HST287: Reading notes, 25-Nov-2004
Chaturvedi, Vinayak. Mapping
Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial. (New York: Verso, 2000)
Chaps. 1, 2, 5, 6, 8-12, 14, 15
1) On Some Aspects of the
Historiography of Colonial India, Ranajit
Guha. Pp. 1-7.
"The historiography of Indian Nationalism has for a long time been
dominated by elitism. (p. 1) Both the colonists and the
bourgeosie-nationalists who attempted to adapt and prosper under their
rule shaped the written history of India.
With this opening sentence the subaltern studies group both the essence
of the group's work and the style perhaps (Marxist? we'll see)
stimulus - response
colonialists - nationalists
or:
"The general orientation of the other kind of elitist historiography is
to represent Indian nationalism as primarily an idealist venture in
which indigenous elite led the people from subjugation to freedom." (p.
2)
but
this "cannot explain Indian nationalism to us...for it fails to
acknowledge, far less, interpret, the contribution made by the people, on their own, that is, independently of the elite to the
making and development of this nationalism." (p. 2)
elite politics - mobilization is vertical - adapting to colonials
subaltern politics - horizontal, kinship, community (p. 4)
elites sometimes tried to mobilize the masses, sometimes succeeded,
sometimes failed: workers never succeeded in organizing/banding
together with peasants or bourgeosie to overthrow colonials
"It is the study of the historic
failure of the nation to come to its own a failure due to the
inadequacy of the bourgeosie as well as of the working class to lead it
into a decisive victory over colonialism and a bourgeosie-democratic
revolution of either the classic nineteenth-century type under the
hegemony of the bourgeosie or a more modern type under the hegemony of
worker and peasants, that is, a 'new democracy'--it is the study of this failure which
constitutes the problematic of the historiographyof colonial India."
(p. 6)
"...we are convinced that elitist historiography should be resolutely
fought by developing an alternative discourse based on the rejection of
the spurious and unhistorical monism characteristic of its view of
Indian nationalism and on the recognition of the co-existence and
interaction of the elite and subaltern domains of politics." (p. 6)
The call of the subaltern studies
group is to become a point of convergence for all who wish to study the
politics of India and find elitest historiography both oppressive and
decidedly shortsighted and incomplete.
2) The Nation and Its Peasants, Partha Chatterjee. Pp. 8-23.
Peasants in Europe and Russia; extinction or absorption
In India there was a paternal relationship. Colonials saw peasants as
needing protection, they were simple but easily aroused to violence.
Nationalists saw them as unaware of their expolitation, so they needed
to be guided. In both cases, peasants were seen as objects of these
strategies, not as individuals or groups in their own right.
Sometimes peasants seemed to be aware of and fit into national
political struggle, sometimes it was marred by sectarian strife. Why?
To find out we need "a critique of both colonialist and nationalist
historiographies by bringing in the peasantry as a subject of history,
endowed with its own distinctive forms of consciousness and making
sense of and acting upon the world on its own terms." (p. 10)
Guha studies insurgency because that is where peasant consciousness
left its mark on those in power--in the 'dialectical relation of power'
(p. 11) can be seen the imprint of the peassant mind (they don;t record
their own). "Guha used colonial discourse of counter-insurgency to
read, as a mirror image, the discourse of insurgency." (p. 12)
Guha, six aspects of "insurgent peasant consciousness: ambiguity,
modality, solidarity, transmission, and territoriality (p. 12)
Principles of community:
- bourgeosie - individuals have preferences, they band together on
the basis of shared preferences
- peasants - believe they are already a community with horizontal
ties, so act according to that. no simple determinate--not caste,
religion, or toteism "we are brothers"
Subaltern studies; to write "an Indian history of peasant struggle" not
" a history of peasant struggle" (p. 18)
Cool sentence:
"The relation between history and the theoretical disciplines of the
social sciences is necessarily one where structural neatness of the
latter is constantly disturbed and refashioned by the intransigent
material of the former."
There was no overall Indian revolution, but some of the 'local'revolts
involved areas/populations larger than some European countries and more
complex
"We could argue that it is always the spectre of an open rebellion by
the peasantry which haunts consciousness of the dominant classes in the
agrarian societies and shapes and modifies their forms of exercise of
domination." (p. 22)
Summary/future: "An Indian history of peasant struggles is a
fundamental part of the real history of our people; the task is for the
Indian historian to perceive in this consciousness of his or her own
self." (p. 23)
5) Recovering the Subject: Subaltern Studies and Histories of
Resistance in Colonial South Asia, Rosalind
O'Hanlon. Pp. 72-115.
A recap of the movement - primarily about recovery of the people's
history as opposed to elite history. Article proposes to be:
- a general review
- rethink issues raised by groups
- explore limitations
- indicate future developments
non-elite and non-Marxist (i.e. about people, not general classes) and
non-nationalistic (i.e. not everything that nationals do is part of an
anti-colonial struggle
"The teleologies of Marxist historical writing have acted to empty
subaltern movements of their specific types of consciousness and
practice, and to see in the history of colonial South Asia only the
linear development of class consciousness." (p. 76)
It is clear what the contributors are disatisfied with. She wants to
ask if they "share some more positive common ground or set of
assumptions." (p. 77)
Point: when your object is to write a history of the masses it can (and
often does) take on the form of recovering the experience of the
group being studied. Currently, elite=bad, the people=good, so you want
your project to reflect the ideas of the people. Those who study the
elite defend themselves by saying those in power determine what happens
in society so to study a society we need to study them.
Make the subaltern a subject in his own right by reclaiming his own
history, not a reflection of elites, a pawn, a victim (p. 80)
But watch out for essentialist reductionism: if there is a history of
their own it implies that 'they' are a cohesive 'they' (p. 82) and that
they exist outside the influence of the elite (p. 84) (She sees Guha as
doing this) (a similar example: not all women are/have same interests
as white middle class women - p. 98)
There has been some criticism of the project, from without as well as
from within, that the contributors have dwelt largely on moments of
overt resistance and revolt." (p. 99)
Why? we demand that subalterns show their independent will
By focusing on what we see as positive: independence, we miss what they
might consider positive or, we foist our own preconceptions on them
which prevents us from seeing reality (and is a power play, too)
Irony: "like the subaltern himself, those who set out to restore his
presence end only by borrowing the tools of that discourse, tools which
serve only to reduplicate the first subjection which they effect, in
the realms of critical theory." (p. 105)
But what form should the subaltern take if not that of autonomous
subject-agent (the all powerful western ideal of independent and free
person)
(Bush: freedom on the march another name for imposition of power)
So, for example, if the group is looking for resistance actions, how
should they define them. What constitutes resistance?
She thinks we should move away from the current definition of
resistance, violent, deliberately political, and examine other more
subtle forms or rather We Should do Both. (p. 111)
6) Rallying Around the Subaltern, C. A. Bayly. Pp. 116-126.
Subaltern studies and students went from a minority to a majority,
though most use traditional sources (police reports, newspapers, admin
memos and official accounts) as their sources. Mostly they have been
focusing on resistance.
The effort has been one of filling in gaps, recovery, rather than
applying theory.
The movement itself grew out of leftist period--it was cool to study
the down-trodden, the forgotten ones (If you privilege the gaps in
history you also privilege the gapees.)
"Any historical thesis must surely address itself to the question of
historical change, and in this particular case to the question of why
peasant, tribal or worker movements occurred at particular times and
not at others; what were the major determinants of change; to what
extent was peasant solidarity enhanced over time; more importantly why
did it decline at others?" (p. 120)
He willfocus on Pandey's 'Rallying Around the Cow' to determine how
subaltern scholars address the ideas of change. Pandey sees "several
basic parameters of change which lie outside the subaltern world but
continue to inform is (p. 121)
- escalation of economic conflict in late colonial as a result of
economic stagnation
- desire of marginal communities to improve their ritual status
So, even peasants have a pecking order. Trying to speak of 'the
peasant' ignores this and so we don;t get the whole picture--and so
certain moments or actions cannot be properly understood. (They are
being forced into a mold which does not fit.)
"In practice the Subaltern historians quite often allude to these
issues, but the rhetorical devices of 'subaltern' and 'peasant
resistance' often impede them in this more subtle analysis." (p. 126)
8) Writing Post-Orientalist Histories
of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography, Gyan Prakash. Pp. 163-190
By saying 'the third world should write its own history' you are
furthering the us/them, normal/abnormal, third world is a monolith
dichotomy.
But (!!) by acknowledging that 'the third world' is itself a historic
construct we can examine how it became so and see it as just another
historical entity to be studied.
Orientalism--Europeans are scholars and audience, orientals are 'inert
objects of knowledge' (p. 164)
Start: 1757 - East India Co conquers Bengal - must learn about the
natives so translate their work to study them
then: find roots - Europe the more advanced civilization from Indian
child-like roots
1920-30: Nationalist movement - first looked at ancient India, then
regional histories
"The assumption that all that was valuable in world civilizations
originated in Greece was challenged." (p. 168)
Also argued that Hinduism does not equal Indian.
