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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Part I About Theories and Philosophies
- Part II About Self
- Part III About Memory
- Part IV About Interpretation
- Part V About Self, Memory and Interpretation
- Chapter 9 Tales in Lives and Lives in Tales
- Chapter 10 Reflections on Real Time in Great Time
- Appendix I Tables
- Appendix II Interview Documents
- References
Chapter 9 - Tales in Lives and Lives in Tales
from Part V - About Self, Memory and Interpretation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Part I About Theories and Philosophies
- Part II About Self
- Part III About Memory
- Part IV About Interpretation
- Part V About Self, Memory and Interpretation
- Chapter 9 Tales in Lives and Lives in Tales
- Chapter 10 Reflections on Real Time in Great Time
- Appendix I Tables
- Appendix II Interview Documents
- References
Summary
I put my tales of you into lasting songs. The secret gushes out of my heart.
They come and ask me, “Tell me all your meanings.” I know not how to answer them.
I say. “Ah, who knows what they mean!” They smile and go away in utter scorn.
And you sit there smiling.
Gitanjali Rabindranath TagoreThese musings of Tagore (1971) force me to ponder the irony of my own research enterprise. I wonder how many of my subjects chuckled when I asked them, “What sense do you make of the Mahabharata?” when they might in fact be “singing” these songs through their lives. Perhaps they did “sit there smiling,” and they have every right to do that. But then, I have the right to ask them about the song; perhaps “telling” me about the song may reveal the depths of the song and mutually benefit both of us. It could enhance my understanding of their song and the song itself. It also gives an “outsider's perspective” – an externalization of private meanings – as Vygotsky (1987) points out: “thinking and speech are key to understanding the nature of human consciousness” (p. 285). Private meanings and spontaneous forms of knowledge, Vygotsky argues, are enriched by public expressions and formalizations. The movement is back and forth. Bakhtin writes with some elegance on the significance of outsider's perspective:
To be able to experience my own acts of experiencing, I have to make them a special object of my own activity. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Dialogics of Self, the Mahabharata, and CultureThe History of Understanding and Understanding of History, pp. 237 - 250Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2010