Reading :: The Formal Method of Literary Scholarship (supplemental notes on dialectics)

Originally posted: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 11:59:52

The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics

by M.M. Bakhtin, P.N. Medvedev

I reviewed this book earlier, but I've returned to it to more closely examine how Medvedev understands dialectic. I just did something similar with Voloshinov's 1929 book -- see that review for a little more context. Here, I'll cut to the chase.

Medvedev does seem to be looking for a system in which to place dialogue. He frames the book in terms of ideology, just as Voloshinov does, and within that frame he extensively discusses what he terms social evaluation (p.119 on). Social evaluation, in Medvedev's view, is connected to economic class. In terms of social evaluation, different levels of analytical scope are dialectically connected to each other (p.121) (a point that I made in an article a couple of years ago, although I wasn't using dialectic in particular). Medvedev's interest in system leads him to look on familiar Marxist territory: base and superstructure, laws of development, and of course ideology (pp. 3-4). He allows that a "will to system" gives way to a desire to understand organic unity in the world (p.6), but it seems that this organic unity is understood along Marxist lines and contrasts with Bakhtin's buzzing, chattering disunity.

Dialectic pairs seem to abound in this book as they did in Voloshinov's. The levels of scope I've already mentioned (p.121). Others include the dialectic between philosophy and world (p.6), extrinsic and intrinsic (p.67, 158) (a pair that dialectically yields an ideological horizon (pp.153-154)), and the dialectical conception of the individuality and interaction of ideological phenomena (p.30). Interestingly, Medvedev uses the same example of the water molecule that Vygotsky cribbed from Engels, but in reverse -- likening literary criticism to pulling the oxygen out of the molecule (p.22).

Like Voloshinov, Medvedev agrees with Bakhtin on key points about dialogue, but strays on others. Like Bakhtin, Medvedev sees each utterance as a social act (pp. 120-121) and understands expressive intonation as historically unique (p.122). Medvedev also sees genre as having a double orientation not described as dialectic (p.131; cf. p.135, where he discusses the reality of genre vs. the reality accessible to it). He understands genre as a way to conceptualize reality, just as Bakhtin does (p.133), and even thinks that inner speech, in utterances, constitutes inner genres (p.134). Like Bakhtin and Voloshinov, he doesn't understand inner speech as a stream of words (p.133). On the other hand, like Voloshinov but unlike Bakhtin, Medvedev understands utterances as agreeing with or negating (p.91; 165). This is key, I think, because (as I argued in the Voloshinov review linked above) it betrays an ultimate allegiance to dialectic as a philosophical method in which theses and antitheses must meet to develop new syntheses and new truths. Bakhtin is looking for personal truths; Marxists, and I think Medvedev as well, are looking for more broadly based ones. >

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(Catching up)

Originally posted: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 12:02:24

Partially as a result of last week's visit to Iowa State, my reading has outstripped my writing this week. And partially because I have caught the inevitable post-travel illness, I have had trouble catching up. I'll be reviewing Distributed Work soon (I read it on the plane), as well as providing a reading roundup soon on some of the excellent articles David R. Russell gave me to read. In the meantime, why not read my review of Barbara Mirel's book in the latest TCQ?>

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Reading :: Telecommunication Infrastructure

Originally posted: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 10:33:23

Telecommunication Infrastructure: The Benefits of Competition

by Sam Paltridge

This 1995 policy report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, like another recent reading, provides us with the international perspective on telecommunications policy. In particular, the report concludes that liberalizing telecommunications infrastructure can result in significant benefits over state-owned and operated monopolies. For the present discussion, it's important that liberalization is justified in terms of universal service: "there is no evidence that universal service has been impaired by market liberalisation" and "facilities competition can be applied to complement and enhance universal service" (p.7). How far this humble notion of universal service has traveled since 1907, when Theodore Vail coined the term to suppress facilities competition and establish a monopoly!

