Subalternity and Representation

Subalternity and Representation

Author: John Beverley

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1999-12-22

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9780822324164

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DIVA discussion of current debates in cultural and subaltern studies, with a particular focus on Latin America, that offers the possibility of constituting new political practices./div


Subalternity and Representation

Subalternity and Representation

Author: John Beverley

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1999-12-22

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 0822382199

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The term “subalternity” refers to a condition of subordination brought about by colonization or other forms of economic, social, racial, linguistic, and/or cultural dominance. Subaltern studies is, therefore, a study of power. Who has it and who does not. Who is gaining it and who is losing it. Power is intimately related to questions of representation—to which representations have cognitive authority and can secure hegemony and which do not and cannot. In this book John Beverley examines the relationship between subalternity and representation by analyzing the ways in which that relationship has been played out in the domain of Latin American studies. Dismissed by some as simply another new fashion in the critique of culture and by others as a postmarxist heresy, subaltern studies began with the work of Ranajit Guha and the South Asian Subaltern Studies collective in the 1980s. Beverley’s focus on Latin America, however, is evidence of the growing province of this field. In assessing subaltern studies’ purposes and methods, the potential dangers it presents, and its interactions with deconstruction, poststructuralism, cultural studies, Marxism, and political theory, Beverley builds his discussion around a single, provocative question: How can academic knowledge seek to represent the subaltern when that knowledge is itself implicated in the practices that construct the subaltern as such? In his search for answers, he grapples with a number of issues, notably the 1998 debate between David Stoll and Rigoberta Menchú over her award-winning testimonial narrative, I, Rigoberta Menchú. Other topics explored include the concept of civil society, Florencia Mallon’s influential Peasant and Nation, the relationship between the Latin American “lettered city” and the Túpac Amaru rebellion of 1780–1783, the ideas of transculturation and hybridity in postcolonial studies and Latin American cultural studies, multiculturalism, and the relationship between populism, popular culture, and the “national-popular” in conditions of globalization. This critique and defense of subaltern studies offers a compendium of insights into a new form of knowledge and knowledge production. It will interest those studying postcolonialism, political science, cultural studies, and Latin American culture, history, and literature.


Can the Subaltern Speak?

Can the Subaltern Speak?

Author: Rosalind C. Morris

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2010-03-16

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0231512856

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Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's original essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" transformed the analysis of colonialism through an eloquent and uncompromising argument that affirmed the contemporary relevance of Marxism while using deconstructionist methods to explore the international division of labor and capitalism's "worlding" of the world. Spivak's essay hones in on the historical and ideological factors that obstruct the possibility of being heard for those who inhabit the periphery. It is a probing interrogation of what it means to have political subjectivity, to be able to access the state, and to suffer the burden of difference in a capitalist system that promises equality yet withholds it at every turn. Since its publication, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" has been cited, invoked, imitated, and critiqued. In these phenomenal essays, eight scholars take stock of the effects and response to Spivak's work. They begin by contextualizing the piece within the development of subaltern and postcolonial studies and the quest for human rights. Then, through the lens of Spivak's essay, they rethink historical problems of subalternity, voicing, and death. A final section situates "Can the Subaltern Speak?" within contemporary issues, particularly new international divisions of labor and the politics of silence among indigenous women of Guatemala and Mexico. In an afterword, Spivak herself considers her essay's past interpretations and future incarnations and the questions and histories that remain secreted in the original and revised versions of "Can the Subaltern Speak?" both of which are reprinted in this book.


Gayatri Spivak

Gayatri Spivak

Author: Stephen Morton

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2007-02-12

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 074563284X

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Gayatri Chakravorty Spivaks seminal contribution to contemporary thought defies disciplinary boundaries. From her early translations of Derrida to her subsequent engagement with Marxism, feminism and postcolonial studies and her recent work on human rights, the war on terror and globalization, she has proved to be one of the most vital of present-day thinkers. In this book Stephen Morton offers a wide-ranging introduction to and critique of Spivaks work. He examines her engagements with philosophers and other thinkers from Kant to Paul de Man, feminists from Cixous to Helie-Lucas and literary texts by Charlotte Bronte, J. M. Coetzee, Mahasweta Devi and Jean Rhys. Spivaks thought is also situated in relation to subaltern studies. Throughout the book, Morton interrogates the materialist basis of Spivaks thought and demonstrates the ethical and political commitment which lies at the heart of her work. Stephen Morton provides an ideal introduction to the work of this complex and increasingly important thinker.


Sentencing Canudos

Sentencing Canudos

Author: Adriana Michele Campos Johnson

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Published: 2010-12-05

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0822977656

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In the late nineteenth century, the Brazilian army staged several campaigns against the settlement of Canudos in northeastern Brazil. The colony's residents, primarily disenfranchised former slaves, mestizos, landless farmers, and uprooted Indians, followed a man known as Antonio Conselheiro ("The Counselor"), who promoted a communal existence, free of taxes and oppression. To the fledgling republic of Brazil, the settlement represented a threat to their system of government, which had only recently been freed from monarchy. Estimates of the death toll at Canudos range from fifteen thousand to thirty thousand. Sentencing Canudos offers an original perspective on the hegemonic intellectual discourse surrounding this monumental event in Brazilian history. In her study, Adriana Michele Campos Johnson offers a close examination of nation building and the silencing of "other" voices through the reinvisioning of history. Looking primarily to Euclides da Cunha's Os Sert›es, which has become the defining—and nearly exclusive—account of the conflict, she maintains that the events and people of Canudos have been "sentenced" to history by this work. Johnson investigates other accounts of Canudos such as local oral histories, letters, newspaper articles, and the writings of Cunha's contemporaries, Afonso Arinos and Manoel Benicio, in order to strip away political agendas. She also seeks to place the inhabitants and events of Canudos within the realm of "everydayness" by recalling aspects of daily life that have been left out of official histories. Johnson analyzes the role of intellectuals in the process of culture and state formation and the ensuing sublimation of subaltern histories and populations. She echoes recent scholarship that posits subalternity as the product of discourse that must be disputed in order to recover cultural identities and offers a view of Canudos and postcolonial Latin America as a place to think from, not about.


Subalternity and Representation

Subalternity and Representation

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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DIVA discussion of current debates in cultural and subaltern studies, with a particular focus on Latin America, that offers the possibility of constituting new political practices./div


Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World

Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World

Author: Partha Chatterjee

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9780816623112

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"If it isn't obvious from the title of this book that this is going to be full of postmodern jargon, it becomes clear quite quickly that Chaterjee prefers difficult terms like 'problematic', 'thematic' and 'discourse' without always defining them - he even admits his admiration for Rorty, Barthes, Foucault and Derrida. Nonetheless, underneath all of this verbiage is a strong and convincing argument about the three stages of nationalism in India: the moment of departure (epitomized by Bankimchandra Chatttopadhyay), the moment of manoeuvre (Gandhi) and the moment of arrival (Nehru). Chatterjee clearly shows how nationalism in India was akin to Gramsci's concept of the 'passive revolution' - i.e. merely a drive towards independence, not towards transforming or breaking up colonial instutions. He argues that, instead of supporting nationalism, we should instead challenge the marriage between reason and capital. From the title of this book one might expect Chatterjee to draw links to other anti-colonial nationalisms but he doesn't; rather he only discusses India (not even other parts of South Asia). While this approach doesn't really make this book too useful for examining anti-colonial nationalisms in general, for someone like me who has never read a book on Indian nationalism this is a good introduction." -- from Amazon.ca.


Dalits, Subalternity and Social Change in India

Dalits, Subalternity and Social Change in India

Author: Ashok K. Pankaj

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-26

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0429785186

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The linguistic origin of the term Dalit is Marathi, and pre-dates the militant-intellectual Dalit Panthers movement of the 1970s. It was not in popular use till the last quarter of the 20th century, the origin of the term Dalit, although in the 1930s, it was used as Marathi-Hindi translation of the word "Depressed Classes". The changing nature of caste and Dalits has become a topic of increasing interest in India. This edited book is a collection of originally written chapters by eminent experts on the experiences of Dalits in India. It examines who constitute Dalits and engages with the mainstream subaltern perspective that treats Dalits as a political and economic category, a class phenomenon, and subsumes homogeneity of the entire Dalit population. This book argues that the socio-cultural deprivations of Dalits are their primary deprivations, characterized by heterogeneity of their experiences. It asserts that Dalits have a common urge to liberate from the oppressive and exploitative social arrangement which has been the guiding force of Dalit movement. This book has analysed this movement through three phases: the reformative, the transformative and the confrontationist. An exploration of dynamic relations between subalternity, exclusion and social change, the book will be of interest to academics in the field of sociology, political science and contemporary India.


Reading Subaltern Studies

Reading Subaltern Studies

Author: David Ludden

Publisher: Anthem Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 1843310589

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In recent years, the most important and influential change in the historiography of South Asia, and particularly India, has been brought about by the globally renowned 'Subaltern Studies' project that began 20 years ago. The present volume of critiques and readings of the project represents the first comprehensive historical introduction to Subaltern Studies and the worldwide debates it has generated among scholars of history, politics and sociology. The volume provides a reliable point of departure for new readers of Subaltern Studies and a resource base for experienced readers, who want to revive critical debates. In his introduction, David Ludden traces the intellectual history of subalternity and analyses trends in the globalization of academic discourse that account for the changing character of Subaltern Studies as well as for the shifting debates around it. In doing so, he expands the field of discussion well beyond Subaltern Studies into broader problems of historical research methodology in the study of subordinate people and into problems of writing contemporary intellectual history. The book thus provides a general readers' guide to techniques for critical historical reading. It uses Subaltern Studies to indicate how readers can read themselves, their context, the text, the author, the author's sources and the subject of study into a single, contentious field of historical analysis.