Abstract

PINHEIRO, Marina  and  LEITAO, Selma. Bakhtin e a "vida dos outros". Rev. Mal-Estar Subj. [online]. 2010, vol.10, n.1, pp. 87-110. ISSN 1518-6148.

The literary critic and philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin is a name heard in various areas of present-day Human Sciences. One of the main representatives of the dialogism, Bakhtin offers us an aesthetic perspective on the understanding of the subjectivation processes, in which the human singularity would be an outstanding presupposition of his reflections. It is through the reading of the film The lives of others (Buena Vista International, 2006; directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck) as a possible bakhtinian metaphor, that this paper brings forward as a refraction field to the debates on the relations between singularity and authorship in the production of the "self". The referred movie takes us to the saga which Gerd Wiesler, an exemplary STASI (East Germany political police) secret agent, is cast into when he is put in charge of observing the life of an artists couple, suspected of subversion of the German Democratic Republic´s ideals. Mobilized by the daily intimacy of the couple, Wiesler finds, through his responsive unicity, a possible scene for self-redescription. Enraptured by the observance he was assigned to, the hero writes the script of the destiny of the ones he observed in a duel with the otherness of his own history. The lives of others thus is a decentered place, from where an "I" passes to author his becoming.

Keywords : Bakhtin; Authorship; Otherness; Singularity; Dialogism.

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