We'll get to what Paltridge means by "universal service" in a minute. First, some history. Paltridge discusses how the "first challenge" to public telecommunications monopolies came when users wanted to connect their own devices to the network (p.11). (This isn't true in the US.) But, says Paltridge, the industry is currently changing from a supply-led to a demand-led industry: Companies "are following their major customers into international markets and seeking greater regulatory freedom to meet user requirements nationally and internationally" (p.12). The US has led in regulatory freedom: It never had a state-owned monopoly, and the regulated monopoly was ended with the Modification of Final Judgment in 1983. Despite industry predictions, the cost of long distance service plummeted after the long distance market was liberalized: "AT&T tariff rates fell by over 70 per cent in real terms between 1983 and 1991" (p.16). After 1984, business 800 services dropped 67.9% and "the cost of direct dialled interstate calls has been reduced by about 40 per cent attributable to competition and regulatory policies" (p.16). At the same time, quality of service measures went up and, at the time of writing, 98% of the rural US had phone service. (Elsewhere the report states that overasll household penetration in 1989-90 was 93.3% (p.29).) And "In 1993 nearly 400 firms purchased the premium access needed to provide direct dial long distance service" (p.16). Two of these three measures -- price and quality of service (including market penetration) -- are associated with the second articulation of universal service. The third was the precipitating factor in the Department of Justice case against Bell: competition.

But internationally, policymakers were dubious. In a 1993 survey, "the most common reason cited for excluding infrastructure competition was the objective of universal service" (p.16). "Seemingly inherent in the argument against liberalisation was the notion that competition was a threat to universal service and the presumed economies of a single network" (p.17). This is curiously similar to AT&T's argument in the 1970s. The report spends most of its time trying to debunk that argument, drawing on market liberalization data from a variety of countries. The key assumption of the argument -- universal service in its second articulation -- is uncontested.

Here's an interesting fact. In 1992, "Sprint's interconnection expense (money paid for access to the networks of other carriers) as a percentage of net operating revenues in 1992 was 46 per cent. On the other hand 17.5 per cent of Sprint's long distance operating revenues was from providing access services to AT&T" (p.46). Amazing how things changed in less than ten years. >

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Reading :: Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (supplemental notes on dialectics)

Originally posted: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 11:25:25

Marxism and the Philosophy of Language

by V.N. Volosinov

In an earlier entry, I discussed this book in its broad outlines. Here, I focus on the question of where Voloshinov differed from Bakhtin in his understanding of dialogue and dialectic. Bakhtin is pretty clearly not enchanted with dialectic in his 1929 book. (Okay, I have the reworked version rather than the original, but I don't think Bakhtin praised dialectic even in the original version.) But in this book, also published in 1929, Voloshinov certainly seems to be interested in discussing dialogue within a dialectical framework. Is he really? Or is this just a way to escape the censors? It's very hard to tell for sure, and more knowledgeable scholars have split on the question.

Here, I'll take Morson and Emerson's reading as a base. They say that "Voloshinov changes Bakhtin?s theories by accepting his specific descriptions of language but then accounting for language so described in historical-materialist terms. Bakhtin describes language as not systematic; Voloshinov agrees, but argues that this asystematicity only leads us to look for an external system to explain it. That system is Marxism as Voloshinov understood it. Indeed, the reformulation of Marxism was central to Voloshinov?s whole enterprise, as it was not for the non-Marxist Bakhtin" (p.125). So they say. And a rereading of Voloshinov seems to support this view.

In terms of system, Voloshinov does seem to look for one. Although he questions system in an enacted sense (p.78), he talks quite a bit about class struggle (p.23) and how it shapes language in systematic ways that certainly sound Marxist. He focuses on structure and process (pp. 96-97), and looks for an ideological system (p.33) with ideological laws that govern language (p.38). And, like Vygotsky, he frames language development as a dialectic generational process in which modern language emerges from primitive ones -- although he manages not to be as teleological as Vygotsky sometimes sounds (p.106).

