Page:Relocating Bakhtin.pdf/24

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RELOCATING BAKHTIN

From our own situatedness, we may attempt logical extension of Bakhtin's thoughts on authoring our own individual and socio-cultural selves. In the context of that eventfulness of authoring, we may come to terms with the participatory construction of our own world of life and culture. Though globalization is threatening our old convictions including Bakhtinian faith in the dialogic sharing of existence and the unrepeatable simultaneity of being, we can profitably call back upon the cardinal concept of polyphony which has the ability to effectively counter the false claims of globalization to release being from the chains of habits. A truly differentiated notion of culture is an important prerequisite for Bakhtinian free world. Globalization can only undo all existential obligations and can never attain the co-participative uniqueness in socio-cultural and aesthetic domains because its hegemonic intentions become apparent in no time. When Bakhtin speaks of the event of the birth of a new human being as socio-aesthetic act that culminates in uniqueness, we understand immediately that with our historically differentiated positions, we are expected to live socially and aesthetically to author a new world order. As meaning is always contextual, the inhabitants of the Indian sub-continent in general and the Bengali people and also those who belong to the marginalized nationalities in particular must recognize the central fact that the acknowledgement of situationally unique otherness is indeed unrepeatable. This non-repeatability constitutes our being whose recognition is obligatory for all participants in the social and aesthetic eventfulness. The onslaught of globalization is an undeniable fact. But even then the recognition of the process of unfinalizable authoring of simultaneous presence of the other and relocation of an alternative existence un-enamored by fantasies of power are undeniable. Bakhtin teaches us the unsubvertable paths of alterities by dint of which we would be able to recollect 'the world scattered in meaning'. This automatically elevates us to completely new thought process positing a renovated human world.