Rather as life and death are interwoven in Bakhtin’s carnivalesque vision, so his reputation flourished as his body failed. Lionised by literary scholars, sought out by aged Formalists and acclaimed by the intellectual young, he died in 1975, just as literary theory was riding high in the West. His last words, despite his having denied in his work that there was any such thing as a last word, were ‘I go to thee.’ Religious Bakhtinians take ‘thee’ to mean God; Marxist Bakhtinians take it to mean his wife, who had died four years earlier. neo-Kantians took 'thee' to mean..., religious humanist took 'thee' to mean, discourse theorist took 'thee' to mean, literary critic took 'thee' to mean, cultural sociologist took 'thee' to mean, ethical thinker took 'thee' to mean, philosophical anthropologist took 'thee' to mean
It in this way that Bakhtinian assertion that there is no such thing as a 'last word' was vindicated.
It in this way that Bakhtinian assertion that there is no such thing as a 'last word' was vindicated.
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