SOURCE: Barsky, Robert F. “Bakhtin as Anarchist? Language, Law, and Creative Impulses in the Work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Rudolf Rocker.” South Atlantic Quarterly 97, no. 3 (summer-fall 1998): 623-42.

In the following essay, Barsky comments on Bakhtin's theory of the implicit relationship between language, anarchy, and natural law presented in the framework of personal freedom.

The various directions toward which Bakhtin studies are presently moving suggests that whatever the differences from one scholar to another, there remains a nagging question in much Bakhtinian work: What else can be done with Bakhtin? This is not, or should not be, a purely academic concern; indeed, it may be because Bakhtin's work is so obviously applicable to concerns beyond tenure-article production that it is so frequently asked. My suggestion would be to take him at his radical word and bring his ideas to bear upon this crucial moment in the inglorious history of...