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Chronotope
Concept introduit en critique littraire, dans les annes 1920, par Bakhtine, qui emprunte le
terme la physique et aux mathmatiques, et l'utilise dans un sens mtaphorique. Le
chronotope ou temps?espace est une catgorie de forme et de contenu base sur la solidarit
du temps et de l'espace dans le monde rel comme dans la fiction romanesque. La notion de
chronotope fond les indices spatiaux et temporels en un tout intelligible et concret. C'est le
centre organisateur des principaux vnements contenus dans le sujet du roman. Ex.: la
route, espace abstrait o se ralise le temps, est un chronotope dans le roman picaresque, dans
Don Quichotte, ou dans les romans de Walter Scott, etc., le salon, dans ceux de Stendhal ou de
Balzac. A partir de cette notion, Bakhtine reconsidre toute l'histoire du roman occidental.
[Gardes?tamine, J. / Hubert, M.?C.: Dictionaire de critique littraire. Paris: Armand Colin, 1993, S.
35?36]
CRONOTOPO. Segn Mijail M. Bajtn, la correlacin esencial que se da entre las relaciones
espaciales y temporales en la obra literaria en general y la narrativa en particular.
Con Bajtin sabemos perfectamente que espacio y tiempo no existen separadamente; que no
hay espacio sin tiempo, ni tiempo sin espacio, por ms que nuestras operaciones separadoras
(conocer: cog-noscere es separar, dividir) insistan en ello. La nocin de cronotopo es mucho ms
que un trmino feliz: es un concepto que se resiste a ser pensado, y que insiste en ser vivido,
vivenciado, experimentado.
Por ello, como re-produccin del macrocosmos al que pertenece, todo relato (microcosmos) tiene
su big-bang (y su big-crunch): un principio y un fin en el tiempo, pero tambin una apertura y un
cierre de la espacialidad instaurada a travs de las palabras, de las imgenes visuales, de los
sonidos no verbales, etc., desde el desembrague... (Ser preciso recordar las implicaciones
espaciales de refero y relatus? ).
Entrar en la reflexin del espacio como un simple decorado (aunque sea -y ya es mucho- un
decorado mtico) es una torpeza. El espacio es un constituyente de la ex-sistencia para los
seres materiales. Ex-sistimos en el espacio. El ex- marca el punto cero, la in-ex-sistencia. Toda
sistencia (toda consistencia, asistencia, resistencia, persistencia, insistencia, desistimiento) se
da en el espacio.O el espacio es, bsicamente , un en. Y nosotros -que no paramos de discurrirsomos, fundamentalmente discursos en trnsito (de dnde venimos? a dnde vamos?).
[Vzquez
Medel,
M.
A.:
Del
escenario
http://www.cica.es/aliens/gittcus/espempl.html]

espacial

al

emplazamiento.

Los intelectuales hoy da tienden a convertirse en intelectuales con base institucional


(normalmente universitaria). Y las universidades se van convirtiendo en productores para un
mercado del conocimiento y no en constructores de poderes alternativos. Porque criticar las
estructuras del poder necesariamente implica construir formas de poder alternativas. Si no, la
crtica no se recibe como tal.
En estas circunstancias, cmo eludir el cortocircuito entre universidad, conocimiento, mercado?
Tal vez haciendo outra pregunta: cules son las lgicas temporales y espaciales con las que se
construyen los discursos de la crtica? Aqu viene a mano el concepto del cronotopo,
desarrollado por Bakhtin en su ensayo sobre las formas del tiempo en la novela. Este concepto
tiene una utilidad doble: pone en evidencia simultnea el interior y el exterior de los textos y, a
la vez, sirve para discutir la cuestin de un conocimiento regional. Segn la definicin de
Bakhtin, El cronotopo es el lugar donde se atan y desatan los nudos de la narrativa.
Se puede decir sin reservas que a ellos pertenece el sentido que moldea la narracin.

Por eso yuxtapone los ordenamientos espaciotemporales que son internos a una obra con los
que son externos, contextuales: aunque no son iguales, estos ordenamientos son inseparables.
Vistos de este modo, todos los textos (prcticas textuales) - la literatura, la historiografa, la
antropologa, la crtica cultural, etc. - comparten ensamblajes temporoespaciales equiparables.
Tambin los cronotopos son instancias de la regionalidad del conocimiento, ya que todos los
significados que entran en nuestra experiencia (que es experiencia social) deben asumir la
forma de un signo que es audible y visible para nosotros (sea jeroglifo, frmula matemtica,
expresin verbal o lingstica, boceto, etc.). Sin la expresin temporoespacial, resulta imposible
an el pensamiento abstracto. Dicho en otras palabras, existe una cronotopicidad general del
lenguaje. Los ejemplos que comenta Bakhtin pertenecen slo a la narracin literaria pero no hay
por qu no extender la discusin hacia otros materiales, como l mismo sugiere.
Ocurrieron evidencias directas y empricas de este fenmeno en las reuniones de JALLA Tucumn
(1995). Cuando hablaba una persona venida desde Salta, se sentan inflexiones, connotaciones,
acentos diferentes a los de una persona de Caracas, por ejemplo. Y estas diferencias a veces
entorpecan la comprensin de las ideas, ms en las sesiones plenarias que en los talleres,
porque en estos ltimos exista la oportunidad de entrar en un dilogo esclarecedor.
Obviamente, las inflexiones regionales se sienten de maneras ms inmediatas en el tema de las
sensaciones y la afectividad; sin embargo, afectan tambin los conceptos. Dado todo esto, hay
que tomar decisiones: o se opta por un discurso impermeable a los acentos locales, o se
investiga el proceso (temporoespacial) de la formacin de los conceptos.
[William Rowe: La regionalidad de los conceptos en el estudio de la cultura. In:
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/eh/eng/wr/regional.htm]
Bakhtin define el cronotopo (=tiempo espacio) como the intrinsic connectedness of
temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature(84). La
significacin del cronotopo dista mucho de ser meramente escnica. Se trata, por el contrario,
de una significacin semntica, ya que every entry into the sphere of meaning is
accomplished only through the gates of the chronotope (258). Esta importancia
semntica se traduce en una importancia representativa que hace que all the novels
abstract elements philosophical and social generalizations, ideas, analyses of cause
and effect gravitate toward the chronotope and through it take on flesh and blood
(250).
Entre los diferentes cronotopos de la novela se establecen distintos tipos de relaciones ya que,
como seala Bakhtin:
Within the limits of a single work...we may notice a number of different chronotopes
and complex interactions among them ... Chronotopes are mutually inclusive, they coexist, they may be interwoven with, replace or oppose one another, contradict one
another or find themselves in ever more complex relationships (252).
En el caso de La barraca [de Blasco Ibez], existe un tringulo cronotpico en torno a cuyos
vrtices se concentra el material narrativo e ideolgico ms importante del texto, ya que a ellos,
ms que a ninguna de las otras unidades cronotpicas de la novela, puede aplicarse la idea
bakhtiniana de que belongs the meaning that shapes the narrative (250).
Estos tres cronotopos son: la barraca que perteneci a Barret y a su familia y en la que se
instalan Batiste y la suya; la taberna de Copa; y la escuela de don Joaqun. Los dos primeros
mbitos se presentan como mutuamente excluyentes a lo largo de los ocho primeros captulos
de los diez que forman la novela. De hecho, el rechazo que la huerta siente por la familia
Borrull y que es signado de diversas maneras4, slo tiene una realizacin cronotpica5: Batiste
no entra nunca en el marco de la taberna a lo largo de los ocho primeros captulos y los
huertanos lo hacen en la barraca de manera excepcional con motivo de la muerte de
Pascualet.

[Alicia de Gregorio: La funcin del cronotopo de la escuela y el tema de la educacin en La


barraca de Blasco Ibez. http://www.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero9/barraca.htm]
Bibliographie:
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. "Forms of Time and the Chronotope in the Novel." The Dialogic
Imagination. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holiquist. Austin: U of Texas
P, 1981. 84-258.

La nocin de "cronotopo" la acu el gran terico de la literatura Mijail Bajtin <1989> para
referirse a las formas en que las novelas relatan el tiempo y el espacio, creando escenarios
dialgicos en los que los sujetos interactan de una forma particular.

La identidad, no podemos olvidarlo, esta definida como posicin en relacin a una geografa, a
un espacio social y ecolgico particular. Esto la liga ntimamente con la espacialidad. Por esto
ltimo, Bakhtin ha buscado explicar la transformacin en la produccin de sentido por la va del
gnero novelstico empleando el concepto de cronotopo. Traducido literalmente como tiempoespacio, implica la fusin de los ndices espaciales y temporales en un todo inteligible
y concreto. El cronotopo establece la imagen del hombre en la literatura, imagen
siempre ligada a la relacin espacio-temporal.
No hay que olvidar a este respecto que los sistemas de representaciones simblicos que
conforman las culturas son los resultantes de modos especficos de apropiarse la naturaleza y de
ubicarse en ella y relacionarse con ella. Los cdigos mentales se desprenden de estos sistemas
simblicos. De ello mismo se desprende un lenguaje, vehculo que articula una forma de
pensamiento particular, y que en el acto de nombrar las cosas y el entorno, implica una relacin
particular del medio en cuestin. Nombrar es introducir sentido y es tambin introducir orden, un
cierto tipo de orden social del cual se desprenden los valores intrnsecos que van a regir esa
comunidad particular.
[Entre la piedra y la cruz de Mario Monteforte Toledo: la encrucijada de la narrativa indigenista
latinoamericana. http://web.umail.ucsb.edu/~jce2/arias17.htm]
Bajtin advierte que el proceso de asimilacin de historia y literatura pasa por la definicin de un
tiempo y un espacio. Esta definicin el crtico ruso la llama el cronotopo, de cronos: tiempo y
topos espacio. La cronotopa es el centro organizador de los eventos narrativos
fundamentales de una novela. A ellos les pertenece el sentido que le da forma a la
narrativa. El cronotopo hace visible el tiempo en el espacio y permite la comunicacin
del evento: es el vehculo de la informacin narrativa.
[La cronotopa
tiempos/5.htm]

de

Borges.

http://www.redesc.ilce.edu.mx/redescolar/biblioteca/fondo2000/

En su largo ensayo sobre Las formas del tiempo y del cronotopo en la novela (84-258),
Bakhtine propone una sugerente prehistoria de la novela como gnero. Segn Bakhtine, los
distintos gneros narrativos de la antigedad y de la modernidad temprana los relatos
autobiogrficos, la novela bizantina, la pastoril, la picaresca, los libros de caballeras son
sistemas cerrados de relaciones de espacio y tiempo. En todas estas formas novelsticas, ese
sistema de relaciones de espacio y tiempo determina la naturaleza de los protagonistas, el tipo
de acciones y acontecimientos, la seleccin de lugares donde se despliega la accin y la
estructura misma del acontecer.
La novela bizantina puede servirnos para ver cmo funcionan concretamente las relaciones que
propone Bakhtine. La novela bizantina es el tpico relato de aventuras. Tiene siempre dos
protagonistas, un varn y una mujer, que son, invariablemente, jvenes apenas adolescentes
y hermosos en extremo. Los dos jvenes se aman en secreto y viven errando por el mundo,

cruzando la tierra y el mar, a enormes distancias de su lugar natal, sin aparente propsito ni
destino.
Precisamente el regreso al lugar natal, o aun el anuncio de que ese regreso se aproxima son la
marca inequvoca de que estamos por llegar al final del relato. As las cosas, la novela entera
es la historia del vagabundeo y las peregrinaciones de estos dos adolescentes en un
mundo que es siempre distante y ajeno. En ese mundo, los protagonistas estn expuestos a
todas las formas imaginables de peligro y amenaza de destruccin o de muerte inmediata, de
las que se salvan, siempre en el ltimo minuto, por pura casualidad. Los libros de caballeras que
le secan el cerebro a don Quijote son, en muchos sentidos, una secuela de los relatos bizantinos.
Como los adolescentes de esos relatos, el hroe de caballeras Amads por ejemplo est
expuesto tambin a toda clase de peligros y amenazas de destruccin o de muerte inmediata.
La diferencia, sin embargo, es que la casualidad proporciona slo el comienzo de una aventura
caballeresca; pero lo que salva a un hroe como Amads, aun a ltimo minuto, es su fuerza
inagotable y su valenta sin lmite .
A pesar de esta diferencia, Bakhtine ve la casualidad como la fuerza absoluta que organiza y
controla el mundo de la novela bizantina y el de los libros de caballeras. En ambos mundos, los
acontecimientos son fortuitos e inesperados; lo que ocurre siempre ocurre de pronto, o de
repente, o justo en ese momento (Bakhtine, 92). Es difcil imaginar un mundo tan
rigurosamente ajeno, en el que nada es habitual o predecible excepto el inescrutable trabajo del
azar. En principio, inguna conferencia, como esta, con su hora y lugar fijos y anunciados de
antemano, sera posible. La nocin misma de horario de trenes, de clases, de aviones
resultara impensable. No habra manera de hacer una cita o de cumplir con ella.
La idea misma de estar perdidos sera inconcebible o superflua, porque no habra manera fija o
determinada de ir a ningn lugar o de volver a casa. La lista podra seguir, pero estos pocos
ejemplos bastan para dar idea del tipo de mundo que la pura casualidad hace posible, o aun
invevitable. Ni la novela bizantina, ni los libros de caballeras despliegan todas las
consecuencias lgicas de un azar absoluto. A mi juicio, ningn discurso humano
podra. Y por eso mismo, vale la pena notar cules son las manifestaciones del azar
que esas formas narrativas en efecto representan, y qu valor tienen.
[Ins Azar: La imaginacin de lo real en El Quijote. In: Cuadernos de Recienvenido.
http://www.fflch.usp.br/dlm/posgraduacao/espanhol/cuadernos/Cuadernos13.htm]

http://www.utmn.ru/frgf/No6/text12.htm
Kira Andreeva M.Bakhtins Ideas in Literary Semantics
Literary semantics and modern poetics were developed under the influence of those scholars
whose scientific interests were directed towards the general laws of creating literature and,
mainly, towards the structure. It cannot be denied that many Russian scientists contributed to a
great extent to the modern stage of analysis of literary narratives. M.Bakhtins contribution to
science is a good example in this respect.
M.Bakhtin lived a life full of hardships and problems. He worked in St.Petersburg and then was
exiled to Saransk. He had to use the pseudonyms: Voloshinov and Medvedev. He is known as a
philosopher and an outstanding specialist in theory of literary studies. His most important ideas
are presented in his books and articles many of which have been only recently published (see
Bibliography at the end of this article). As becomes evident from the Bibliography, M.Bakhtins
main works written in the thirties became known in the West only in the eighties when they were
translated into European languages.
This article makes an attempt to outline some of M.Bakhtins most important ideas
which have been assimilated and developed by modern poetics and, in particular, his
concept of the chronotope.
The main object of Bakhtins literary studies was the novel. He developed the concept that in the
novel, as in every work of fiction, the meaning, the ideas are encoded by different forms and
ways of presenting these meanings. He wrote about the complexity of presenting the narrative
universe. He compared the novel with symphony where different instruments united by some
general purpose play their own individual parts. Thus, the novel contains the polyphony of
voices. Their sounds in the novel present different views and opinions from different angles,
from different points of view.
One of the major concepts worked out by M.Bakhtin in his works is the idea of chronotope
understood as the unity and interdependence of space and time in portraying
characters in the novel. One of the general ideas of M.Bakhtin is connected with his approach
to different literary genres. He believes that a novel is the most complicated genre which has not
been formed yet whereas all other genres present basic constant forms for expressing meanings.
Most of Bakhtins ideas have been consistently applied to his analysis of Dostoyevskys novels.
In this paper, as it was stated, we center our attention on M.Bakhtins most general and
important notion the chronotope. The semantic structure of this word is transparent enough: it
means time-space relations. The term was first introduced by Einstein in physics.
M.Bakhtin underlined the fact that in literary studies this word is used almost
metaphorically emphasizing the idea that time and space cannot be separated. The
chronotope was defined by Bakhtin as essential interconnection of time and space
artistically employed in literature. The chronotope is understood as a special literary
formal-semantic category which determines the genre and is very important for the
presentation of a human being in fiction due to the fact that a human being always
exists in a certain space and at a certain time. M.Bakhtin goes on to say that in
literature time and space are very special: they are so closely semantically connected
with each other that they represent a certain historical period. The reader imagines,
sees time through space and vica versa: time becomes dense, we can almost see
it, space is intensified and moves together with time.
M.Bakhtin also worked out classification of chronotopes. Some of the basic types are
presented below.
A.Adventure Chronotope. Abstract time combines here with non-specific and not clearly
identified geographical space. Time is not determined either historically or geographically and
characters lack individuality, remain unchanged, e.g. good-looking and young are presented in

