Understanding Others: A Study of Dalit Women Writers in Bakhtinian Light

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher, literary critic, semiotician and scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language. His theory of dialogism discusses every level of expression from live conversational dialogue to complex cultural expression in other genres and art works is an ongoing chain or network of statements and responses, repetitions and quotations, in which new statements presuppose earlier statements and anticipate future responses. The dialogic work carries on a continual dialogue with other works of literature and other authors. It does not merely answer, correct, silence, or extend a previous work, but informs and is continually informed by the previous work. Dialogic literature is in communication with multiple works. This is not merely a matter of influence, for the dialogue extends in both directions, and the previous work of literature is as altered by the dialogue as the present one is. Taking this in account I would like to read and strike a dialogue between three texts on and by Dalit women: Sangati and Karuku by Bama and The Grip of Change by P. Sivakami and Savitri by Daxa Damodara.