and Bakhtin in Walter Benjamin or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism', 'Freedom of Interpretation : Bakhtin and the Challenge of Feminist Criticism', Critical Enquiry, Sept. 82, etc. The notion of identity-indifference is extremely important in considering thinkers who, sharing a general philophic context are nevertheless shaped by their own specific contexts. Bakhtin's relationship to traditions of Russian thought have yet to be studied : his concept of value-oriented discourse, for instance, has a long history in Russian thought stretching back to the Revolutionary Democrats of the nineteenth century, to the period of the revolution; his relationship to the historical poetics ofA.N. Veselovsky and the linguistic and aesthetic theories of A. Potebnya with whom the Formalists also polemicized; the discovery of Freud and Saussure by early twentieth century Russia and the interpretations offered by the various streams of thought— Marxist, Formalist, sociologistic. psychologistic—in various disciplines, including the arts; the development of linguistic theory in the Soviet Union, with N. Marr and later V. Vinogradov as leading figures: the specificity of Soviet semiotics and the areas of Bakhtin's agreement and disagreement with it. . . Any reading of Bakhtin would have to deal with this specific tradition of Russian thought that he relates to as well as the wider Western philosophic context. (Bakhtin's theoretical positions are not discussed since they lie beyond the limits of this short note.) 1 References to P. Medvedev in 'Russian Formalism — History — Doctrine' hyV. Eriich (1955). to M. Bakhtin in V. Seduro's'Dostoevsky in Russian Literary Criticism 1K46-1956(1957) &Jakob-son's 'Za i ProtivV. Shklovskogo' (1959), Julia Kristeva's 'Bakhtin Ie mot. Ie dialogue et Ie roman' (1967). etc. 2 K. dark and M. Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin. The Belknap Press of Harvard University. Masachussets. Cambridge. London. 1984. 3 V.N. Voloshinov. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, tr. by L. Matejka and R. Titunik. Seminar Press. N.Y. & London. 1973. 4 For further discussion refer to Allon White's 'Bakhtin. Sociolinguistic Deconstruction' in Theory of Reading, (ed) F. Gloversmith. Harvester Press. Sussex. 1984. 5 Michael Holquist. The Politics of Representation' in Allegory and Representation, (ed) SJ. Greenstall. Johns Hbpkins Univ Press. Baltimore, p. 173. Numbers 12-13 112