the end in the same way as from the very beginning (sophisticated Greek novel of the 2-6
centuries A.D. will serve as an example).
B.Threshold Chronotope. The threshold serving as the key-word in this type appears to be not
only the place of action in the novel but usually is used as some symbol implying a certain crisis
or an important change in the life of the character.
C.Provincial Life Chronotope.
D.The Castle Chronotope. It is characteristic of some novels created in England at the end of
the 18th century (e.g. by Radcliffe, Lewis, later W.Scott). The castle is presented not only as the
place where rich respectable people lived but it is time-specific. It is characterized by the
introduction of special architecture of the house, furniture, portrait galleries and is connected
with mysterious legends, traditions which create, in their turn, a certain atmosphere and special
plots.
Some chronotopes are connected with the style and genre of certain writers. Thus, as M.Bakhtin
remarks, the following Chronotopes are most typical for Dostoyevskys novels.
E.The Staircase Chronotope.
F.The Street Chronotope.
G.The Carnival or Mystery Chronotope.
The novels by L.Tolstoy are characterized by their own typical chronotopes.
H.The Biographical Chronotope. Space is outlined here through rooms of big village houses.
I.The Nature Chronotope.
J.The Idyllic Family Chronotope.
K.The Idyllic Labour Chronotope.
Certain chronotopes are typical of Stendal and Balzacs novels:
L.The Sitting-room Chronotope.
M.The Saloon Chronotope. New time and a new place were presented here. Saloon was the
place where plots were made, fates were decided, reputations began and finished. The place was
private and historical at the same time where political secrets were discussed and discovered,
politics was determined.
To conclude this typology, it is important to mention that M.Bakhtin himself accepted the fact
that the classification presented by him was not ultimate, absolute. He believed that the future
might possibly refine and develop it. He also wrote that chronotopes were not of the same rank,
they were all different: some of them were recognized as basic and more important including, in
their turn, an uncountable number of smaller chronotopes. In one and the same novel certain
chronotopes may be revealed which are interconnected and form very complicated (dialogic)
relations. Only one of them can be justly called the dominant, the main one.
In conclusion to this part, it is of vital importance to mention M.Bakhtins idea that the very
entrance to the concept of meaning can be realized only through the gates of
chronotopes.

We can state that many ideas of M.Bakhtin are being developed by modern poetics. He launched
not only the concept of chronotope but also those of Voice, Point of View, Perspective (see,
for instance, the so-called Stanzels Typological circle presented in Thomas Pavels work Literary
Narratives: 2).
This analogy may be traced back in the preface to Bakhtins book The Problems of
Dostoyevskys creative activities where he wrote (Translation ours, K.A.): every work of
fiction viewed from its inner permanent state is sociological. In it living social powers
combine, each element of its form is permeated with living social values. That is why
purely formal analysis must take each element of aesthetic structure as the point of
refraction of living social powers like an artificial crystal, the facets of which are built
and polished so as to reflect certain rays of social opinions and to reflect them from a
certain viewpoint (3).
References
1.Andreeva Kira. M.Bakhtins Ideas in Literary Semantics / Second International Conference of
the International Association of Literary Semantics (IALS). 1-4 September, 1997, University of
Freiburg, Germany.
2.Stanzel Franz. Narrative Situations in the Novel / Transl. By J.P. Pusack. Indiana University Press.
Bloomington-London, 1971.
3. .. / . 4. .:
, 1994.
Bibliography by M.Bakhtin
.. / .
4. .: , 1994. .. (1934-1935) / .
: . ., 1975.
.. :
(1937-1938; 1973) / . : .
., 1975.
.. (. . . 1920-
) / .. . . ... ., 1979.
.. (1940, 1974) / - 1974:
- .
.. ( ..) / . .: ,
1995. 2.
.. - / . ... .: .., 1986.
Bakhtin Michail. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. / Transl. Caryl Emerson. University of Texas
Press.

http://www.carleton.ca/~mflynnbu/bakhtin/concepts.htm
(...)
Chronotype: Time and space as interwoven as in the work of Geothe. Goethe wanted to 'bring
together and unite the present, past and future with the ring of necessity' (Bakhtin 39), to make
the present creative. Like Rabelais, Goethe was as much a philosopher as a writer. " in the
literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one
carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh,
becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the
movements of time, plot and history" (Bakhtin 1937-8:84).
"Time and space merge ... into an inseparable unity ... a definite and absolutely concrete locality
serves at the starting point for the creative imagination... this is a piece of human history,
historical time condensed into space. Therefore the plot (sum of depicted events) and the
characters ... are like those creative forces that formulated and humanised this landscape, they
made it a speaking vestige of the movement of history (historical time), and, to a certain degree,
predetermined its subsequent course as well, or like those creative forces a given locality needs
in order to organise and continue the historical process embodied in it." (Bakhtin :49)
"the meeting on the road" where "time, as it were, fuses together with space" (Bakhtin 19378:243).
Chronotypes as cultural-historical as expressions specific to the world view of
particular social groups.
"Chronotopes are not only semantic elements of texts; they are also (and in the first
place) cognitive strategies applied by specific readers and writers." Bakhtin's 1937-38
chronotope essay (Keunen, Bart. 2000. Comparative Literature and Culture Web Journal)
Chronotypes are also mental constructions not just formal phenomena. Through chronotypes
the time and space embedded in the text enters into the minds of embodied writers
and readers and are then combined.
Chronotypes "... provide the basis for distinguishing generic types; they lie at the heart of
specific varieties of the novel genre, formed and developed over the course of many centuries"
(Bakhtin 1937-8: 250 also 1937-8: 84-85).
Chronotopes is a "...combination of setting and plot, they can be viewed as a kind of
textual "superstructure." A chronotope may be reformulated as a network of (spatial
and temporal) categories that is governed by specific combination rules." (Bakhtin
paraphrased by Keunen 2000)
The concept of chronotopes can be used interchangeably with "memory schemata." (Keunen
2000)

