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18 understanding the multiple phenomena of existence. When the onslaught of the consumer society is at its worst, the task of situating Bakhtin in our historically different perspective has indeed become challenging. In the Indian sub-continent, the experience of the multiplicity of different languages, ethnic behaviours, discourses, priorities and symbolizing practices on the one hand and the disruptive, isolationist and non-conformist tendencies on the other, has made dialogical understanding both inviting and perplexing. We are required to reformulate Bakhtin in such a scenario. Inspite of the imposing presence of the western interpretations, we are to highlight the dialogical interrelatedness between different socio-cultural and aesthetic system and practices as wonderful manifestations of simultaneity. Besides, we are to privilege the marginal, the decentred, the contingent and the unofficial. However, the overwhelming process of globalization has rendered all the aforesaid spaces complicated, hybridized and tentative. Then there is the phenomenon of multi-culturalism which has redefined the notion of addressivity. It is, therefore, advisable to explore anew the key concepts like carnival, polyphony, heteroglossia, unfinalizability and simultaneity in the context of our own experiences.

We are expected to read Bakhtin in his totality, keeping in mind his own dialogic progress as thinker. We should avoid overreading the alleged dichotomy between his early and late works or his subtle and apparent 'compromises' with the official positions. Our first requirement is to develop such a Bakhtinian model which holds considerable promise with respect to proper theorization of our own chronotopic organization of lived time and space.

When globalization is sweeping across all geographical and cultural domains, our familiar world is fast losing stability and responsiveness. Time and space is in a flux and the Bakhtinian notion of interpenetrating unity seems to be out of place. In the