= vity cannot be a neutral point of view, which is a self-contradiction. Suppose a high school principal named Mrs. Popper&nb= sp; must find a substitute teacher for Mrs. Jane Progroff’s Americ= an History class. The topic to be covered tomorrow morning is the Mormon movem= ent into Utah. Mrs. Popper has five substitutes ready to com= e to the rescue. One is a Southern Baptist, the second an atheist, the third a M= ormon, the fourth a Buddhist, and the fifth a Catholic. Mrs. Popper’s assist= ant urges her to select the most objective. “This is a sensitive topic,” he warns. “I don’t know whether Jane ProgroffR= 17;s sickness was a convenient excuse to get out of teaching tomorrow,” he says. As principal, Mrs. Popper has to select someone who will be objective. She sees at once that each of the five substitute teachers has his or her o= wn point of view. Mrs. Popper would not look for a sixth substitute who= had no point of view since, above all, she requires a teacher with knowledge ab= out the topic.

The presuppositionless tabula rasa empty of all biases is a fiction. Bia= ses are the inescapable starting point of all rational inquiry. The brain is a biological instrument with built–in presuppositions or propensities. = This is not to say that the ideas, theories, or propensities invariably correspo= nd with objective reality. Rather, they provide enough to get the brain starte= d. Then in the process of making mistakes, it sometimes corrects itself. Since= a major part of objective thinking is critical analysis, the mind must have s= ome doctrines, some beliefs, to begin with; and these beliefs come primarily through indoctrination. All cultures initiate their new members into the tr= ibe or the community by indoctrination. While indoctrination alone is not objectivity, it is a necessary ingredient.

In-depth indoctrination is a major step toward greater objectivity. Objectivity is something that comes in degrees.

Multiple indoctrination is an essential ingredi= ent of objectivity. The more indoctrination in multiple areas a person has, the mo= re objectivity is approximated. When Bakhtin says that Dostoevsky is the maste= r of the polyphonic method in composing his novels, he means that the narrator d= oes not become the authoritative interpreter for the reader. Rather, the narrat= or is more like one of the participants in the dialogue. Furthermore, each maj= or character carries in his mind the thoughts and ideas of the others. Solitud= e is almost impossible in Dostoevsky’s novels. In Notes from Undergroun= d, for example, the narrator–character constantly hears his readers and anticipates their objections. In The Brothers Karamazov, Alyosha sometimes appears to know Ivan’s thoughts.

Mikhail Bakhtin notes that Dostoevsky entertain= ed a variety of ideas:

As an artist Dostoevs= ky often divined how a given idea would develop and function under certain cha= nged conditions, what unexpected directions it would take in its further develop= ment and transformation. (91)

This is like a scient= ific theory being tested under a variety of conditions. Bakhtin goes on to say:<= o:p>

This striving of Dost= oevsky to perceive each thought as an integrated personal position, to think in voices, is clearly evidenced even in the compositional structure of his journalistic articles. His manner of developing a thought is everywhere the same: he develops it dialogically, not in a dry logical dialogue but by juxtaposing whole, profoundly individualized voices. Even in his polemical articles he does not really persuade but rather organizes voices, yokes together semantic orientations, most often in the form of some imagined dialogue. (93)

Like the symbolic interactionist George Herbert= Mead, Dostoevsky deals with social psychology. Michael Gardiner and Michael A Bel= l see Bakhtin, too, as a so= cial psychologist. To think is to interact with other minds and th= eir beliefs even when those other minds are not present or are no longer alive.=

Objectivity requires stepping inside a way of l= ife or perspective sufficiently to learn it from the inside, to understand why the beliefs, practices, and rituals are meaningful to the adherents. Thinking as an insider demands discipline, imagination, and every learning skill available. This openness is more than a psychological feeling. Far fr= om being passive observation or passive receptiveness, it is active probing, testing, listening, and working at various levels to enter into the lives or cultures of others vicariously. This is not to say that one becomes a conve= rt, but that one can think and feel like a genuine believer. Without this discipline, criticism would remain largely external. Internal criticism is informed and therefore more valuable and useful. External criticism is judg= ing a system of belief or practices by the standards outside that system. Altho= ugh the study of others can be done as a comparative study, it has its limitati= ons. Internal criticism shows that the researcher understands how the points, arguments, and rituals of the culture operate. If contradictions exist with= in the culture or subculture, the researcher or observer who learns the system from the inside can better find them. External criticism, by contrast, tend= s to be superficial by finding not contradictions so much as the surface differe= nces between System A and System B.