http://www.naya.org.ar/congreso2000/ponencias/Paulo_Seixas.htm
Do corpo ao espectculo: descontextualizao, recontextualizao e polticas da
diferena
Abstract
Tomou-se a cidade do Porto como laboratrio e as ilhas e os novos condomnios como lugaresmodelo de construo social dos paradigmas urbanos e da sua transio, quer em termos de
sentidos nomeados, espaciais e vividos, quer como pontos de acesso face s estruturas socioespaciais e de sentido. E este percurso de investigao possibilitou-nos ento pensar a transio
da cidade para a metrpole de uma forma global.
1. O mundo como organismo e a cidade higinica
A cidade no sculo XIX , as mais das vezes, entendida como um organismo vivo, e este
organismo que se torna necessrio estudar, descrevendo as suas foras e diagnosticando as
suas fraquezas. A metfora orgnica torna-se central, sendo a higiene o sistema pericial urbano,
por excelncia, e os mdicos-sociais os seus principais especialistas. O organismo, extenso do
corpo humano, o signo descontextualizador da cidade que se vem sobrepor-substituir ao
mecanismo, extenso do relgio e signo normalizador do mundo urbano desde o sculo XVII.
Como diz Giddens (1995), o esvaziamento do tempo , em grande medida, a pr-condio para
o esvaziamento do espao e se a metfora mecnica e o relgio inscreveram zonas uniformes no
dia, a metfora orgnica inscreveu zonas uniformes no espao. A cidade toma, muitas vezes, as
diferenciaes inerentes a um qualquer organismo, tornando-se literalmente um espao vital: o
centro e a periferia distinguem-se por crculos sucessivos em Manchester, no Porto, em
Chicago, ...; uma cidade oriental distingue-se de uma outra ocidental em Londres, no Porto, em
Paris, ...; uma cidade alta distingue-se de uma cidade baixa ... . Aparentemente, estas divises dicotmicas as mais das vezes - que atravessam diversas cidades de um e outro lado do
Atlntico, surgem espontaneamente mas, de facto, elas so contemporneas da mudana de
uma weltanschauung mecnica, paradigmatizada pelo relgio, para uma weltanschauung
orgnica, paradigmatizada pelo corpo humano que uma medicina dos orgos introduz como
modelo de base de anlise do mundo. Assim, o modelo orgnico hegemnico reflecte-se no
espao construdo e praticado da cidade como uma ideologia em aco, sendo difcil destrinar
uma relao simples causa-efeito entre cidade praticada e cidade pensada.
A dialctica cidade pensada - cidade praticada, centrada no paradigma do organismo, constitui
uma mudana na poltica da diferena. Numa cidade apreendida segundo o paradigma do
mecanismo, todo o mau funcionamento do mesmo deriva de uma qualquer influncia exterior
nefasta. Em tais circunstncias, o sistema de regulao entre o exterior e o interior era activado,
fechando-se a cidade completamente sobre si mesma e impedindo assim, por um lado, a
contnua entrada dos elementos nefastos (pessoas, miasmas, etc.) e, por outro lado, a sada de
quaisquer elementos na expectativa de que o mal se manifestasse e fosse eliminado
publicamente, sendo o fogo o elemento purificador mais repetidamente usado. As diversas
mudanas ocorridas na transio do sculo XVIII para o XIX impediam a continuao da mesma
poltica da diferena e tornavam necessrio um novo paradigma que legitimasse a mudana.
Este novo paradigma constitui-se a partir do saber mdico, congregando os avanos da
medicina e de outras cincias auxiliares num sistema pericial especificamente centrado nos
problemas urbanos, denominado Higiene. o hospital que sai de si prprio, tornando-se toda a
cidade hospitalar. Os higienistas so, maioritariamente, mdicos-sociais, ou seja, uma classe de
mdicos que atribui a si prpria a responsabilidade de policiar, diagnosticar, ajuizar e
ortopedizar a cidade como um todo, na pluralidade dos seus problemas, no sendo aquela seno
um corpo a abrir para diagnosticar os problemas e extirp-los. A regulao entre o interior e o
exterior no desaparece, mas altera-se substancialmente: o interior agora que tem que ser
tornado completamente visvel nas suas chagas para que, depois, se possam centrifugar os
elementos nefastos para o exterior. Na sociedade medieval, a organizao espao-temporal da
cidade exclua a diferena para alm das muralhas e quando, conjunturalmente, a inclua

atribua-lhe o no-lugar da priso, metonmica do exterior atemporal e aespacial. A diferena do


criminoso e do leproso era, alis, a do limiar entre os homens e as bestas, reais e imaginrias. A
sociedade moderna abre-se ao Outro pela sua gradual incluso na organizao espao-temporal,
ao mesmo tempo que deslocaliza o ego pela descontextualizao que a abertura espaotemporal propicia. O organismo inclui mais facilmente as deficincias sem morrer, do que o
mecanismo os defeitos sem parar. A metfora higinica da cidade-organismo inscreve nesta a
relao pericial anlise-diagnstico-prescrio e possibilita assim a substituio de uma
legitimao da mudana urbana em funo da tradio, por uma legitimao em funo da
prospeco, projectando sempre o lugar do Outro na periferia de uma organizao espaotemporal mais vasta. Esta substituio da tradio pela prospeco possibilita tambm que
excluso da diferena se substitua a incluso disciplinada da diferena

Esq. I
O mundo higinico, baseado na homologia entre organismo e sociedade, torna anlogas a sade
e a civilizao por um lado, e a doena e a barbrie por outro. Para alm disso, e a partir de
indicadores demogrficos, demgenos e outros, qualificadores do grau de civilidade pelos
ndices de criminalidade, pela taxa de natalidade e de outras qualidades sociais, cria-se uma
correspondncia entre (in)salubridade fsica, social e moral como salvao ou como perdio.
Esta viso higinica do mundo estabelece uma tenso essencial que se pode conceber como um
permanente perigo de contgio da civilizao pela barbrie e da sade pela doena. O Outro,
associado que agora doena, deixa gradualmente de fazer parte de um estado de diferena
radical, condenado pelos seus sinais excluso-recluso, para se inscrever num espao-tempo
mais abstracto que unifica cada vez mais o eu e o outro no mundo humano, relativizando as
diferenas absolutas de humanidade existentes na era pr-moderna. No entanto, aos estados de
humanidade e no humanidade, substitui-se uma relao de diferena baseada nas diferenas
entre passado e presente e entre centro e periferia. O Outro , ento, associado barbrie, no
sendo a doena seno um sintoma do seu lugar perifrico na nova escala espao-temporal das
diferenas. No podendo ser eliminado do mundo humano, pode, no entanto, ser erradiado para
um espao-tempo perifrico que agora adequado moderna definio da diferena. Foi a
abertura gradual das cidades na era moderna, pela presso do industrialismo e do capitalismo,
que possibilitou a abertura do eu ao outro e a gradual humanizao do outro que atinge
actualmente uma escala planetria, mas esta nova relao com o outro s seria possvel
mediante a construo de novos sistemas simblicos que assegurassem os novos estatutos da
diferena. todo um projecto antropolgico, no sentido lato, que est na base dessa
descontextualizao espao-temporal da diferena e em que as perspectivas iluministas do
progresso e romnticas da degenerescncia e toda a construo socio-histrica de carcter
evolucionista e difusionista tm como lugar comum, apesar de todas as suas dissenes, a unio
do humano num espao-tempo extremamente abstracto, ao mesmo tempo que assegurava ao
Outro a periferia desse mesmo espao-tempo.
Tendo em conta este quadro, todo um programa para a cidade higinica posto em marcha. A
questo da diferena toma uma pertinncia especfica nas cidades, em que a tenso entre um
mundo baseado em pressupostos mecnicos e um mundo baseado em pressupostos orgnicos

mais premente. Desprotegida das muralhas medievais e invadida por vagas humanas cada vez
mais numerosas, a diviso entre exterior e interior torna-se, cada vez mais, tnue e difcil de
estabelecer. A prpria noo de estranho como Georg Simmel discerniu alterada, pondo
assim em causa o lugar da distino entre o eu e o outro e o de todos os nveis intermdios
entre um e outro que uma perspectiva mecnica e esttica legitimava. A cidade era, assim, o
lugar da tenso essencial entre um mundo que se desmoronava e um mundo que emergia.
No admira que o anti-urbanismo, associado a uma certa ideia de cidade-monstro e a uma
nostalgia de uma Idade Mdia rural, convivesse com posies apaixonadamente pr-urbanas,
caracterizando a cidade como lugar de civilizao, estmulo de trocas entre indivduos, da
inteligncia e da excelncia artstica. Confrontados com esta tenso de medo e fascinao pela
grande cidade e reflectindo nos seus prprios escritos essa ambiguidade paradoxal, os
higienistas impuseram a metfora do organismo cidade sem, no entanto, criar uma quebra
total em relao weltanschauung mecnica anterior e, principalmente, ao papel da relao
interior-exterior como chave da poltica da diferena. De facto, o programa de saneamento
espacial, social e moral implementado pelos higienistas estabelece uma homologia prospectiva
entre espaos citadinos e estados diferenciais fsicos, sociais e morais. Se a cidade se concebia
como um organismo, o centro daquela equivaleria ao sistema aferente desse organismo,
enquanto a sua periferia poderia corresponder ao sistema eferente. Toda a lgica da
saneabilidade das cidades, em sentido lato, instituda pelos higienistas no seno a de um
sistema de filtragem em que se estabelecem diferentes pontos de acesso reguladores das
transaes fsicas, sociais e morais entre a cidade e a periferia e que, substituindo as muralhas
derrubadas, possam repor a necessria distino ameaada. Neste programa da cidade
higinica, o centro deveria, assim, ser o lugar da salubridade espacial, social e moral, enquanto
que a periferia seria o lugar da centrifugao da insalubridade, associando-se assim o centro
pureza e a periferia ao perigo. Entre um espao e outro, uma srie de pontos de acesso se
estabelecem no controlo do contgio entre o eu e o outro, na substituio das antigas muralhas
medievais.