In terms of dialectic, we see the same kinds of pairings that we saw in Vygotsky's works. Inner-outer, psyche-ideology (pp. 33; 35; 39-40), psyche-existence (p.25), necessity-freedom (p.81), subject-object (p.82), as well as the constant tension among contexts (p.80). These pairings all involve tensions, tensions that are often explicitly labeled as dialectical. Indeed, dialectical contradictions are said to be embedded in the sign (p.23).

In terms of dialogue, Voloshinov uses the same example Vygotsky does in Thought and Language -- Dostoevsky's drunks -- but rereads the dialogue in terms of active reception involving value judgments (p.103). Whereas Vygotsky thinks of dialogue as a chain of reactions, Voloshinov understands it as always occurring, even when the person isn't speaking. That's why they part ways when it comes to written language, which Vygotsky sees as monologic and Voloshinov sees as "vitiated dialogue" (p.111). Monologic utterances, in Voloshinov's understanding, are those that do not allow an active response (p.78; cf. 117).

These characteristics seem very Bakhtinian, especially the notion of active reception (which also sounds like Medvedev's notion of social evaluation). But Voloshinov also diverges from Bakhtin's understanding of dialogue in several ways. First, he understands utterances as agreeing with or negating each other (p.80) -- a stance that Bakhtin rejects in Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, where he subtly critiques dialectics for conceptualizing utterances as simply agreeing or disagreeing, theses and antitheses. In Bakhtin's understanding, utterances can be identical yet diverge in meaning and import; that divergence is usually partial or in shades, not crudely for or opposite. Second, Voloshinov speaks almost entirely of the sign, something that Bakhtin rarely mentions. Voloshinov sees the word as an inner sign (p.14), and he sees every outer sign as engulfed by inner signs (p.33). Again, I think "sign" is a bit crude for Bakhtin.

Finally, and tellingly, Voloshinov frames the entire book in terms of ideology (p.9) (as did Medvedev in his book, published a year earlier). Ideology becomes a way of fitting dialogue inside a Marxist framework, I think, by providing the ultimate unity of thought (or absolute frame) that Bakhtin tried so hard to avoid. That is, by bringing in ideology, Voloshinov gave himself the option to objectivize or externalize various perspectives and to essentially monologize them, making them identical for various groups. Once one accepts that a group has the same ideology, developed through a cultural struggle, it becomes easier to argue from a Marxist perspective that dialogue is unsystematized, since that systematicity can be recovered on the ideological level. We can see how Voloshinov found it easier than Bakhtin to see dialogue as assertions and negations.

>

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Reading :: Telecommunication Infrastructure

Originally posted: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 10:33:23

Telecommunication Infrastructure: The Benefits of Competition

by Sam Paltridge

This 1995 policy report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, like another recent reading, provides us with the international perspective on telecommunications policy. In particular, the report concludes that liberalizing telecommunications infrastructure can result in significant benefits over state-owned and operated monopolies. For the present discussion, it's important that liberalization is justified in terms of universal service: "there is no evidence that universal service has been impaired by market liberalisation" and "facilities competition can be applied to complement and enhance universal service" (p.7). How far this humble notion of universal service has traveled since 1907, when Theodore Vail coined the term to suppress facilities competition and establish a monopoly!