By becoming immersed in several ways of = life, critical and comparative evaluation tends to emerge. This, too, becomes an essential ingredient of growing objective inquiry.

In–depth indoctrination is a = major step toward greater objectivity. It is conceivable that a Catholic, Baptist= , or atheist might be better informed of the Mormon religion than is a Mormon believer. My point is not that an outsider would be more objective. Rather, objectivity is a process composed of special ingredients, one of which is placing oneself in situations to learn more and more of the fundamental det= ails of the subject. An open mind is not a blank mind. The more versed the teach= er is in, say, the Mormon religion, the more she increases her objectivity.

Indoctrination is an ingredient of brainwashing= . But brainwashing need not be an in–depth indoctrination. Greater objectiv= ity, however, requires in–depth indoctrination. Brainwashing is a process = of limiting the individual to indoctrination in one belief system and cutting = the individual off from the possibility of becoming deeply indoctrinated in oth= er perspectives. While brainwashing may contain learning about other perspecti= ves, it restrains the individual from gaining an in–depth indoctrination i= n other perspectives. Brainwashing depends on either gaining no information about o= ther perspectives or gaining only superficial, surface understanding.=

Karl Popper credits the Ancient Greeks for help= ing educators break the habit of brainwashing:

[T]here is the histor= ical fact that the Ioanian school was the first in which pupils criticized their masters, in one generation after another. There can be little doubt that the Greek tradition of philosophical criticism had its main source in Ionia.

It w= as a momentous innovation. It meant a break with the dogmatic tradition which permits only= one school doctrine, and the introduction in its place of a tradition that admits plurality of doctrines which all try to approach truth by mea= ns of critical discussion. (151)

In the movement toward greater objectivity, brainwashing lies at the bottom of the ladder. Slick indoctrination comes n= ext. While it does inform the individual of other views, perspectives, or belief systems, it presents them superficially, not from the perspective of inside= rs. Next up the ladder toward greater objectivity is in–depth indoctrinat= ion in contrast to the surface presentation found in slick indoctrination.=

The next rung of the ladder is multiple in–depth indoctrination. At this level, openness to learning from oth= er perspectives gives birth to criticism. Without openness to examine other perspectives and openness to internal and comparative criticism, progress to greater objectivity ceases. The polyphonic method is this two–pronged openness. The voices hear each other and respond. The more attentive the listening, the more profound the criticism can become.

My final point raises the question of detachmen= t and passion. The drive to understand is itself a passion. If it persists despite difficulties and obstacles, we call it a strong passion. Objective inquiry entails passionate involvement in the necessary work. Detachment enters onl= y as disengagement from one passionate line of inquiry for the sake of passionat= ely pursuing another. The polyphonic method stresses reflective involvement. Listening carefully involves hard work, many trials and errors, many conjectures and refutations in the hope of improving our understanding.

Respect for the integrity of the subject of inq= uiry does not mean treating it as a pristine, fragile object. Rather, understand= ing improves when other perspectives are brought into hearing distance of one another. Objectivity increases at the boundaries, where subcultures encount= er one another. If perceptions are theory‑laden, then theories are cultu= re‑laden. By encountering other cultures, we fully grasp how enculturated beliefs are= .

Mikhail Bakhtin explains the process toward gre= ater objectivity as follows:

The idea begins to live, that is, to take shape= , to develop, to find and renew its verbal expression to give birth to new ideas, only when it enters into genuine dialogic relationships with other ideas, w= ith the ideas of others. Human thought becomes genuine thought, that is,= an idea, only under conditions of living contact with another and alien though= t, a thought embodied in someone else’s voice, that is, in someone else’s consciousness expressed in discourse.