Esq. II
2. O mundo como espectculo e a cidade espectacular[1]
Se o urbanismo moderno se fez imagem de um modelo mecnico dominado pelo
esvaziamento do tempo e, depois, imagem de um modelo orgnico dominado pelo
esvaziamento do espao, a partir da segunda metade do sculo XX, comeamos a assistir a uma
descontextualizao/recontextualizao pelas formas de compresso espao-temporal em
heterotopias [PS1] [2] espectaculares. O espectculo, extenso do palco e depois do ecr, o
signo descontextualizador que se tem vindo a sobrepor ao organismo. O espectculo , de facto,
o resultado do esvaziamento do tempo e do espao da subsequente constituio de cronotopos,
ou seja, de nexos privilegiados em que unidades temporais se cruzam com unidades espaciais.
As cidades constrem, cada vez mais, uma determinada imagstica em que uma cidade
imaginria adere a uma cidade vivida em funo da introjeco e projeco de figuras
estruturais ou conjunturais como as de cidade histrica; cidade-museu; cidade
universitria; capital do gtico; cidade do futuro; capital da cultura; cidade patrimnio da

humanidade, cidade da exposio universal, cidade do campeonato mundial de Futebol,


etc.. Estes eptetos que vem substituir, no final do sculo XX, as dicotomias internas da cidade
orgnica do sculo XIX e a dicotomia dentro-fora da cidade mecnica anterior, representam bem
uma nova weltanschauung espectacular em que o espao praticado e vivido de cada cidade, ou
alguns lugares desse espao, se mesclam normalmente a um determinado tempo interno ou
externo, estrutural ou conjuntural, de forma a constituir-se um nexo espao-temporal capaz de
proporcionar um prime time na cronogeografia regional, nacional, internacional ou mesmo
mundial, que vai orientando o espectculo do mundo e o mundo como espectculo. A cidade
pensada e praticada segundo o princpio do espectculo implica uma mudana na poltica da
diferena. Na cidade dominada pelo princpio do mecanismo, tal como na dominada pelo
princpio do organismo, era a noo de interior e de exterior - ainda que com matizes
diferenciados - que possibilitava a regulao da cidade. Os sistemas de regulao mecnico e
orgnico faziam ver a cidade respectivamente pelo espao-limite da muralha e pelos tempos de
abertura e fechamento de portas, e pela proliferao de pontos de acesso higinicos como
formas de disciplinar a cidade. Num e noutro dos casos, era ainda uma poltica da diferena de
carcter expiatrio que disciplinava a cidade. No entanto, as diversas mudanas ocorridas ao
longo deste sculo XX e que levaram a uma compresso do espao-tempo, tornaram a
concepo de periferia espao-temporal necessria utilizao do sistema de regulao
orgnico, cada vez mais difcil de estabelecer. Tornava-se ento necessria uma nova poltica da
diferena adequada a um novo paradigma socioespacial em emergncia. Os sistemas urbanos
mecnicos e orgnicos tinham usado estratgias de visibilidade ou de fazer ver como elementos
centrais das suas polticas da diferena (as muralhas e os portes, assim como o sistema
mdico-policial inquisitoiral). O sistema urbano ps-industrial e ps-moderno vai tornar
autnoma essa mesma estratgia de fazer ver ou de espectacularizao como princpio de
flexibilizao em que o dentro-fora e o centro-periferia agora gerido como espectculo esquecimento, palco - bastidores, associando-se a uma certa ideia de hiperrealidade de ecr
como a nica realidade. o ecr que sai de si prprio convertendo toda a cidade em ecr. O
princpio do espectculo constitui-se a partir da autonomizao de um saber especfico que,
congregando os avanos do marketing, dos media e da publicidade como potenciadores de
diversas artes e cincias aplicadas, origina um saber pericial comunicacional que tambm
abrange os problemas urbanos e que pode denominar-se sistema meditico-publicitrio. A
sociedade moderna atinge o seu limite com a globalizao, ideolgica sem dvida, mas tambm
econmica, tecnolgica, cultural e poltica. No novo quadro global, uma determinada hierarquia
rgida e linear do sistema-mundo vai-se esboroando e as regies internacionais antes concebidas
como centrais deram lugar s cidades mundiais que, numa regio central ou no, passam a ter
funes centrais, mesclando-se assim a centralidade e a periferia. Ao nvel do quadro urbano
local, por outro lado, as cidades industriais transformaram-se em metrpoles, em conurbaes e
em regies urbanas polinucleadas, deixando tambm a, cada vez mais, de ter sentido uma
rgida diferenciao entre centro e periferia pela pluralidade e contnua portabilizao dos
centros num espao urbano em contnua restruturao. De facto, no sentido em que o espao do
planeta abrangvel em segundos pela tecnologia digital, a concepo de um exterior ou de
uma periferia em sentido absoluto j s estratosfrica. Ora, esta deslocalizao da noo de
centro e de periferia que a metfora do espectculo utiliza, aproveitando as oportunidade
cronotpicas (locais e globais), para transformar qualquer aqui e agora num palco hiperreal e
espectacular que se torne centro do mundo. Cada espectculo conseguido para um aqui e agora
torna esse lugar o nico e verdadeiro, durante minutos que seja, constituindo-o como lugar
globalitrio e transformando o resto do planeta, naquele perodo de tempo, em mera extenso
sem sentido votada desglobalizao e ao esquecimento.
Esq. III

A espectacularizao do mundo , ento, esta procura de nexos espao-temporais


especficos, de oportunidades para imprimir um prime time num lugar que o torne
globalitrio face desglobalizao e ao esquecimento de toda a restante extenso
espacial e temporal. O mundo espectacular, baseado na homologia entre espectculo
e sociedade, torna anlogos o espectculo e a globalizao por um lado, e o
esquecimento e a desglobalizao por outro. O Outro deixa de estar numa qualquer
periferia espacial ou temporalmente definida de forma definitiva, para poder
submergir numa qualquer extenso espao-temporal que, devido a constrangimentos
conjunturais, foi relegada ao esquecimento e desglobalizao face a um qualquer
cronotopos que emerge como espectacular. O Outro no j aquele entre os deuses e
as coisas como no mundo pr-moderno, nem aquele entre os civilizados-saudveis e
os brbaros-moribundos como no primeiro mundo moderno, para ser aquele que est
entre a ausncia de imagem e aquele que a imagem, sendo este agora o axioma
bsico, j no da salvao mas da mera existncia, da mera realidade. A revoluo
tecnolgica, econmica e cultural da segunda metade do sculo XX - com nfase para
as ltimas trs dcadas - levou a abertura do Eu ao Outro a uma escala planetria, ao
mesmo tempo que, ao redefinir a realidade em funo da emergncia hiperreal
flexvel em cronotopos, criou uma nova estrutura da diferena que pe em causa o
projecto antropolgico de uma comunidade humana global ao tomar o espectculo
como programa urbanstico.
Tendo em conta todo este quadro, de facto todo um programa de hiperrealidade posto em
marcha na constituio de uma cidade espectacular. Tal como na transio de paradigma no
sculo XIX, a cidade torna-se o palco onde se sente a tenso entre um mundo baseado em
pressupostos orgnicos e um mundo baseado em pressupostos espectaculares. A invaso da
vida urbana, pensada e praticada, pela hiperrealidade, a portabilizao das unidades temporais
e espaciais, antes adstritas a posies centrais e perifricas, assim como a completa
mercadorizao espao-temporal segundo uma inscrio da sequncia seduo-espectculo /
consumo-resgate em todo o real, criou o medo e a fascinao em que vivemos. E face a este
medo e a esta fascinao que o sistema meditico-publicitrio, sustentado por empresrios e
polticos, cientistas aplicados e artistas, vai instituindo um programa de espectacularizao do
real. este programa que vai dar existncia hiperreal e, por conseguinte, qualidade de vida, aos
diversos nexos espao-temporais onde decorre mais geralmente a vida quotidiana das pessoas
sem, no entanto, esquecer a cidade definida entre centro e periferia, ou seja, a cidade orgnica.
Assim, espectacularizam-se os centros histricos, ao mesmo tempo que se d uma
mediatizao, digitalizao, macdonaldizao e condominiao da cidade. Todos os locais
parecem constituir-se como potenciais nexos espao-temporais do programa de seduoespectculo / consumo-resgate e essa potencialidade que a cidade-espectculo vai gerindo.
Esq. IV

