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16 Though it is fashionable now to talk animatedly about postmodern decentredness, the time is just right for evaluation of Bakhtin from our postcolonial position. Yes, we cannot deny the distorting influence of various counterideologies as well as elitist polemics of the socalled liberal west. Bakhtin's ideas have always been appropriated by a wide range of multidisciplinary recipients. Our task is to comprehend the synthetic approach by which we can extend his ideas further. As our readings are entirely dependent on English translations of the original discourses, we have to accept the possibility of inadequacies and complications due to occasional slippages and loss of nuances. Inspite of such exigencies, our positional readings can nevertheless explore and decipher the conceptual richness of Bakhtin's thoughts. Throughout his life, the great thinker sought to situate Man through continuing dialogical relationship with various formations.

The basic question is: what is Bakhtin for? Or, if we frame it in a different way, how we should utilize his ideas? He is definitely one of the greatest theoreticians of novel. But his uniqueness is not confined to the exploration of a particular genre. He is also one of the foremost thinkers of philosophical anthropology. Moreover his impact on literary hermeneutics and criticism is immeasurable. The poststructuralists, feminists, Marxists, phenomenologists and post-modernists tend to celebrate many of his ideas. In the sphere of cultural studies, Bakhtin is equally important. That is why we are argueing in favour of a synthetic approach to his ideas as otherwise his profoundly inter-disciplinary and complex ideas can hardly be scaled properly.

Bakhtin's life has been described as an extraordinary odyssey through many an abrupt turns and plethora of eventfulness. But this has provided the western critics with the arsenal to represent his dissent not as crystallization of nonofficial countervoices against official discourses negating the