The old historical model: Ancient India; Hindus subdued by Muslim
tyranny and so vulnerable to conquest by Britain
1940s: So, Nationalism at least makes India an active subject rather
than a passive one but it is still a single Oriental entity.
1950s: U.S. $cholarships - the search for the 'authentic' India,
anthropology, etc. the 'scientific' objective outside study,
Marxist - domination and struggle
new post-Marxist: looking at relationships between colonialists and
nationals, asking how historic aspects of each led to building of
current India - foundational
early subaltern: still subaltern consciousness
later subaltern: more post-structuralist
Big Point:
The Orientalism of studying India may, ironically, be the best tool for
studying "Westernism" not because they are essentialist differences but
because "Western tradition was itself a peculiar configuration in the
colonial world" (p. 186) not a tradition but a historic construct
developed and defined at a specific time.
9) After Orientalism: Culture,
Criticism and Politics in the Third World.
Rosalind O'Hanlon and David
Washbrook. Pp.
191-219
Ouch: The anti-postmodernist (esp. American-flavored) article, or,
postmodernists are just as biased and short-sighted as the colonials
they complain about.
Post-structuralism and postmodernism. Characteristics of:
- Foucauldian approaches to power
- politics of difference
- emphasis on the decentered and the heterogeneous
The article asks: Is Prakash's 'post-foundational' approach to Indian
history the best way to gain critical understanding to it? (esp. "given
the manner in which these perspectives have come to be interpreted and
absorbedinto the mainstream of historical and anthropological
scholarship, particularly in the United States." (p. 191)) They are reacting to chap 8 article
They argue that it is not, that these methods are as prescriptive as
those they replace, and that historians are misinterpreting Said when
they assume that his "work provides a clear paradigm for a history that
transcends older problems of representation." (p. 192)
When we invoke Derrida we are pointing out that all
foundations/structures are constructed, thus one is no more
useful/objective than another, thus we should simply do without. The
authors say this misses the crucial point: "we cannot actually do
without some categories and some means of evaluating orders of
certainty, in order to comprehend, to explain, to elucidate and to do.
That these categories are conventions, Searles further argues, is no
bar to our continuing to use them provided we recognize them for what
they are, inventions of our own necessity. However, this recognition
involbes a change in the way we conceive and test them -- not against
metaphysically conceived standards of objectivity but against their
adequacy in serving the purposes for which we want and need to use
them." (p. 195)
Very pragmatic yet savvy.
So, Prakash's Derrida-derived approach is at odds with his avowed
purpose of historical reconstruction and political engagement.
(Somewhere in there is a difference
between the practice of history and the practice of literary studies, I
think...between art/aesthetics and craft/usefulness maybe)
They go on to describe how several historians fall into this
dichotomous trap.
Here's an interesting thought, esp as re: the amount of 'noise' our
century is generating, not to mention that old stereotype of the Lone
Historian:
"To state the obvious, the historian must undertake the prior, and in
part subjective, tasks that only the historian can do: to turn the
noise into coherent voices through which the past may speak to the
present and to construct the questions to which the past may give the
present intelligible answers." (p. 198)
Isn't this exactly the struggle Ayres
describes re: The Valley of the Shadow?
Another dilemma: we study subalterns to emancipate them, hear their
voice and their history. But we use Foucauldian terms/methods which
actually cast power in terms of relationships, not emancipation at all.
Like feminism, those studying it must "continue to act as if such a
category exists, [even if they question that such a limiting category
indeed does] precisely" because the world acts as if it does. (p. 203)
Same is true of Said's Orientalism: you can invoke Foucault but it is
contradictory to then try to use history for political or emancipatory
activity.
Other approaches: ethnography: Clifford and his Papgos Island people
writing the book on their culture in such a way that is both a handbook
(for indigenes) and a description (for non-natives). Of course, by
choosing his set of authors he is privileging those voices, just as the
East India Company did by choosing the Brahmins as the source of
knowledge re: India. Thus that view is the one that is adopted/imposed
on all other views.
"Yet what is striking about these debates, particularly those employing
postmodernist perspectives, is how one particular identity, that of
class and material relations, is so often downplayed or screened
off...What it means is that the true underclasses of the worls are only
permitted to present themselves as victims of the particularistic kinds
of gender, racial and national oppression which they share with
preponderantly middle-class American scholars and critics, who would
speak with or in their voices. What such underclasses are denied is the
ability to present themselves as classes: as victims of the
universalistic, systemic, and material deprivations of capitalism which
clearly separate them off from their subaltern expostitors. In sum, the
deeply unfortunate result of these radical postmodernist approaches in
the minorities debate is thus to reinforce and to give new credence to
the well-known hostility of American political culture to any kind of
materialist or class analysis." (p. 215)
Well, duh!!!
