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A comment on “After Subaltern Studies”

Partha Chatterjee’s essay “After Subaltern Studies” talks about the need for reforming the domain of Subaltern Studies. He, along with Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty and others pioneered and contributed to the Subaltern Studies Group (SSG). In this essay, Chatterjee calls for a significant shift in the way Subaltern Studies is practiced in India especially its intervention in areas like popular culture and ethnography.

1.	Summary 1.1 The Importance of the Youth in Subaltern Studies Group Chatterjee denies the need for a mere “extension or reformulation” of the domain but calls for a younger demographic to provide new projects to the same since the original Subaltern Studies Group has already contributed extensively to the field. While being self-reflexive, he reminisces that them being young helped them not be too stringent in their opinions and allowed for flexibility. In addition, since Ranajit Guha had already made significant contributions to the field of subaltern studies in South Asia and belonged to a different generation, it guided them to look at the said domain from a youthful albeit critical perspective. Chatterjee argues that in the process of being involved in Subaltern Studies, the group was aware of all the developments and previous works existing in the subject but they were careful to not be limited by the boundaries of it. Another factor that influenced their cause was an eclectic approach in addition to them being from various national and international universities. This hints at the diversity that was manifested in the project. 1.2	Peasant Insurgency Chatterjee claims it is imperative that not only the domain of Subaltern Studies but also the “mass-political subject”, i.e. the peasant community, has to be reshaped. The earlier works of Subaltern Studies portrayed this subject of subordination in a particular way, which ended up homogenizing them to a one-dimensional story. He refers to Ranajit Guha’s works which portrayed the peasants as catalysts of rebel consciousness during colonial times. However, Chatterjee contests this by saying that “[s]urely the insurgent peasant as mass political subject did not exhaust the entirety of peasant life” (46) by only contributing to the rebellions. Further, the nature of insurgency in the peasants has undergone changes in contemporary times. Even though some of them still resort to older, violent practices of agitation such as setting fire to vehicles or road blocks, a common response among peasants today is suicide. Thus, to trace the genealogical shifts in the peasant community, new projects in Subaltern Studies are required. 1.3 Further Inclusions in Subaltern Studies Subaltern Studies is a field that borrows heavily from various theoretical frameworks such as Marxism, Structuralism and Saidian and Foucauldian ideas about power and discourses. However, the author points out that one theory, that of populism, comes closest to understanding Subaltern Studies. This is so because it “describes a process of the temporary and often fragile aggregation of disparate groups under a common signifier called “the people” assembled against a putative enemy of the people…” (Chatterjee 47). In addition, he says that “intellectual fashions” generally have a lifespan of less than 30 years. Thus, he concludes the article by saying that new frameworks are required to understand the aspects of the existing field of Subaltern Studies. Subaltern Studies is a domain that cannot be looked at in isolation. Chatterjee claims that Subaltern Studies has now entered the fields of ethnography and popular culture. It has undergone a significant shift by focusing on the “implicit conceptual structures that supposedly underlie the practical activities of people” (Chatterjee 49). This is a phenomenon that the old concept of Subaltern Studies had not accepted into its purview. In terms of popular culture, media like films, calendar art, advertisements, et cetera reveal notable aspects of subaltern voices whereas, an ethnographic account would disclose an intricate and personal version of the minority. 2.	History of Subaltern Studies Subaltern Studies has been a controversial and ambiguous field. It deals with the voices of the minority or the subaltern. However, it is of paramount importance to address problematic questions like who comprises the minority, whose version of subalternity is one reading and why should Subaltern Studies be revisited. It is because of these issues that Partha Chatterjee calls for an exploration of “after subaltern studies”. “Subaltern Studies began as a revisionist historiography of peasant movements in colonial India… The group consisted of heterodox historians of South Asia who were critical of the nature of the historiography prevalent at that time because of its elitist biases and “bourgeois-nationalist” and “colonial” mode of history writing. These forms of history distorted the historical portrayal of the subalterns or the “people” and neglected their role in the anti-colonial struggle.” (Chowdhury, BlackwellReference). Thus, in the context of the Indian freedom struggle, the peasants become an integral part of Subaltern Studies. In the article “After Subaltern Studies”, Chatterjee makes a reference to Ranajit Guha’s seminal work Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (1983) in which he distinguished the peasants from a version of history that chose to ignore and eliminate the minority. Guha asserts that this method of looking at history denies the “the subaltern’s autonomous consciousness” (Prakash 1480).A colonial appropriation of history written by the British dismisses the voices of the peasants which is addressed by Guha since he refers to the vernacular texts left by the workers such as their diaries, poems, ballads, local newspapers, almanacs, et cetera as a source of history. 