READING BAKHTIN
Bakhtin's world is, for all practical purposes, limitless and enormous. Many a readings are possible on the discourses of this unique doyen of simultaneity. Ever since his discovery by the American and European scholars, diverse schools of thought emerged which transgress the established frontiers of disciplines. The Bengali readers in the Indian sub-continent became aware of immense possibilities of Bakhtinian thoughts in the late eighties of the last century. But the overriding habit of Euro-centrism prevailed upon the recipients even in the postcolonial phase of social history. Only a few critics and thinkers of Bengali intellectual community felt the urgency of re-reading Bakhtinian conceptual frames and discourses with emphatic primacy on our own situatedness. Since positionality determines the nuances of the truth inherent in varying human situations, these scholars also had to interrogate the basic ingredients of the European and American commentators. A thorough reexamination of their intentions and basic postulates about Bakhtinian concepts is being undertaken. Because the western hegemonic framework of knowledge industry have all along been casting its deep shadow over the third world intellectuals and the Bengali literary firmament in the Indian sub-continent is no exception. Particularly in the latest phase of total domination of cyber technology, all the socio-cultural spaces belonging to the margin of margins are under threat of extinction. The other has to make its presence felt through reaffirmation of its identity, independence and relative sovereignty. It can be achieved by discovering and re-chiselling the alterities inspite of the implosion and domination of the western modes of thought in all spheres of contemporary life.
