Review of the Book 'Society Seen Through the Mirror of Life'

Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay

Indian Statistical Institute

February 19, 2005

Amitranjan Basu, Sakar, Avik, ed., Anandabajar Patrika. 19 Feb 2005

Abstract:
This was a short review of an autobiographical account of Niranjan Bhowmik, a so-called ruthlessly marginalized man, who was categorized as 'insane'. The book was transcribed and edited by Amit Ranjan Basu (published by the Bibhasa (2004) and distributed by the Progressive Publishers, Kolkata.)

The reviewer mentioned that this book was an exceptional publication as the editor, a professional Health Care Provider, (a) preserved the so-called (mis) spelling and non-well-formed non-standardized syntactic constructions of Bhowmik, thus Basu did not play the role of language managers/-polices/-judges and celebrated the joy of heterography; (b) did not categorize the 'disease' of Bhowmik following any 'norm'-al scale. The editor followed the Foucauldian path of anti-Cartesianism in his Preface.

The reviewer maintained that this book would draw the attention of linguists, who were problematizing the boundary between “normal” well-formed language (Chomskian position) and 'abnormal' speaking/writing following Foucauldian path. The reviewer questioned, 'How do we know the differences between 'norm'-al way of speaking and 'ab'-normal way of speaking?' Cartesian Linguistics analyzed the algorithm of 'normal' 'well-formed' sentences only. This very construction of 'natural language' (e.g., the well-constructed written sentences) mercilessly marginalizes the language of so-called non-'natural' madness or folly. This question might be elaborated further by taking cue from Goutam Bhadra : how do we distinguish between error (khyati) and non-error (akhyati), when we are talking about normal and natural language? Well-formed syntagms were used as examples in the Chomskian syntactic analysis. There was no scope for discursive paradigmatic recurrences. That was sanity. This text, edited by Amit Ranjan Basu, might open a new avenue in linguistics.

Note: Downloadable document is in Bangla.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 1

Keywords: language managers, polices, judges, heterography