3.	Critical Analysis 3.1. Why “After” Subaltern Studies A major reason for revisiting subaltern studies is the constant re-evaluation of the section of the society being suppressed. The author argues that there were several questions that the Subaltern Studies project had not properly catered to, such as the concepts of gender. Both Chatterjee and Dipesh Chakrabarty agree that the earlier works of the Subaltern Studies Group (SSG) lacked different gendered inputs due to the absence of “women in [their] editorial team” (45). Thus, the issue was not addressed for a certain period of time, resulting in a slow progress of the discourse within India. In addition, Chatterjee claims that some questions had been completely dismissed by the SSG. This is evident through the omission of the Dalit community within the essay itself. 3.2. Subaltern Studies as a Form of Resistance In the article, Partha Chatterjee recalls the political events that took place between the period of mid-1960s and early 1980s and its effects on the Subaltern Studies Group. The Emergency period (1975-1977) started as a result of the Congress Party leaning towards a populist understanding, which comprised focusing on ideas such as inclusivity, nationalism and peasantry. However, the focus shifted from an agrarian society to one that was overruled by mechanisation and globalisation. Thus, this deviation in ideology resulted in the suppression of the needs of peasants and sidelined them. It was during such turbulent times that the essence of Subaltern Studies emerged, consequently leading to a rapid growth of the domain. In this context, Subaltern Studies rose as a means of resistance by constructing the peasants as insurgent. 3.3. Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial “It has been suggested that it is more helpful to think of postcolonialism not just as coming literally after colonialism and signifying its demise, but more flexibly as the contestation of colonial domination and the legacies of colonialism.” (Loomba 32) Therefore, postcolonialism is not limited just to a temporal aspect but signifies an ideological shift as well. It comprises questioning existing hierarchies imposed by colonisers through subversion, something that is embodied by Subaltern Studies. Hence, both these ideologies are intrinsically related to each other and cannot be viewed in isolation. Subaltern Studies, by giving a voice to the minority, explores the unchartered terrains of the other side of history, politics and hierarchical structures in societies. It borrows from obscure sources like pamphlets, oral stories, etc. to reshape how one understands or looks at the past. Thus, at its very core, Subaltern Studies becomes an integral part of postcolonialism. 3.4. Problems within Subaltern Studies Just like any other theoretical framework, Subaltern Studies too, has an inherently hierarchical structure. Within the classification of the “minority” there is a manifestation of rungs in terms of their visibility. Even though Subaltern Studies tries to speak for the peasant community that colonial history had ignored via “obligatory amnesia” and “selective remembrance” (Prakash 1482), it in turn becomes a practitioner of the same by establishing such hierarchies. This is manifested in the essay when Partha Chatterjee only makes a mention of women in passing and completely omits Dalits or tribal communities as subalterns. 4.	See Also •	Popular Culture •	Ethnography •	Populism •	Subaltern Studies •	Subaltern •	Edward Said •	Postcolonialism •	Michel Foucault •	Dalit •	Ranajit Guha •	Dipesh Chakrabarty •	Partha Chatterjee •	Marxism •	The Emergency (India) •	Structuralism Bibliography 1.	References Chatterjee, Partha. “After Subaltern Studies.” Economic & Political Weekly 47.35 (2012): 44-39. Web. 20 Jun 2017. Loomba, Ania. “Situating Colonial and Postcolonial Studies.” Colonialism/Postcolonialism. London: Routledge, 1998. Print. Prakash, Gyan. “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism.” The American Historical Review (1994): 1479-1482. JSTOR. Web. 25 Jun. 2017. 2.	Sources Bijukumar, V. “Economic Reforms, Populism and Party Politics in India.” The Indian Journal of Political Science 65.2 (2004): 161-180. JSTOR. Web. 25 Jun 2017. Brass, Tom. “The Agrarian Myth, the ‘New’ Populism and the ‘New’ Right.” Economic & Political Weekly 32.4 (1997): 27-42. JSTOR. Web. 20 Jun 2017. Chatterjee, Partha. “Subaltern History.” International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences (2015): 632-36. Web. 28 Jun. 2017. Chatterjee, Partha. Lineages of Political Society: Studies in Postcolonial Democracy. Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2011. Print. Chatterjee, Partha. The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Print. Dhanagare, D. N. “Subaltern Consciousness and Populism: Two Approaches in the Study of Social Movements in India.” Social Scientist 16.11 (1988): 18-35. JSOTR. Web. 26 Jun 2017. Guha, Ranajit. “DSpace at West Bengal State Central Library: Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India.” n.d. Web. 19 Jun 2017. Guha. Ranajit. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. Delhi: Oxford U Press, 2002. Print. Ludden, David. Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the Globalization of South Asia. London: Anthem, 2011. Print. Roy Chowdhury, Arnab. “Subaltern Studies: The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies.” Blackwell Reference Online. 2016. Web. 21 Jun 2017. 3.	External Links