"Sly and ill-disposed polemicists"

Gee, I wonder who I might be referring to (to whom I might be referring).

One could say that my PhuDding is getting in the way of my blogging. This is bad news for those seeking commonsensical, factual, logical, nonsense-busting insights, but good news if you prefer a truth-denying, IQ-quashing, Guardian-fuelled, free-speech-subjugating echo chamber.

So today, while PhuDding as usual, when I came across a juicy, awe-inspiring, too-good-to-be true quotation that is going straight into the introduction and conclusion of my thesis, it was a good excuse to include it in a blog and share with my enlightened blog fans and not-so-enlightened blog critics: 

“… the speech of another, once enclosed in a context, is – no matter how accurately transmitted – always subject to certain semantic changes … Any sly and ill-disposed polemicist knows very well which dialogizing backdrop he should bring to bear on the accurately quoted words of his opponent, in order to distort their sense. By manipulating the effects of context, it is very easy to emphasize the brute materiality of another's words, and to stimulate dialogic reactions associated with such ‘brute materiality’; thus it is, for instance, very easy to make even the most serious utterance comical.”

It was penned, as if I have to spell it out to such a heducated haudience, by the late, the great Mikhail Mikhaĭlovich Bakhtin, 1895-1975, a household name to a limited number of PhuDders, Profs and University Challenge wannabees. Bakhtin was (per Wiki, coz I’m lazy) “a Russian philosopher, literary critic and scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language … his distinctive position did not become well known until he was rediscovered by Russian scholars in the 1960s.” He has been called the greatest mind of the 20th century. I’m not sufficiently knowledgeable to agree or disagree with that assessment, except to say that if ease of understanding were a criterion for greatness, he wouldn't make the cut.

What Bakhtin means by the above paragraph, in layman’s terms, is: it doesn’t matter how carefully you choose your words, or craft them meticulously in their complete, transparent and incontestable context, they can and will be misrepresented by your opponent to suit their agenda. You don’t even have to be misrepresented that cleverly; if your opponent’s followers want to believe them rather than you, then you’re screwed.

Perfect example last week: a lefty subversive delivered a lecture about how the British judiciary was in cahoots with the Tory government and always decided in their favour because they were all private school / Oxbridge educated, and it was his mission to save them from themselves. Hmmm, thought I. Flights to Rwanda? Blocked. Just Stop Oil cretins? Slapped wrists only. Net-zero strategy? Thrown out. And the daddy of them all – Prorogation of Parliament? Cancelled quicker than J. K. Rowling at a Stonewall-sponsored literary festival.

The subversive was rewriting history, sneer by sneer, oink by oink. I thought about asking him a pointed question, but didn’t want to dignify his presence by engaging, so literally sat on my hands while everyone else applauded.

Of course, I can’t talk about misrepresenting the facts to suit a warped agenda without an example from the water industry. So again last week, I tuned into a webinar about sewage pollution. Campaigners on the panel were demanding more data from the water companies. I posted in the chat that the problem with data is it can be misunderstood and misrepresented. Indeed, one of the campaigners illustrated my point perfectly by complaining about the timing of the collection of water samples, oblivious to the fact that not everything happens in real time and that sometimes there’s a delay between cause and effect. Sigh.

Also this week (Jeez have I been busy) I attended a lecture about Brexit. Now this guy was brill. A self-confessed Remainer, he presented us with facts/data/stats/charts/tables/what-have-you in a fully transparent, non-judgmental way. It was so refreshing I could have cried (especially when he overran and the white wine was getting warm). He was insightful and enlightening, positive and pragmatic. But what reminds me of Bakhtin is the conversation I had with another Remainer before the lecture started. As well as misrepresentations, Bakhtin is big on self-reflection, introspection, critically examining ingrained traditions and pre-conceived ideas, and changing your mind. So when the Remainer, whom I’ve known for years, admitted that he and his friends were in shock at the referendum result, but also by how much they were out of touch with the (based on the vote share) majority of the rest of the country, I marvelled at his ‘magnanimousness’. It really was straight out of the Bakhtin playbook. I mean, he didn’t change his mind, but he had realised and admitted that there were different points of view out there to those adhered to by the establishment. That is huge.

I suppose the question is, have I ever had such an epiphany? Well, yes. Firstly, I never thought I’d vote Leave; all I wanted at first was a referendum as a tool to extract concessions from Europe. I only started to think about voting Leave when Cameron came back empty-handed from the EU, and the ridiculous Project Fear kicked in, bolstered by Obama, the second worst US President ever (Biden is by far the worst). The other time was when I first became aware of the extent of sewage pollution. I was quite critical of the water companies back then. It’s only when I delved deeper into the data that I realised that life is not that simple, and that hydrology is even more complicated than Bakhtin.

Yup, life is not that simple. Bakhtin certainly isn’t. But one commentator on Bakhtin’s writings is very insightful and has helped a lot. She said that Bakhtin’s philosophy isn’t simple because life isn’t simple. In order to explain his position, he had to state it, chew the cud and by chewing the cud, explain further or even adjust his position. He would then move on to something else, but at some stage relate it to stuff he’d already chewed, chew it again, and assess it in a new context and/or adjust it again. Trust me. That’s helpful. 

I’ve done some reassessing and chewing of my own recently, but I haven’t quite got the hang of it because I think I’ve cracked a couple of crowns in the process.