Resonating:
"There runs through [current academic writing] a desire to be seen on
the side of the dispossessed against power, working with their strange
voices and different stories, subverting dominant cultures and
intellectual traditions 'from within the academy'. But in the case of
postmodernist approaches, these commitments can be made with a
lightened burden of authorship and a comforting sense that in this
volatile new world of cultural self-invention, the critic's own history
is at best a fable. What all this begins to look very like, in fact, as
a new form of that key and enduring feature of Western capitalist and
imperialist culture: the bad conscience of liberalism, still struggling
with the continuing paradox between an ideology of liberty at home and
the reality of profoundly expoitative political relations abroad, and
now striving to salve and re-equip itself in a postcolonail world with
new arguments and better camouflaged forms of moral authority."
10) Can the 'Subaltern' Ride? A Reply
to O'Hanlon and Washbrook, Gyan Prakash. Pp.
220-238.
In which Prakash gets a chance to reply to Chap. 9!
O'Hanlon and Washbrook are actually trying to look for mastery over
ambivalence. They set up a false dichotomy between Marxism and
poststructuralism so they can shoot it down. They misrepresent Derrida,
deconstructive criticism, capitalist modernity and its relation to
colonialism, Said and the relation to liberal humanism, and
postmodernism and the politics of differentiated subject positions. (p.
223)
- Derrida: not a nihilist, not arbitrariness of categories, rather,
look at the gaps because the gaps define the patterns
- the past does not come to us as uninterpreted 'noise' and
deconstruction can help us explore what shaped that noise so we can
better interpret it
- "Critical history cannot simply document the process by which
capitalism becomes dominant, for that amounts to repeating the history
we seek to displace" (p. 227) "To suggest that we reinscribe the
effects of capitalism's foundational status by writing about histories
that remained heterogeneous with the logic of capital, therefore, is
not to abandon Marxism but to extricate class analysis from its
nineteenth-century heritage, acknowledging that Marxism's critique of
capitalism was both enabled and disabled by its historicity as a
European discourse." (p. 230)
- Does Said suggest that Orientalism functions "as a discourse
unified by the Western will to dominate" or as recognition of
self-aware individuals? Yes! "Two thought with but a single mind!"
- "It is one thing to recognize that certain systems of dominance
operate by conferring and constituting identities such as the woman and
man, colonizer and colonized, and quite another to assume that such
homogeneous identifications do not split and open themselves up to
heterogeneous formations in historical articulation." (p. 235) in other
words, today you are woman, tomorrow you are resisting oppression. This
does not mean that you are resisting oppression of women, it could be
other kinds of oppression as well. That's an easy one!
Conclusion: the Brits are ticked off at the Americans. They see a
problem but erroneously assume they know the cause, based on their own
prejudices re: Marxism. The Empire Strikes Back.
"The insistence that the histories of the metropolitan proletariat and
the colonized worker are discrepant, even if both are exploited by
capitalism, therefore, is to insist on difference as the condition of
history's possibility, and to rearticulate it differently than White
mythology." (p. 236)
Go Two Horses!! Ride 'em cowboy!
11) Orientalism Revisited: Saidian
Frameworks in the Writing of Modern Indian History, Sumit Sarkar. Pp.
239-253.
The problem with postmodern pointing out the interstices is the same
mote/beam problem as meta-izing: each person must step outside to point
out the mote, each step outside makes the beam more glaring to the next
person, who must then step outside....etc.
Article's main thesis: "One can
respond to vital and central issues, but in ways that are ultimately
unhelpful and even counter-productive--and that, I have been arguing,
is what fundamentally characterizes the Saidian framework, at least as
far as my own discipline of history is concerned. The assumption that
no other intellectual tradition or resource exists to confront the
admittedly central issues highlighted by Said or FOucault is deeply
self-limiting." (p. 252)
Current phase: "common sense" yes we are creating categories, but at
least with postmodernism we are aware that we are doing so. The author
wonders if this is a valid argument.
(neat phrase "fetishizing capacities of concepts" (p. 241, quoting
Marx?)
In the 'academic common sense' model, Marxism and economics are
curiously absent from histories of politics and cultures. The author
contends that this is shortsighted. In the case of Indian history the
emphasis is still on the Big Bad Colonial and the Good National, as if
there was no transference/impact between the two. (Colonialism didn't
completely transform all society/cultural groups/cultural practice in
India.)