Crticas para uma cidade melhor

Quando o espao se torna demasiado compacto para comportar as diferenas


culturais que nele existem, as cidades recorrem a imaginaes mais ou menos
infernais ou mais ou menos paradisacas para reinstalar a hierarquia e a ordem social.
De uma forma ou de outra, em nome da qualidade de vida de uns desqualifica-se
outros e, por vezes, mesmo parte inteiras de uma cidade. A cidade mecnica,
orgnica e espectacular, expiatria ou de resgate, sustentada em estratgias
infernais ou paradisacas da diferena est sempre condenada sua prpria
destruio pela saturao do modelo na construo da diferena que se propunha
inicialmente.
A cidade espectacular constri a diferena em funo da insero do Eu num palco,
num ecr, enfim, num espectculo, por oposio ao Outro que dele est ausente no
esquecimento. Nesta espectacularizao urbana, h cronotopos, como os da
macdonaldizao, essencialmente representada pelos shopping centers, e os da
patrimonializao que podem realizar a espectacularizao de todos. Pelo contrrio, a
condominiao um dos maiores desafios na mudana de paradigma socioespacial ao
constiturem-se
as
micro-cidades
como
ritual
de
aculturao-enculturao
metropolitana ao mesmo tempo que o sistema meditico-publicitrio as prope como
apartheids urbansticos votados apenas ao espectculo de si para si de alguns
eleitos. Uma Antropologia crtica deste paradigma socioespacial e desta poltica da
diferena, ainda que o critique como um todo, ter a obrigao de se empenhar num
potenciar dos cronotopos espectaculares abertos a todos e de todos, numa profunda
discordncia da construo de cronotopos como espectculo apenas de alguns e de
toda e qualquer ideologia que procure constituir-se em sua defesa ou exortao.
Porque s quando o urbanismo aprender a multiculturalidade poderemos ter uma
cidade melhor: uma cidade que seja um verdadeiro sistema de convivncia de
culturas. A verdadeira qualidade de vida s pode passar por um urbanismo de
edifcios multiculturais em ruas multiculturais, em bairros multiculturais. Este
urbanismo antropolgico, na partilha quotidiana das diferenas a nica salvao do
nosso futuro como seres urbanos.

http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/A-C/bakh/flanagan.html
Bakhtin and Film
by Martin Flanagan Department of English Literature University of Sheffield
Copyright 1998 Martin Flanagan; all rights reserved. Redistribution, or republication of this
text in any medium requires the consent of the author and the notification of the Bakhtin Centre.
Presented for discussion at the Chautauqua Graduate Discussion Group
Introduction - Dialogism and Film
The ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin are characterized by an extraordinary flexibility that has led to their
being utilized across a broad range of disciplines - linguistics, philosophy, literary theory, music,
even sculpture. One of the most promising directions in which Bakhtinian theory has moved has
been towards film studies. The work of Robert Stam and others has sought to apply Bakhtinian
concepts such as dialogism and heteroglossia to the cinematic text, in order to better
understand the kind of language that narrative film constructs. My own take on Bakhtin and
film differs somewhat in emphasis. I was introduced to the work of this original and idiosyncratic
thinker through his writing on the novel, and it is in his incarnation as literary theorist that I
suppose I have appropriated, or to use his terminology, reaccentuated Bakhtin.
The idea of combination and interaction of diverse elements is the key to Bakhtins conception of
the novel. He criticises repeatedly the tendency of traditional literary analysis to isolate one level
or aspect of the work - whether compositional, thematic or linguistic - and study it without
recourse to other components, as if all the meaning of the text was contained within one strand
of it. Stylistic unity is achieved for Bakhtin through diverse elements in dialogic interaction, and
the meaning of any single aspect changes when it is removed from the matrix of dialogic
relations. I would suggest that film is suitable for a Bakhtinian approach because it is a medium
where diverse stylistic and structural methods interact. Dialogism can be seen to operate on
several levels in the dissemination of meaning in film. For example, the passage of meaning
from text to viewer can be interpreted as a dialogical process, with the understanding of the
spectator representing a response necessary for the film to successfully communicate its
narrative message. Even in the most technically basic film the relationship between images
operates along this dialogic principle, and in more complex texts speech, music, and written
signs such as credits or subtitles can be added. Each of these elements makes little sense when
abstracted from the dialogic whole. Within the visual image, there is further diversity - colour,
special effects such as slow-motion, even computer generated effects or animation. In cinematic
editing, shots are related to one another in dialogic exchange; the response or answer of the
second shot is what determines the meaning of the first in a chain of meaning that stretches
through the text. A shot or frame taken in isolation from the context created by the images
preceding and following it is stripped of its intended meaning. Dialogism can also be seen to
operate at the level of genre, linking texts across generic boundaries, as I will discuss later.
Bakhtin and Film Theory
A Bakhtinian approach to film can address some of the limitations of existing theory relating to
the medium. One of the most important contributions to modern film theory has been made by
the semiologists, and their figurehead Christian Metz. Metz Language and Cinema (1974) is
motivated by a paradigm derived from the structuralist linguistics of Saussure - he tests film
against a linguistic metaphor to determine the nature of the language it constructs. This choice
of paradigm leads to a certain reduction of the historical and social elements in the text that a
Bakhtinian approach would emphasise. Metz sets out as one of his primary aims the
establishment of a dichotomy between the terms cinema and film, which effectively erases
much of the complexity of this area. Metz concludes that, although the study of the cinematic
(which he classes as technical, economic factors, cinema as an institution and social

phenomenon etc) deserves attention elsewhere, such aspects are not a priority in his
examination of how the individual signifying discourse, the film, organizes narrative through the
manipulation of codes and sub-codes. There would be two main oppositions to this polarisation
of terms from a Bakhtinian point of view. Firstly, film is a medium where factors of production
such as economic and technical elements are incredibly important, as they are responsible for
the whole structure of the cinematic apparatus and how film is disseminated, through notions
such as the Star System. The appearance of a major star in a film affects the nature of the text
in huge ways - a big-budget version of Hamlet starring Mel Gibson will be crucially different, on a
textual level, to a small independent version of the same source material. Stars have been
credited with changing the entire narrative direction of a film, one notorious example being the
change in the nature of the character Kurtz due to Marlon Brandos unexpected bulk during the
shooting of Apocalypse Now (1979). Similarly, technical aspects should not be overlooked, as
huge swathes of the diegesis of a film may be non-verbal, such as the special effect battles of a
film like Star Wars (1977). These effects contribute to the construction of the narrative sense of
their scenes just as influentially as does language in a dialogue scene, and cannot be excluded
from any analysis that aims to be thorough.
Secondly, such an approach to the filmic text drastically underestimates the dialogic role of the
viewer in creating the film as a signifying discourse. Although Metz puts a certain amount of
emphasis on the position of the analyst in identifying and constructing the codes of the cinema,
he does not recognise the influence of the spectator as a dialogic addressee and participant in
the textual process to the extent that Bakhtin insists upon. For Bakhtin, in the artistic sphere
as in spoken language, the utterance is constructed around a dialogic relationship
with the anticipated response of the other. This dialogue does not only occur between
the multiple voices within the narrative (in the sense of heteroglossia) but beyond
the level of the text in the relationship between the discourse and its addressee, the
reader/viewer, and further, between that reader and all the other readers of the same
text, all of whom contribute not only to an emerging understanding of the text, but to
the fundamental concreteness of the textual utterance itself. This notion, brought out
in the concepts of dialogism and the chronotope (which posits a direct relationship
between the levels of reality and representation in the reading process - out of the
real world of the reader emerge "the reflected and created chronotopes of the world
represented in the work" (FTC, 253)), seems especially relevant to film, where there is
arguably a greater contribution to be made by the audience to the life of the text than with, for
instance, the novel (when was the last time a novel had its downbeat ending replaced with a
happier one because of the poor reaction of a test audience?). Within the cinematic medium, the
level of interaction between audience and author is raised well beyond that of a novel, a
situation that takes into account not only the commercial realities of film production, but also the
possibility of future directly interactive film (a possibility that Metz, with his characterisation of
film as a one-way circuit of communication, does not allow for).
Metz emphasis on the separation of the textual system from the wider socio-economic
institution of cinema is consistent with the Saussurean paradigm that motivates Language and
Cinema. His conception of the relationship between film and cinema recalls Saussures treatment
of natural language. Saussure insists on the dichotomy between language as an over-arching
system (langue) and the individual speech act (parole). Metz privileging of the code in the
textual system of film - that which links all films formally to each other - seems to serve the
same homogenising function as Saussures conception of language as a system of normatively
identical forms. This is a philosophy that a Bakhtinian approach could not endorse; he is
much more interested in what sets utterances (artistic and spoken) in dialogic relation to each
other within the sphere of social interaction. Bakhtins priority is the unique, unrepeatable
quality of the utterance, which has no correlation within Metz schema. The Metzian notion of
film relies too heavily on the homogeneity of codes to satisfy the vital social and historical
parameters set by Bakhtin, while the concept of cinema as an institution or apparatus
combining economic, technical and social aspects does not provide the basic textual material of

Bakhtinian analysis, the utterance. The difference between the Metzian formulation of the filmic
text and a potential Bakhtinian counterpart is confirmed in a terminological opposition addressed
by Bakhtin in a brief paragraph in his notebook.
Context and code. A context is potentially unfinalized; a code must be finalized. A
code is only a technical means of transmitting information; it does not have cognitive,
creative significance. A code is a deliberately established, killed context. (SG, 147)
Context is vital in every aspect of the Bakhtinian project. A systematic analysis along the lines
suggested by Metz would result in an efficient rendering of the way narrative codes are arranged
in the text, but, through ignoring contextual factors such as the way in which the film relates,
dialogically, to other texts, would nevertheless fail to take into account many important
resonances on the narrative level. For example, the narrative understanding of a genre action
movie like Michael Bays The Rock (1996) is greatly enhanced by examining it within its generic
context. This process is almost automatic in viewing the text, so explicit are the references to
related films. To this, we might add further elements that do not fall within Metz hierarchy of
codes but whose influence is equally significant. These elements may include thoughts on how
the narrative is affected by commercial considerations (for instance, the choice of Nicholas Cage
for a main role was almost certainly due to his heightened commercial viability following Oscar
success in Leaving Las Vegas [1995]); or of how the film deliberately plays with the iconic image
of Sean Connery, through references to his characters age, sexual appeal and so on. One can go
on and on; the point is that social and economic factors, in all artistic spheres but crucially in
film, do have a huge impact on the way the story is told - The Rock would have been a
completely different film had it not been produced by the successful Simpson/Bruckheimer team,
had it been made in 1976 rather than 1996, or if it had starred Tom Cruise and Richard Harris
rather than Cage and Connery. And it is most definitely in production, and not in screenplays,
that the unrepreatable quality of the text can be identified; scripts can sit around in production
limbo for decades, as did David Webb Peoples Unforgiven, which Clint Eastwood bought in the
early seventies and then sat on until 1992 when he felt he was old enough to play the main role.
Film is a "closed text" for Metz; there is nothing between the moment that work on the
production side finishes and the moment when the analyst starts to pick apart the (finalized)
codes of the narrative (Metz, 18). Yet , to use Bakhtins term, it seems that film is one of
the most unfinalized media in existence, as standard industrial practices such as
sequels, directors cuts, special editions, remakes and so on testify. If Brett Easton Ellis
went back to American Psycho and added chapters that he claimed he did not have the
resources to complete at the time, there would be strong resistance from an audience who
believed the novel to be perfect in its original state - it just would not happen. Yet, many people
felt that the Star Wars trilogy was improved by the changes made for the special editions
released last year.
The Cinematic Chronotope?
Although Bakhtins literary frame of reference very much favours the novel, it is nevertheless
surprising that his own work on the chronotope could omit film from its focus, given the apparent
suitability of the term to the medium. The definition of the chronotope as the textual site
of the interaction of time and space is actually only one of several meanings that
Bakhtin implies, but it is the most literal, and taking it at this level, it may be
suggested that film is the artform which most thoroughly expresses chronotopic
activity. Film is a medium where, at a particular place and a specific time, a visual
representation of spatial reality unfolds at around twenty-four frames per second, projected onto
a screen with definite spatial parameters. It presents spatial relationships with a tangibility that
the novel, no matter how descriptive or imaginative, cannot approach; it can traverse temporal
limits in a way that stage drama, despite its three-dimensionality, cannot match (for example,
the manipulation of time in slow-motion or freeze-framing).

Not uncommonly for Bakhtins concepts, the chronotope is not rigidly defined. This lack of
theoretical rigour is often attributed to the fact that Bakhtin is not interested in the ultimate,
fixed meaning but the open-ended possibility. It is true that Bakhtin never sets out to create the
definitive set of novelistic categories in The Dialogic Imagination, and that all of his concepts
have an unfinalized quality that reflects the open-ended nature of dialogism - his concepts
require the contribution of the reader/user as much as the utterance needs the
response of the dialogic other to be complete. This open-endedness is simultaneously
the best and worst thing about the chronotope - as Barry Rutland has commented, it is possibly
the least developed but the most suggestive of Bakhtins key concepts (Rutland, 133).
Bakhtins use of the term in Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel is
prone to mutation between three apparently distinct meanings. It can represent both
dominant generic forms (classified according to methods of representing time and space - for
example, the adventure chronotope common to the second to sixth century Greek Romance)
and more localized renderings of time and space within the textual field of reference
(e.g. the road, or the threshold in Dostoevsky). In the Concluding Remarks section of the essay,
Bakhtin seems to realize that the theoretical basis of the chronotope needs further clarification.
Here, he fleshes out his idea, defining chronotopes as "the organizing centers for the
fundamental narrative events of the novel ... the place where the knots of the
narrative are tied and untied" (FTC, 250). It is in this explicit linking of the chronotope
with the structural properties of narrative that the concept seems to have the
greatest promise for film theory, as I will attempt to show with a brief analysis of how
chronotopes organize narrative in the Hollywood action genre. Bakhtin goes on in the
Concluding Remarks to draw the chronotope together with his other important theory,
dialogism, in suggesting a third meaning for the term. Bakhtin contends that the
representational elements of the text emerge "[o]ut of the actual chronotopes of our
world" (FTC, 253). The relationship between the two levels of chronotopic meaning
(that is, between the chronotopes represented in the text and the time-space
relations governing the world of the reader) is implicitly dialogic, and thus has great
potential for the analysis of film, where the role of the spectator is arguably more
chronotopic than that of the reader of a novel. For example, on a very literal level, the
cinema viewer inhabits very concrete time and space co-ordinates to experience the text; a
specific seat in a specific cinema at a specific time.
The Chronotope and Genre in the modern Hollywood action film
Tzvetan Todorov has suggested that the terms genre and chronotope are "synonymous" in
Bakhtin (Todorov, 83). The chronotope, in the sense of the textual rendering of time/space
relations, is not only the place where the knots of the narrative are tied or untied, but also the
formal marker of genre. This may be demonstrated in the familiar locales and time schemes of
film genres - in film noir, the dark alleyway, sleazy nightclub, deserted warehouse, and nighttime; in the modern road movie, the small towns, diners and trailer parks of Middle America, and
a sense, as in Gus Van Sants My Own Private Idaho (1992), of a displacement of conventional
time, as the road seems to stretch ahead forever. Bakhtin rejects the notion of genre as a
stylistic template used by a particular author, and recasts it as a collective phenomenon,
infusing the concept with social and historical value. In Discourse in the Novel, he theorizes
about the fates of genres, of types of literary discourses through real historical time, as if they
were living entities, and one can see that, like literature, certain genres in film have a
very specific sell-by date determined by changing social practices or conditions - for
example, British realist drama of the 1960s kitchen sink variety, or the Cold War spy thrillers of
the 1970s and 80s.
In order to illustrate how I believe the temporal and spatial factors united by Bakhtin in the
chronotope can be crucial to narrative and generic design, Ill briefly comment upon a specific
cinematic text of a most recognisable archetype. Speed, directed by Jan DeBont and released in
1994, is a fast-moving action thriller, with character and dialogue subservient to the demands of

a super-tight plot. Its international success, and acclaim as a superior film of its kind, can be
attributed to the streamlined, well-organised structure of its narrative, which concerns the efforts
of an LAPD bomb disposal expert, played by Keanu Reeves, to outwit his nemesis who has placed
a massive, remotely-detonated explosive on a public bus. This high concept derives from many
generic predecessors, but most notably John McTiernans Die Hard (1988). In that film, a game
of cat and mouse is played out within very clearly defined temporal and spatial
parameters - one evening, one location. Die Hard itself is the product of a convergence of
intertextual influences from many other sources, including westerns like Howard Hawks Rio
Bravo (1959) and Fred Zinnemans High Noon (1952), heist movies such as Stanley Kubricks
The Killing (1956), the Hollywood disaster movies of the early 1970s and low-budget thrillers
such as John Carpenters Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). The success of Die Hard instigated the
creation of an entire sub-genre based on the same premise of a solo protagonist beating
overwhelming odds within a very limited temporal and spatial context, which includes films like
Under Siege and Passenger 57 (both 1992). These films, where narrative time is overwhelmingly
devoted to one significant time-space context, work because of their simplicity, and Speed is one
of the more accomplished examples of this genre.
It is possible to identify many of the generic motifs that Bakhtin extrapolates from his theory of
the chronotope in films like Speed. The nature of time in such texts has something of the
character of the adventure time that Bakhtin finds in the early Greek romances of Heliodorus,
Achilles Tatius and Chariton. In adventure-time, neither historical nor psychological
elements contribute to the textual sense of time, and the heroes adventures change
nothing in their lives. The plot instead represents "an extratemporal hiatus between
two moments of biographical time (FTC, 90). Of course, the events in Greek romance could
unfold over a nominal timescale of several years while, as I have said above, action film
narratives tend to unfurl within much narrower temporal parameters, often within the course of a
few hours or days. However, the comparison may be justified by Bakhtins observation that
adventure time lacks even an elementary biological or maturational duration . . .
[and] is not registered in the slightest way in the age of the heroes (FTC, 90);
therefore, whether an adventure narrative encapsulates days or years is largely
immaterial. A closer cinematic analogy for the nature of adventure-time as Bakhtin
characterises it may be found in films of a slightly different generic type - those which may be
described as action-adventure or action-fantasy. The Star Wars, Indiana Jones and James Bond
series of films are all texts that exhibit characteristics of adventure-time. The Bond films are
particularly interesting in terms of the way in which textual time bears no relation to the passing
of human time outside the frame of representation; the main character has not noticeably aged
over the course of thirty years and eighteen releases, although the ages of the actors chosen to
play him has varied considerably. In fact, the hero seems to be regressing, with the current actor
Pierce Brosnan a lot younger in appearance than was Roger Moore in his last outing as Bond.
The space and time configurations of the Greek adventure narratives that Bakhtin discusses
support a narrative logic that does not adhere to realistic principles. The nature of time
in such texts is controlled by chance, what Bakhtin calls a veritable downpour of suddenlys
and at just that moments (FTC, 95), and action films follow a similar formula. The equivalent in
cinematic grammar of these intrusions of irrational forces occurs in Speed when the bus hurtles
into the path of a woman crossing the road with a pram. The film plays on our assumption,
gleaned from a familiarity with Hollywood conventions, that the disaster will be narrowly
averted; however, this pre-emptive reading is dramatically undercut when the bus smashes into
the pram, a moment that is very affecting on a first viewing. The pram turns out to be filled with
cans collected for recycling, and our initial reaction of horror turns first to relief and then to
embarrassment that such contrivance could catch us out.
The set-piece is structured around two elements of chance. The first coincidence is that the
woman should be crossing the road at just the moment that the bus intersects her path; the
second, irrational, coincidence is that the pram should be filled with cans instead of a child. Yet,

in the ineluctable logic (FTC, 102) of the action film, the wildly unlikely occurrence
fits perfectly, and is in tune with a certain sense of irony which is a requirement for
watching these films. Thus, the internal logic of the action genre, as manifested in the
representation of time and space, can be seen to exploit the dialogical traces of other
films that attend our viewing. In this case, the sequence uses our expectations to create an
effect of shock by reversing them.
I have attempted to show that Speed fits into the action genre because it uses space and time
in a certain way. However, although chronotopes may define generic value, they may
also be quoted intertextually in texts of a different generic order. Many films make a
point of appropriating recognizable temporal and spatial scenarios in order to play with their
connotations and frustrate viewers narrative expectations. The fact that chronotopes can be
so easily transplanted from one semantic context to the next raises the problem of
reconciling the chronotope with the emphasis Bakhtin places on historical value in
artistic discourse. The chronotope is often wrenched from any foundation in real
historical time. The 1940s setting of the Indiana Jones films is essentially an intertextual
reflection of the chronotopes employed by the Saturday morning serials so beloved of producer
George Lucas. The character does battle with cartoon Nazis, who signify a blank,
depoliticised source of evil. Other real historical situations are evoked in film as a
ready-made narrative backdrop that requires no explanation to a mass audience and
therefore cuts out the need for lengthy exposition. The Vietnam War has been used in this
way, as a sort of cinematic shorthand for a rupture in the American masculine psyche, which
often finds expression in acts of violence against society (the Rambo films). Recently, the Gulf
War has started to be used by filmmakers in the same fashion (The Rock).
However, the chronotopes used by films in this fashion do say something about the
historical situation at the time of their creation. Film is an extremely self-reflexive
medium, and in the one hundred or so years of its existence, chronotopic contexts
have been revisited and recycled countless times. The Western enjoyed greatest
popularity in the 1940s and 50s, reflecting a time when the American public had faith in its
country as an honourable and protecting world force. However, the Vietnam War shook this
confidence, resulting in the revisionist Westerns of Sam Peckinpah and others in the late
1960s. The Wild Bunch (1969) reconceived the Wild West as a domain of mercenaries, and
Sergio Leones Once Upon A Time In The West (1968) depicted the traditional pioneer family at
the mercy of the onslaught of capitalism. These films referred back to the mistakes made by
previous filmmakers in narrating American history as much as they cast aspersions on the
historical era itself. They even emphasised this point by casting actors like Henry Fonda or
William Holden, familiar as good-guys from conventional Westerns, as bloodthirsty killers.
Conclusion
Speed perfectly encapsulates the state of the action film art in the 1990s, and can certainly be
compared to the thrilling but shallow adventure narratives that Bakhtin discusses. It promotes
itself as a kind of thrill-packed fairground attraction with the advertsing slogan Get Ready
For Rush Hour. This raises the issue of the relationship between the chronotopes of
the real world and those within the text (the third sense of the term outlined above).
Such a tag-line seems to invite us to transcend conventional fictional boundaries by
physically inserting ourselves into the text, exploiting the way in which the
represented springs from the real via the activity of chronotopes. The time in which we
experience the text and the time delineated within the diegesis are subject to a dissolving of
barriers; in one review, Marshall Julius claims that the film tears along faster than a speeding
bullet and passes two hours in what seems like a couple of minutes (Julius, 192). In such an
interpretation, the film and the chronotopic motif of the bus are conflated and the

bus becomes the film, highlighting the centrality of this spatio-temporal configuration
to the narrative.
The chronotope can help us to situate a film like Speed within the dialogic network
created by its intertextual references to other films, and its position within wider
cultural matrices. The massive popularity of such films (Speed grossed over $100 million in
the U.S. alone) makes analysing their narrative construction a worthwhile task, and one that
reveals much about the processes of cinematic reception. Bakhtin, who always emphasises
the roots of the textual in the material, would appreciate the vital role that economic
considerations such as star casting and special effects play in the narrative processes
of blockbuster movies. This paper has attempted to show that a Bakhtinian approach
to film can help to restore these socio-cultural inflections to textual analysis, by reinserting the spectator into the dialogical equation, and encouraging us to look more
closely at the way we look at movies.
Abbreviations: FTC = Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel SG = Speech Genres
and Other Late Essays
BAKHTIN, M. M., The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson
and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994)
BAKHTIN, M. M., Discourse in the Novel, in BAKHTIN, M. M., The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays,
ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1994), pp. 259-422
BAKHTIN, M. M., Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel, in Bakhtin, M. M., The
Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael
Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), pp. 84 - 258
BAKHTIN, M. M., Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, eds. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist,
trans. Vern W. McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994)
JULIUS, MARSHALL, Action! The Action Movie A to Z (London: B.T. Batsford, 1996)
METZ, CHRISTIAN, Language and Cinema (The Hague: Mouton, 1974)
RUTLAND, BARRY, Bakhtinian Categories and the Discourse of Postmodernism, in Critical Studies,
Vol.2, no. 1/2 (1990)
TODOROV, TZVETAN, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1984)
Filmography
Speed (1994), directed by Jan DeBont. Produced by Mark Gordon. Co-produced by Allison Lyon
Segan. Executive producer: Ian Bryce. Written by Graham Yost and Joss Whedon (uncredited).
Cinematography by Andrzej Bartkowiak. Starring Keanu Reeves (Jack Traven), Dennis Hopper
(Howard Payne), Sandra Bullock (Annie). Released by Twentieth Century Fox. 115 mins.

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