II
Let us reread Bakhtin's Art and Answerability, where he states clearly: 'aesthetic activity collects the world scattered in meaning and condenses It into a finished and self-contained image. Aesthetic activity finds an emotional equivalent for what is transient in the world (for its past and present, for its present-on-hand-being), an emotional equivalent that gives life to this transient being and safeguards it; that is, it finds an axiological position from which the transient in the world acquires the axiological weight of an event, acquires validity and stable determinateness. The aesthetic act gives birth to being on a new axiological plane of the world; a new human being is born and a new axiological context—a new plane of thinking about the human world.' (1990: 191)
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.
Bakhtin emphasizes not merely on the assumption of differences but concentrates on dynamic struggle over differences because the basic concept of dialogism attaches much prominence on the process of inter-activity and inter-relatedness. It automatically transgresses the standardized frontiers between various disciplines and provokes us to extend our faculties of cognition and imagination further while we author ourselves and our world. If we can realize the inherent strength and potentialities of such a process of dialogism that always renews our capacities for addressivity and answerability. We can propose an effective encounter with the hegemonistic approaches of globalization. The notions of participation and responsibility need to be comprehended anew which paves the way towards positing an alternative world order beyond predictivity and finalization.
As situatedness is constantly historicized, the task of the commentators and interpreters in the Indian subcontinent automatically calls for a reorientation of the thought process and re-contextualization of disjunctive and differentiated experiences. During the heyday of colonialism, western model of hegemonic modernism made inroads into the psyche of Indian people but could not wholely unsettle the feudal remnants of the civil society. Concomitantly paradoxical situations emerged and hybridized cultural paradigms gradually took shape which, in their turn, resulted into concoctions of multicultural mix. With the advent of post-modernism mainly among the metropolitan elites, complications and confusions percolated to some extent even to the otherwise sensitive cultural activists. More particularly the Bengali intellectuals afflicted with displacement, diasporas, migration and intense form of localization in various regions of the subcontinent had to grapple in the space between the aesthetic and the political. Their experience of responsiveness and answerability is characteristically different from that of other ethnic strata in the subcontinent. The projects of authoring the inter-penetrative worlds of simultaneity and polyphony have various ways. The questions of perfection or profusion are valid to a certain extent: but the more important thing is to scale the process of dialogism through apparently discursive practices.