Camalita Naicker on Marikana as an Event in the Subaltern Sphere of Politics

Language Knowledge and Decolonizing the University

Partha Chatterjee Interviewed by Manu Goswami

Partha Chatterjee Interviewed by Manu Goswami 2013 by TigersEye99

Revisiting Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Conversation with Partha Chatterjee

Partha Chatterjee: Subaltern Studies and Capital

Partha Chatterjee: Subaltern Studies and Capital by TigersEye99

Powerful Critique of Postcolonial Theory

Powerful Critique of Postcolonial Theory by TigersEye99

Towards a History of Non-violent Resistance

Towards a History of Non-violent Resistance by TigersEye99

Marxism & the Legacy of Subaltern Studies

On the Decline of Class Analysis in South Asian Studies

by Vivek Chibber, 2006

The decline of class analysis has been pervasive across the intellectual landscape in recent years. But South Asian studies stands out in the severity with which it has been hit by this phenomenon. It also is the field where the influence of post-structuralism has been most pronounced in the wake of Marxism’s decline. This essay offers an explanation for both the decline of class analysis and the ascendance of post-structuralism in South Asian studies as practiced in the United States. I suggest that the decline of class theorizing was a predictable and natural result of the decline of working-class politics in the United States. But the severity of its decline in South Asian studies in particular was a symptom of its never having made much of a dent on the field in the first place. This left unchallenged the traditional, Indological approach, which was heavily oriented toward culturalism. This in turn made the field a hospitable ground for the entrance of post-structuralism, which, like mainstream Indology, not only eschews materialist analysis, but is largely hostile to class. South Asian studies is thus one of the few fields in which traditional scholars and younger ones are both able to agree on their hostility to class analysis. Finally, I argue that the decline of class is now visible in Indian universities too, and this is largely caused by the overwhelming influence that U.S. universities have come to exercise over Indian elite academic culture.

How Does the Subaltern Speak?

by Vivek Chibber, The Jacobin

Postcolonial theory discounts the enduring value of Enlightenment universalism at its own peril.

In recent decades, postcolonial theory has largely displaced Marxism as the dominant perspective among intellectuals engaged in the project of critically examining the relationship between the Western and non-Western worlds. Originating in the humanities, postcolonial theory has subse­quently become increasingly influential in history, anthropology, and the social sciences. Its rejection of the universalisms and meta-narratives associated with Enlightenment thought dovetailed with the broader turn of the intellectual left during the 1980s and 1990s.

Demolition Job

Postcolonial Theory &
the Specter of Capital

Rosinka Chaudhuri, The Indian Express

Book: Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital

Author: Vivek Chibber

Publisher: Navayana

Price: Rs 450

Pages: 306

Vivek Chibber does not like the Subaltern Studies historians, and his mission in this book is to tear down the early theories of, in his order of importance, Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Partha Chatterjee. What these historians have influentially said seems to him to be simply wrong-headed and methodologically dubious; his favourite descriptions of them here are as "cultural essentialists" and "Orientalists" (the latter without reference to Edward Said, who is mentioned only once on page eight). Culture, in fact, is a bad word for him in general, and one of his main objections to the Subalternists is the primacy they choose to give to cultural locations.

Partha Chatterjee: After Subaltern Studies

Partha Chatterjee: After Subaltern Studies by TigersEye99

Ranajit Guha on the failure to grasp the political agency of peasants

“…[I]nsurgency is regarded as external to the peasant’s consciousness and Cause is made to stand in as a phantom surrogate for Reason, the logic of that consciousness”.

