Subaltern
Sigrid Olsson March 15th, 2010
Subaltern is a relatively recent conception involving people outside social, geographical and political hegemonic power structures. The concept was, when it was used in the 1970´s, first refering to colonized people of South Asia, as a way trying to view colonization from a new perspective, from below, unlike the traditional way of refering from above. At this point, Marxists had already been observing colonisation from a proletarian point of view, but this was still from a western, eurocentric perspective. During the beginning of the 1980´s the concept developed into a criticism against the colonialism, and today the term is common within the so called Post-Colonial theory, frequently mentioned in several Humanistic subjects such as Sociology, History, Anthropology and also Literature. Still, the definition of Subaltern is contentius, and on the exact meaning there is still disagreement. Some theorists use the term generally looking at marginalized subordinated groups lacking social status, while others claim that the term should be used in a more specific way. One of the latter is Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, an Indian literary critic and theorist, author of the article ”Can the Subaltern Speak?”. Spivak is anxious about not referring to, for example, the entire working class as Subaltern, meaning that they could still make their voices heard, in contrary to the subaltern. She claims that a Subaltern never can express herself from her own perspective and that the voice of the subaltern constantly is shaped through a western perspective, preventing the subaltern from being actors or agents. The post-colonial thinker Homi Bhaba have in several of his essays asserted that the subaltern or the oppressed, in their opposition to the majority actually defines the majority. This, in turn, can make it possible for the subaltern to undermine the holders of the hegemonic power. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, author of the book Toward a New Legal Common Sense released in 2002, uses the term ”subaltern cosmopolitism”, referring to the struggle performed by marginalized people, against the neo-liberal hegemonic globalization and social exclusion.
References:
Loomba, Ania, Tankekraft förlag, 2008, Kolonialism/postkolonialism : en introduktion till ett forskningsfält – Kan den subalterna tala?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaltern_(postcolonialism)
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