Subalternity and the National-Popular: A Brief Genealogy of the Concepts (original) (raw)
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The Subaltern Studies initially sought to make a "translation of Gramsci" to India and with it has given rise to a diversity of interpretations within the Indian social and political history. The group was introduced, in this sense, in the context of a comprehensive and international intellectual debate, especially localized around the clash between the Marxists and the ideas that shaped the field of "post-structuralism". This way, we try to reflect on the translation of Gramsci"s work as a fundamentally political brand of Indian Subaltern Studies project and the process of particularization of this group with others theoretical and interpretative sources. The "political character" claimed by scholars linked to the Indian project, although with problems, is still prominent in other appropriations, and consequently constitutes an important matter for the study and understanding of this perspectiveconcentrating, furthermore, in an important component of the process of disseminating Gramsci"s ideas -and also for the internationalization of his concepts.
ORIGIN AND HISTORIOGRAPHY OF SUBALTERN STUDIES
This paper is dealing with history of the society and social concept with special focus of the class and equality concept from the West to East. Looking into the history says Western intellectual schools gave the name of this concept as Subaltern Studies, and first in the West the revolution started for the voiceless people. In Indian society also dominated by the same notion from the ancient tradition and following the West they also started raising voice for the poor and voiceless. It is a comparative study from the West to East with few intellectual's discussions and history of "Subaltern Study" in the progressive society.At the end also it will criticize the insufficiency of the concept and its impact in the Indian society and present society. Speaking for subalternity as subaltern could thus become a professional academic niche. We could expect Subaltern Studies to attain authority as an authentic voice of the postcolonial East in self-consciously Western academic localities which have been shaped intellectually by orientalism, area studies, and Cold War anti-communism, when scholars mobilize to oppose colonial forms of knowledge with post-orientalist critical theory, global cultural studies, and post-Marxist, post-colonial literary criticism.
Reading subaltern studies: Critical history, contested meaning, and the …
Reading Subaltern Studies the Indian history contained in Subaltern Studies are inflected variously by national contexts in the world of globalisation. Peter Gran argues, for instance, that in India, Subaltern Studies is read against liberalism, Marxism, and 'religious fascism,' whereas in the US, its 'principal novelty' is its ability to represent India by being read into ideologies of difference and otherness. 13 Though globalisation circulates texts and ideas around the world, it nonetheless divides reading environments. In the US, readers are generally encouraged to think about cultures in essentialist terms, in the ethnographic present; to see colonialism and nationalism as cultural phenomena; to disdain Marxism; and to distance academic work from partisan politics, a separation that bolsters academic credibility. But in South Asia, cultural change preoccupies scholars and activists, colonialism includes capitalist imperialism (which is still at work in the world of globalisation), Marxism is alive, and most scholars embrace politics in one form or another as a professional responsibility of citizenship. Such contextual differences differentiate readings of subalternity. To map the whole world of contested meanings lies far beyond the scope of this book, which endeavours, more modestly, to locate Subaltern Studies in the context of relevant English language scholarship. Historical Origins: Insurgency, Nationalism, and Social Theory In the last forty years, scholars have produced countless studies of societies, histories, and cultures 'from below' which have dispersed terms, methods, and bits of theory used in Subaltern Studies among countless academic sites. Reflecting this trend, the 1993 edition of The new shorter Oxford English dictionary included 'history' for the first time as a context for defining 'subaltern.' The word has a long past. In late-medieval English, it applied to vassals and peasants. By 1700, it denoted lower ranks in the military, suggesting peasant origins. By 1800, authors writing 'from a subaltern perspective' published novels and histories about military campaigns in India arid America; and G.R. Gleig (1796-1888), who wrote biographies of Robert Clive, Warren Hastings, and Thomas Munro, mastered this genre. The Great War provoked popular accounts of subaltern life
Krisis: Journal of Contemporary Philosophy, 2018
The historiographical intervention of the Indian Subaltern Studies Group took as their targets elite and nationalist accounts of the transition from colonialism to nationhood. However, they also included in their interventions a corresponding critique of Marxist analyses of the transition to nationalism. As Gyan Prakash argues “When Marxists turned the spotlight on colonial exploitation, their criticism was framed by a historicist scheme that universalized Europe’s historical experience” (Prakash 1994, 1375). Subaltern Studies thus also found a place within the field of Postcolonial Studies’ critique of Europe-centred analyses of history, politics and identity. The critique of Marxism targeted the Marxist reliance on “mode-of-production narratives” couched in terms of a “nation-state’s ideology of modernity and progress” which resulted in an inability to take seriously “the oppressed’s ‘lived experience’ of religion and social customs” (ibid., 1477). At the same time, as the term “subaltern” indicates, the Group’s relation to Marx and Marxist thought was also one of a critical engagement with Marx’s historical and theoretical understandings of the political transformations in societies undergoing colonial exploitation. The place of Antonio Gramsci is crucial here, in particular his writings on Italian history during the complex political processes which constituted the Risorgimento (Gramsci 1992).