- Ranajit Guha, The Prose of Counter-Insurgency

Are Those-Who-Do-Not-Count Capable of Reason? Thinking Political Subjectivity in the (Neo-)Colonial World and the Limits of History

By Michael Neocosmos, 2012

This article is concerned to show that the historical science of the (neo-)colonial world is unable to allow
for an analysis of the political subjectivities of ‘those-who-do-not-count’ or ‘subalterns’ as rational beings.
Rather, it can only think such subjectivities as the products of people who are merely bearers of their social
location, not thinking subjects. As a result, such history can only be a history of place, not a history of the
transcending of place; it therefore amounts to colonial or state history. Historical objectivity invariably
produces state history. The thought of the possibility of emancipatory politics, which always exceeds place,
is thus precluded. This is an unavoidable epistemic problem in history and the social sciences in their current
form. Following the work of Lazarus, I argue for an alternative historical methodology in Africa in terms of
an internal analysis of the idioms of politics as discontinuous subjective sequences.

Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Historiography

by Dipesh Chakrabarty, 2000

Subaltern Studies: Writings on Indian History and Society began in 1982 as a series of interventions in some debates specific to the writing of modern Indian history. Ranajit Guha (b.1923), a historian of India then teaching at the University of Sussex, was the inspiration behind it. Guha and eight younger scholars based in India, the United Kingdom, and Australia constituted the editorial collective of Subaltern Studies until 1988, when Guha retired from the team. The series now has a global presence that goes well beyond India or South Asia as an area of academic specialization. The intellectual reach of Subaltern Studies now also exceeds that of the discipline of history. Postcolonial theorists of diverse disciplinary backgrounds have taken interest in the series. Much discussed, for instance, are the ways in which contributors to Subaltern Studies have participated in contemporary critiques of history and nationalism, and of orientalism and Eurocentrism in the construction of social science knowledge. At the same time, there have also been discussions of Subaltern Studies in many history and social science journals. Selections from the series have been published in English, Spanish, Bengali, and Hindi and are in the process of being brought out in Tamil and Japanese. A Latin American Subaltern Studies Association was established in North America in 1992. It would not be unfair to say that the expression “subaltern studies,” once the name of a series of publications in Indian history, now stands as a general designation for a field of studies often seen as a close relative of postcolonialism.

After Subaltern Studies

By Partha Chatterjee, Economic & Political Weekly

As an intellectual project, Subaltern Studies was perhaps overdetermined by its times. Given today's changed contexts the tasks set out by it cannot be taken forward within the framework and methods mobilised for it. Subaltern Studies was a product of its time; another time calls for other projects. An exploration of what Subaltern Studies achieved, what remained unasked and unrecognised and what has changed in the historical context to necessitate new intellectual project(s).

This article is based on the Keynote address given at the conference on “After Subaltern Studies” held at Princeton University, 27-28 April 2012.

The Prose of Counter-Insurgency

by Ranajit Guha, 1983

When a peasant rose in revolt at any time or place under the Raj, he did so necessarily and explicitly in violation of a series of codes which defined his very existence as a member of that colonial, and still largely semi-feudal society. For his subalternity was materialized by the structure of property, institutionalized by law, sanctified by religion and made tolerable-and even desirable-by tradition. To rebel was indeed to destroy many of those familiar signs which he had learned to read and manipulate in order to extract a meaning out of the harsh world around him and live with it. The risk in 'turning things upside down' under these conditions was indeed so great that he could hardly afford to engage in such a project in a state of
absent-rnindedness.

Subaltern Studies: No Dalit Movement so No Dalit Question Part 1-4

The limits of nationalism

Sumit Sarkar

TO start with the obvious: history, described famously by E.H. Carr many years ago as the ever-changing dialogue of the present with the past, is necessarily being ‘rewritten’ all the time. The immediate issues that have given this question great topicality and high media profile need not be rehearsed again. Briefly, they relate to the current state-backed Hindutva drive to ‘rewrite’ history through an onslaught on established historiography.

Gramsci at the Margins: A Pre-History Nepal’s Maoist Movemen

This talk, titled “Gramsci at the Margins: A Pre-History Nepal’s Maoist Movement” was given at the CUNY Graduate Center on November 1, 2011 as a part of the Geography Colloquium Speaker Series, sponsored by the Earth and Environmental Sciences Program and the Provost’s Office. The paper by Vinay Gidwani and Dinesh Paudel can be downloaded by clicking here: