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RELOCATING BAKHTIN

sub-continent is immensely significant. Bakhtin inspires us to transform dialogue, his central key idea, into one continuous text which, in its turn, implores us to erase the division between voices, appearances and contexts. Though meaning is basically contextual, it is always dynamic because of this continuous erasure and repositioning. Now we have to reassess the role of our creative consciousness as well as methodologies of expression and understanding.

With our newly discovered awareness of repositioning and recontextualization, we may now propose to redefine the concept of marginality. In fact, notwithstanding our firm belief in the discovery of the multiple voices from the margin, the perennial distance from the hegemonic centre and the process of inversion initiated through carnival, subtle presence of interrelatedness in historically conditioned existence of late tends to deconstruct the efficacy of given marginal spaces. Sometimes a counterquestion is articulated: marginal to whom or in respect of which space? In the contemporary world, the givenness of marginality is being interrogated and it is argued that even the hitherto accepted margins are at the edge. It is not to claim that hegemonic arrogance has ceased to exist or all the repressed and negated existences have suddenly recovered their cherished spaces throughout the world. On the contrary, in spite of the celebration of inter-relatedness, the decentred spaces remain where they have been. It is only argued here that Bakhtinian dialogics can be profitably interpreted and applied in a completely different non-western cultural context, which has always been the perpetual Other—the margin of the margins shrouded in impenetrable darkness.

Yes, one readily agrees with the famous introductory statement by Clark and Holquist in their widely read book, 'there is always a gap between what someone does and what the world perceives that person to have done.' The perceiver world is never homogeneous and hence the perception and the