We'll get to what Paltridge means by "universal service" in a minute. First, some history. Paltridge discusses how the "first challenge" to public telecommunications monopolies came when users wanted to connect their own devices to the network (p.11). (This isn't true in the US.) But, says Paltridge, the industry is currently changing from a supply-led to a demand-led industry: Companies "are following their major customers into international markets and seeking greater regulatory freedom to meet user requirements nationally and internationally" (p.12). The US has led in regulatory freedom: It never had a state-owned monopoly, and the regulated monopoly was ended with the Modification of Final Judgment in 1983. Despite industry predictions, the cost of long distance service plummeted after the long distance market was liberalized: "AT&T tariff rates fell by over 70 per cent in real terms between 1983 and 1991" (p.16). After 1984, business 800 services dropped 67.9% and "the cost of direct dialled interstate calls has been reduced by about 40 per cent attributable to competition and regulatory policies" (p.16). At the same time, quality of service measures went up and, at the time of writing, 98% of the rural US had phone service. (Elsewhere the report states that overasll household penetration in 1989-90 was 93.3% (p.29).) And "In 1993 nearly 400 firms purchased the premium access needed to provide direct dial long distance service" (p.16). Two of these three measures -- price and quality of service (including market penetration) -- are associated with the second articulation of universal service. The third was the precipitating factor in the Department of Justice case against Bell: competition.

But internationally, policymakers were dubious. In a 1993 survey, "the most common reason cited for excluding infrastructure competition was the objective of universal service" (p.16). "Seemingly inherent in the argument against liberalisation was the notion that competition was a threat to universal service and the presumed economies of a single network" (p.17). This is curiously similar to AT&T's argument in the 1970s. The report spends most of its time trying to debunk that argument, drawing on market liberalization data from a variety of countries. The key assumption of the argument -- universal service in its second articulation -- is uncontested.

Here's an interesting fact. In 1992, "Sprint's interconnection expense (money paid for access to the networks of other carriers) as a percentage of net operating revenues in 1992 was 46 per cent. On the other hand 17.5 per cent of Sprint's long distance operating revenues was from providing access services to AT&T" (p.46). Amazing how things changed in less than ten years.

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Reading :: The impact of regulation and public policy on telecommunications infrastructure and U.S. competitiveness

Originally posted: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 22:02:08

Reading :: The impact of regulation and public policy on telecommunications infrastructure and U.S. competitiveness

by Shooshan & Jackson, Inc.

In 1989, the US was still fairly alarmed about the strength of Japanese and German economies relative to the US. In that context, this report urges the readers to make telecommunications infrastructure a priority. Although the US was well ahead of most countries in its infrastructure development, that development had slowed and deregulation had lessened its coherence. The US had long relied on private companies to develop infrastructure, and the authors acknowledge that this "has resulted in a telecommunications infrastructure that brings universal, affordable basic telephone service to nearly all U.S. citizens" (p.4). (This is the second articulation of universal service, in the terms I've been using as I've explored the concept.) Indeed, the US was "the first and only country to provide universal, affordable telephone service" (p.21). Yet that status was at risk.

The authors define "infrastructure" as "the physical plant (copper wire, switching facilities, optical fiber, coaxial cable and radio transmissions equipment, including satellite systems) which enables voice, data and video to move from one point to another, or among many points, by means of publicly- or privately-owned transmission systems" (p.6). Notice that this leaves behind Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). The authors also include "piece parts" such as "lasers and semiconductors, as well as emerging technologies such as X-ray lithography and advanced television (ATV)" (p.6).

One impediment to getting these piece parts and infrastructure technologies to work together was the state of US regulation. As a result of the 1983 Modification of Final Judgment, Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) could not own cable TV systems or provide long distance (p.10). So these technologies were held apart through regulation. (In the wake of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, some of these restrictions have been lifted. Now you can get cable TV, high speed Internet access, and phone service from the same company.)

These regulations were put into place to guard against monopolies while encouraging investment in the infrastructure. But the authors suggest that "the current regulatory environment neither encourages such investments nor provides the best protection for consumers" (p.25). The traditional rate of return no longer provided adequate incentives due to the increased competition (p.25). And the rate-of-return regulation which guarded against fleecing the consumers had resulted in "perverse asymmetries": "shareholders do not reap the benefits of a highly profitable investment, and yet might very well bear the loss associated with an unsuccessful investment" (p.26). The authors conclude that regulatory alternatives should be pursued. >

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