Problematizing Global Knowledge Time 133

Chronotope
Luis Alberto Brando
Keywords Bakhtin, science, space, theory, time reasonable to suppose that both concepts express fundamental questions and problems of physics and the theory of language, which is to say that both concepts efficiently synthesize the attempts to equate epistemological questions considered central to the 20th century, questions related to dissatisfaction with the ways available up to that moment for dealing with notions of time and space, movement and position, duration and extension, change and structure, history and context, possibility and determination. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the concepts of timespace and chronotope play specific roles in the histories of their respective areas of knowledge. When these roles are compared, the discrepancies between the two terms become clear. The Einsteinian concept fulfills the function of contradicting common sense in pre-scientific thought, which conceives space and time as real things, directly observable by sense experience, a conception that is to some extent endorsed by Newtonian physics. At the same time, it is opposed to Kantian idealism, which regards space and time as a priori categories. It should be noted as well that time is incorporated into space, is one of its dimensions in a four-dimensional space. The Bakhtinian concept acts as the negation of a formalist tradition, which defines language in terms of intrinsic data. This is a question of foregrounding historical factors, understood as those factors that define a given concrete reality. Although the concept affirms that time and space are inseparable, it is time that is given priority, regarded as synonymous with history. There is therefore a significant difference. Einsteinian thought explores the consequences of disconnecting what are considered fundamental concepts from the experience of the human senses, which obliges the notion of science to conciliate radical speculation with the need for an experimental demonstration of the facts. For Bakhtinian thought, it is a matter of defending a positive conception of knowledge, based above all on the primacy of the notion of history as a concrete instance of reality to the detriment of idealistic interpretations, which make use of transcendental presuppositions, especially concerning aesthetic questions, from which is derived the great emphasis given to the body as material reality of the world. It must be said that the conceptual-metaphorical play developed in Bakhtins work, despite the

he relevance of a concept can be evaluated not only for its rigor or efficacy at the basis of a theoretical system, but also by inquiring to what extent, and through which forms, this concept has been diffused beyond the limits of the discipline or area of knowledge in which it was originally proposed. The power of certain categories is connected to the fact that they allow themselves to be translated into the languages, and according to the parameters, of other fields of knowledge. Considering the transformations that have occurred in the passage from one field to another, one can therefore claim that the importance of a concept cannot be disassociated from its ability to generate images and stimulate metaphorical appropriations. One of the most evident demonstrations of this claim can be found in the way that the category of timespace, introduced in the first decade of the 20th century by the physicist Albert Einstein, was taken up by Mikhail Bakhtin as a reference for his concept of chronotope. In the introduction to his article Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel, written in the 1930s, the Russian thinker defines it thus: We will give the name chronotope (literally, time space) to the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature. This term is employed in mathematics, and was introduced as part of Einsteins Theory of Relativity. The special meaning it has in relativity theory is not important for our purposes; we are borrowing it for literary criticism almost as a metaphor (almost, but not entirely). (Bakhtin, 1981: 84) If we take the power of influence of their theories as a criterion, and the fact that they produce a complex set of discourses that have been more or less institutionalized, on several levels of cultural reality, there is no doubt that Einstein and Bakhtin are among the most respected names in western thought. It is unlikely, therefore, that the consonance between the concepts of spacetime and the chronotope, as well as the strong effect and the continuing interest they arouse, is fortuitous. It is more

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explicit admission of being inspired by Einstein, does not privilege a debate associated with the transformations of classical physics within those of modern physics, but mainly the confrontation between a Ptolemaic model of language, in which a unique linguistic consciousness and the centripetal character of social forces prevail, and a Copernican model (also referred to as Galilean), marked by centrifugal forces and by a relative, plural, dialogic linguistic consciousness. It is possible to suppose that the Einsteinian inspiration arises from the appropriation, in a very broad sense, of the notion of relativity, understood as a generic opposition to everything intended to be absolute. In Einsteins theory, however, relativity only makes sense when the velocity of light is regarded as an undisputed constant. It is not a question of opposing relative to absolute, but of determining to what systems these values can or cannot be applied. It is tempting to suppose that, in the ambivalence of Bakhtins concept relative to Einsteins, the ambivalence of a good part of the field of humanities in the first part of the 20th century is revealed. This field seeks to claim its scientific basis in two conflicting ways: in one, by drawing near to the natural sciences as a model of positive and socially legitimated knowledge; in the other, by distancing itself from them through the attempt to establish theoretical and methodological specificity. This duplicity explains why, on a fairly regular basis, concepts are shared by disciplines, even if, owing to the particularities they take on, they can be regarded as metaphors in relation to another disciplines theoretical context. Independently of the degree of fidelity or freedom in the passage from one context to another, the concept-metaphors make up a common field of interest whose theoretical productivity and power of imaginative suggestion are seen in the developments appropriate to the limits and openings of each area of knowledge. If chronotope is almost but not entirely a metaphor of space-time, one may ask if such irrefutable ambivalence does not indicate the very difficulty of distinguishing the metaphorical from the conceptual operation. In Bakhtins theoretical model, the chronotope acts as a concept to which specific features are attributed and, at the same time, as a metaphor that evokes aspects of the Einsteinian concept. And yet, a rigorous separation between the two uses cannot be established either; to what extent the term aspires to generality, with its foundational and propositional function, and to what extent it does not have its own meaning, but merely operates in a diffuse and suggestive way by analogy, cannot be defined. Timespace and chronotope meet, conceptually and metaphorically, in a common epistemological field that has selected as a basic problem the human determination of knowledge, which includes the debate over the universal and the particular, absolute and relative, fact and discourse, what can be demonstrated and what can be imagined. The thought of Einstein and of Bakhtin share, even though in different senses, the tension between the acceptance of a human scale for knowledge in which its historicity is primary, to which the limitations and potentialities that ground it in a specific context are connected and the transposition of this scale, the search for which is beyond the human capacity for perception and conception.

Reference
Bakhtin, M.M. (1984) The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Luis Alberto Brando is an Associate Professor in the Department of Literary Theory at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil.