Misunderstanding Fakirmohan Rabi Shankar Mishra Jatindra Kumar Nayak BISWAMOY PATI's response (EPW, July 20) to our discussion pieces (August 25, 1990 and January 19,1991) is again a misrepresentation and distortion of our position with regard to the use of literary texts for purposes of social analysis. Pati continues to be a victim of his own method, i e, he is not critically aware how his method conditions his access to what he believes to be indubitable truths. His cocksure method of discourse, his totalising intentions, and simplistic attitude to historical change are due to his failure to comprehend the first lesson of scholarship: that the language, the method of a discourse, literary or historical, must inevitably control and produce the 'truth' of a discourse. In fact, an absence of self-reflexiveness in Pati's method provoked us in the first place to enter the discussion.
