did not think ill of those who compromised, and he assumed for himself whatever guises political expediency dictated" (Clark and Holquist: 1984:2). This comment is, to say the least, most unfair and unkindest cut. Though the critics quoted here are profound Bakhtin scholars, their self-imposed blindness has blurred insight to a lamentable extent.
Ideology is mere rhetoric for those who submit themselves willfully to the guiles of the hegemonic official positions. They employ all their skill in building up counterrhetoric against any semblance of ideology in the social or intellectual arena. For them ideology is a grand narrative and should be obliterated with cleverly designed rhetoric. That is why they have zealously misinterpreted Bakhtin because that was in the interest of the domineering west. They pretend that those who do not subscribe to the official discourse, they only reduce the apparent scope of his works and fail to see through the authorial disguises in different stages of his career. The various representations of Bakhtin only reveal the eagerness of critics to think on behalf of Bakhtin and thus, in spite of their proclaimed preferences, they ultimately turn out to be covert ideologues of the hegemonic west. Therefore, though it has been subtly alleged that Bakhtin was 'an impassive ventriloquist, for politically acceptable locutions,' the critics themselves prove to be as such. Precisely here there is enough scope for developing a non-western, non-hegemonic, non-official perspective for studying Bakhtin. Let us be mediators but that mediation should not interfere with his life-long dialogics. That is to say, while revisiting the site of Bakhtin, we have to be particularly careful about the existing western interpretations which sometimes seem to choke the original voice of Bakhtin. Our singular motto shall be: Let Bakhtin speak for himself.
