Although the term ‘Subaltern’
was coined by Antonio Gramsci, as a method of intellectual discourse that identifies
with social groups that have been excluded and/or displaced from the so-called
‘dominant centre,’ Ranajit Guha brought the term to greater prominence in the
Indian context, advocating the need to formulate a ‘new narrative’, a narrative
that would help reclaim the histories and the voices of the subjugated, marginalized
classes!
In his prefatorial
remarks to his remarkable compendium on Subaltern
Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society, [writing from
Canberra, in August 1981,] Guha informs the reader of the need to ‘rectify the
elitist bias characteristic of much research and academic work’ in the field of
subaltern studies, with special reference to history and society, which he
feels, have always been complicit in the subaltern condition.
This edited volume
contains scholarly articles from David Arnold, Partha Chatterjee, David
Hardiman, Gyan Pandey, Shahid Amin and Ranajit Guha, the editor himself!
Ranajit Guha’s opening
article titled, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India”, advocates
a sixteen point plan that doubles up as a ‘strategy’ when one studies the historiography of Colonial
India, since he strongly feels that, the historiography of colonial India has
almost always been dominated by elitism, colonial elitism, and
bourgeois-nationalist elitism. This ‘inadequacy of elitist historiography’ is
hence described by Guha as ‘un-historical historiography’!
This ‘sixteen point
charter’ of Guha reminds us of Gramsci’s ‘six point plan’ for studying the
history of the subaltern classes, which he outlines in his ‘Notes on Italian
history’ (1934—35).
Moreover, this series in Subaltern Studies, in six volumes, (there
were twelve in total, Guha having edited the first six of them!), has a wide
range of essays pertaining to society, politics, economics, sociology and the
history of subalterneity!
Although Guha had
given us a structured rubric for the term ‘subaltern,’ it was Gayatri Spivak
who, much later, in 1988, made the term quite accessible to academia worldwide. To begin with, Spivak had words of encomium and appreciation on Guha’s subalternist research venture, but at the same time, she minced no words in pointing out the overt male bias in their hitherto existing subalternist research,
as almost every member of the Subaltern Studies collective was a male, and hence she felt that real life experiences of subaltern
women were conveniently sidelined, sidestepped or even ignored in the process!
So what makes this
Spivakian 1988 essay, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ a rage and a sensation in
academic studies in general, and postcolonial studies in particular?
We shall discuss that and more, in our next post…
Stay tuned…
image: amazondotcom
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