‘Dialogics of Self, the Mahabharata and Culture: The History of Understanding and Understanding of History’ explores the interrelationships between individual and cultural historical dynamics in interpreting texts, using key concepts from Bakhtin’s theory of dialogics. This ambitious volume discusses the limits of fixed monologic discourses and the benefits of fluid dialogic discourses, and provides a cultural and psychological analysis of the epic Indian text the ‘Mahabharata’. The problem addressed by ‘Dialogics of Self, the Mahabharata and Culture’ is not just how we understand and narrate history, but also how the very mechanism by which we understand and narrate history itself has a history. This volume is about the interplay of several histories – that of the individual, individual’s past relationship to the text, which in turn is dependent on the nature of encounters they have had in the past, and the history of the text, and the very history of understanding.

Lakshmi Bandlamudi is Professor of Psychology at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York. Her research and teaching interests are focused on the area of human development, with a special emphasis on dialogic consciousness. She is also the author of a travelogue.

Part I. About Theories and Philosophies; 1. Introduction: So What’s the Story and Why This Story?; Part II. About Self; 2. Telling Tales About Lives; 3. Who Tells What Kind of Stories?; Part III. About Memory; 4. The Cultural Scene: Allure of Tales in the Living; 5. Remembering Mahabharata: The Story Telling Time and the Time of the Story; 6. Gendered Memories: The Heroine’s Journey in Time; Part IV. About Interpretation; 7. The Reading Act; 8. Readers, Plots, and Discourses; Part V. About Self, Memory and Interpretation; 9. Tales in Lives and Lives in Tales; 10. Reflections on Real Time in Great Time; Appendix I: Tables; Appendix II. Interview Documents; References

‘There is a lot in this book, and the discussions succeed in illustrating and exploring the complex relationships between individual history and memory, sense of self, cultural background, contemporary cultural location, and textual interpretation.’ —Simon Brodbeck, ‘Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception’

‘This wonderful book has something to offer readers of many backgrounds… Bandlamudi provides a model of textual scholarship for us all.’ —James V. Wertsch, Marshall S. Snow Professor in Arts and Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis

‘The author’s insightful readings of the ancient text are indeed a tour de force. The data that she acquires from the immigrant Indians yields…a profoundly energetic and lively reading of a great Indian text.’ —V. Narayana Rao, Krishnadevaraya Professor of Languages and Cultures of Asia at University of Wisconsin-Madison