The idea––as it was seen by Dostoevsky the artist––is not subjective individual–psychological format= ion with ‘permanent resident rights’ in a person’s head; no, = the idea is inter–individual and inter–subjective––the realm of its existence is not individual consciousness but dialogic communi= on between consciousnesses. The idea is a live event, played out at the poi= nt of dialogic meeting between two or several consciousnesses. In this sense the idea is similar to the word, with which it is dialogically united. Like the word, the idea wants to be heard, understood, and ‘answered’ by other voices from other positions. (88)

Dostoevsky’s polyphonic novel Crime and Punishment illustrates several of my points regarding the ladder toward objectivity. Gary Saul Morson points out that the protagonist “Raskolnikov entertains a variety of theories justifying the murder h= e commits, but the crucial one is his division of humanity into a few superior people,= who are thinkers and theorists, and a mass of others, who are mere breeders, to= be sacrificed for what the first type consider their good” (paragraph 53= ). One might say, however, that the many voices Raskolnikov listened to before= he committed the murder consisted mainly of Nihilists. This constituted inR= 09;depth indoctrination.

After the murder, Raskolnikov’s thoughts = and ideas contain the voices of his mother, his sister, and Sonya. Given his interaction with his family and especially with the lowly prostitute Sonya,= who offers forgiveness, he progresses toward multiple in–depth indoctrination.

Mikhail Bakhtin elaborates: <= /p>

[T]he consciousness of the solitary Raskolnikov= becomes a field of battle for others’ voices; the events of recent days (his mother’s letter, the meeting with Marmeladov), reflected in his consciousness, take on the form of a most intense dialogue with absentee participants (his sister, his mother, Sonya, and others), and in this dialo= gue he tries to “get his thoughts straight.” (88)=

Multiple in‑depth indoctrination appears = to increase, according to Bakhtin’s continued description of Raskolnikov’s polyphonic voices:

Raskolnikov’s v= ery same idea appears before us again in his dialogues with Sonya, no less inte= nse; here it already sounds in a different tonality, it enters into dialogic con= tact with another very strong and integral life position, Sonya’s, and thus reveals new facets and possibilities inherent in it. Next we hear this idea= in Svidrigailov’s dialogized exposition of it in his dialogue with Douni= a. But here, in the voice of Svidrigailov, who is one of Raskolnikov’s parodic doubles, the idea has a completely different sound and turns toward= us another of its sides. And finally, Raskolnikov’s idea comes into cont= act with various manifestations of life throughout the entire novel; it is test= ed, verified, confirmed or repudiated by them. (89)

As early as 1886, one review of Crime and Punishment asks, “Can such a book, dealing with material so revolting, be of any possible service?” In answering that question, t= he reviewer tells readers that the author’s “underlying principles= of the art that brought” the novel to the bookstores, “leaves no aspect of social degradation untouched, but it touches all with the unerring yet kindly skill of the trained physician who applies the knife and cautery= to heal” (A Review 365).

Ironically, the review of 1886 points out that = by reading Dostoevsky’s polyphonic Crime and Punishment, people s= tep up the ladder toward more objectivity. They enter the world of multiple in&= #8209;depth indoctrination and open criticism of one’s own ideas. The review stat= es:

It is a book that gains in power by a second or a third reading, that takes hold = upon the memory and leaves it peopled with new shapes, strange and often terribl= e in outline, yet pulsating with the universal longings that cry from the depths= for the comprehension and sympathy of a common humanity. (A Review 365)<= o:p>

Works Cited=

“A Review of Crime and Punishment.” The Literary World (October 30, 1886): 17:22, 364-65. Reprinted in Nine= teenth-Century Literature Criticism. Vol. 2.

Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems = of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Ed. and Trans. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota= Press, 1984.

Gardiner, Michael, and Michael= M. Bell, eds. Bakhtin and the Human Sciences: No Last Words. Thousand Oaks, CA, 1998.

Morson, Gary Saul. “How = did Dostoevsky Know?” New Criterion (May 1999) 17:9, 21. Online So= urce Database: Literature Resource Center.

Popper, Karl R. Conjectures= and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York, NY: Routledg= e, 1992