Through these concepts, Bakhtin anticipates the postmodern engagement with the concepts of constructedness of reality, truth:and human subjectivity. It cannot be held within a single mind, it also cannot be expressed by “a single mouth”. Truth needs a multitude of carrying voices. Instead, ‘truth is a number of mutually addressed, albeit contradictory and logically inconsistent statements. For Bakhtin, truth is not a statement, a sentence or a phrase. Bakhtin briefly outlined the polyphonic concept of truth. This idea of polyphony is related to the concepts of unfinalizability and self-and-others, since it is the unfinalizability of individuals that creates true polyphony. Each character in Dostoevsky’s work represents a voice that speaks for an individual self, distinct from others. In Dostoevsky‘s work, Bakhtin found a true representation of “ polyphony“, that is, multiple voices. About the relationship between the self and others, Bakhtin argues that every person is influenced by others in an inescapably intertwined way, and consequently no voice can be said to be isolated. Bakhtin’s conception of unfinalizability respects the possibility that a person can change, and that a person is never fully revealed or fully known in the world. In Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Bakhtin introduces three important concepts – the unfinalizable self, relationship between the self and others, and, polyphony.
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