series of other infinitely varied means for advancing a thought as a signifying, affirmed thought." If the idea falls outside of the author's worldview, it might be polemically repudiated, or it might be reduced to a negative 'attribute' of character, an expression of a finalized psychological or moral 'quality'. Its status is that of "socially typical or individually characteristic manifestations of thought." It is objectified by the author and always lacks the power to "signify directly" in and as itself. An idea's power to signify directly is impossible in a monologic world, where there is only affirmation or repudiation. Bakhtin argues that this is not merely a fact of an artistically created world, but is true of "the entire ideological culture of recent times". Polyphonic authorship In polyphonic writing, the author must relinquish monologic control over the work. If they do not, there is no possibility of realizing a dialogic sense of the world, where autonomous and unfinalized personalities interact on their own terms. It is only possible if the character is truly an other consciousness, with equal rights to signify, and not merely a 'created' character in the author's imposed reality. The author of the polyphonic novel confronts his characters as equals. He does not withdraw his own ideological position for the sake of an illusory objectivity: rather he places it directly among the equally signifying voice-ideas that are at variance with it, and provokes their confrontation with it and with the other voice-ideas. As his own voice has no more or less existential significance than any other voice, the author himself does not know in advance what the outcome of these confrontations will be. The interactions thus provoked are ripe with "event potential": conclusions are not foreordained, nothing truly comes to an end, and no character can be ultimately finalized from without. Thus the author's role in the polyphonic novel is twofold: "he creates a world where many disparate points of view enter into dialogue, and, in a quite distinct role, he himself participates in that dialogue. He is one of the interlocutors in the "great dialogue" that he himself has created." See also Dialogue (Bakhtin) The Dialogic Imagination Bibliography Bakhtin, M. M. (1984), Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin and