THEORIST IN QUEST OF LIFE-WORLD
Every meaning is achieved through struggle : this was most emphatically assured by Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, one of the most prominent thinkers of twentieth century. He lived through exceptionally interesting times in the history of Soviet Russia. In his youth, he saw the traumatic phases of the emergence of a new social order on the wake of Bolshevik Revolution spearheaded by Lenin. Alongwith his close associates, he also experienced personally the cruel repressive powers of the state. Gradually he went into total oblivion while his friends were eliminated. He escaped the possible exile to Siberia but had to undergo an obligatory extradition in a minor township. His right leg was amputated in the beginning of 1938. His movement was in fact restricted due to prolonged illness as far back as 1920. The most fundamental concept propagated by Bakhtin, viz., Life is Dialogical, was corroborated by his own life. Because it was that illness which brought Elena Alexandrovna Okolovich to intimate proximity. They married at the end of that year.
Elena was an exceptional lady who might be regarded as an epitome of co-being. It is because of her that Bakhtin could survive physically and also escaped certain death. While he was in exile at Kustanai in Kazakhstan, Elena had to work incessantly to make both ends meet. Their precarious condition continued till the end of the turbulent thirties when they stayed in Saransk and Sabhelova. That was the period of dialogical recontextualization of the life-world because turmoils of the political society were sharpening Bakhtin’s intellectual and
