Bakhtine démasqué

Mikhail Bakhtin came to be considered the 'greatest literary specialist of the twentieth century' after the publication of his older manuscripts and the claim that he was the actual author of the 1920s texts by Medvedev and Voloshinov. A veritable Bakhtin literary industry grew out of this focusing on the unity and coherence of his work. Archival publications and interviews with Bakhtin released at the end of the century demonstrated that he had in fact lied about his biography and falsified and plagiarized texts. Jean-Paul Bronckart and Cristian Bota examine Bakhtin's motivations, the actual origin of the texts he claimed, as well as the obstinacy of some scholars in continuing the tradition of Bakhtin's genius.