Examples of Saidism gone to far:
- Lata Mani on sati - she
ignores much of the literature on pre-colonial practice and women's
voices, using only that which supports her thesis. "It soon becomes
clear tha tthe real purpose of establishing such a unifying structure
is to imply that the reformist advocates for the discouragement or
banning of sati were not in
any meaningful sense more progressive and humanistically inclined that
their opponents." (p.248) ('They were just as bad in the bad old days
as well.')
- O'Hanlon and feminism in India: patriarchal oppression of women
is seen as an effect of British colonialism. She ignores the fact that
pre-colonial Indians were quite skilled at suppressing women! Also,
making 'British male' into a homogeneous monolith she is also
shortchanging the complexity of the colonialists' views.
"The applications of the Saidian framework to india, then, have so far
produced little more than reiterations of the already said." (p. 249)
So, why,if they continue to screw it up so badly, do scholars continue
to use the Saidian framework?
- cross-disciplinary variations, appealing and different
- distance: most Saidian scholars are outside the areas studied
- power structures are of interest to today's people, so models, like
Foucault's, that look at power, resonate
- anti-Marxism
Is there another way?
- Thompson, Customs on Commons,
"raised important questions about the assumption...that hegemony
necessarily 'imposes an all-embracing domination upon the ruled.'" (p.
252)
What is needed? "the development of analytical tools appropriate for
South Asian colonial contexts which will be able to handle more
effectively the nuances, ambiguities and interrelationships of multiple
kinds of power and oppression." (p. 253)
12) Radical Histories and Question of
Enlightenment Rationalism: Some Recent Critics of Subaltern Studies. Dipesh Chakrabarty. Pp. 256-280.
or, how postmodernism does/doesn't lead to fascism!
Hyper-rationalism of Colonial Modern: "scientific rationality . . .was
introduced into colonial Indoa from the very beginning as an antidote
to (Indian) religion" esp. 'superstitious' Hindus. Colonialists thought
rationality would lead to conversion to Christianity. Instead it lead
to secular anti-religious modernity.
(Interesting: he personalizes examples and the examples are of
kinship/firendship; that's one of the new trends...groups/individuals/)
Key point:
"Why does one of our most capable and knowledgeable historians[Sarkar: The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal]
fail to give us any insight into moments in the history of our
political and public life when religious sentiments presented
themselves as their own end and not as means to some end defined by
European political philosophy, however much some Indians may have made
that philosophy their own? It is because history for Sarkar is a
perpetual struggle between the forces of 'reason' and 'humanism' on one
side and those of 'emotion and faith' on the other." (p. 264)
"Frankly, if Enlightenment rationalism is the only way human societies
can humanize themselves, then we ought to be grateful that the
Europeans set out to dominate the world and spread its message. Will
our self-proclaimed 'rationalist' and 'secularist' historians say
that?" (p. 272) i.e. Catch-22: imposition of enlightenment/colonialist
ideas is bad, but if you assume they led to good (modern, secular) than
they must be good, but they were obviously bad so historians must show
they were bad, but...
"I am trying to think my way towards a subaltern historiography that
actually tried to learn from the subaltern..." (p. 272)
The paragraph, p. 273, about the dialog between the academic and the
subaltern: the point that while the academic may say he is engaging the
subaltern, the outcome is given: the subaltern as a historic voice has
no current voice to speak: the academic seeks to convert the subaltern
to the scientific way, the subaltern will not convince the academic
that superstition is true--rather reminds me of Lewis's "we had some
fine arguments I can tell you," and Joy's reply about predictable
outcomes
ramsci defines the subaltern as that which cannot (but must) imagine
itself as the state instead of retaining it's current fragmentedness.
"What would Indian history be like if it were
imagined as fragmentary? Not 'fragmentary' in the sense of fragments
that refer to an implicit whole but fragments that challenge not only
the idea of wholeness but the very odea of 'fragment' itself (for if
there were not to be any wholes that wouldthe 'fragments' be 'fragments
of)?
Even the concept of freedom and diversity for all the world is western
monomania! How dare we dictate!
"It would be sad if we ceded this entire heritage [poetry, mysticism,
romanticism] to the Hindu extremists out of a fear that our romanticism
must be the same as whatever the Europeans produced under the name in
their histories, and that our present blunders, whatever these are,
must be the same as theirs in the past. What, indeed, could be a
greater instance of submission to a Eurocentric imagination than that
fear?" (p. 277)
Yes, for us as well!!
14) The Decline of the Subaltern in Subaltern Studies,
Sumit Sarkar. Pp. 300-323.
Primarily points out the inconsistencies of subaltern studies writers:
motes/beams again
Mostly with definitions being limiting, with major themes of the day
becoming misued, outmoded, and replaced (Marxism, nationalism,
community, secularism, fragmentism, etc.)
Misgivings about late subaltern studies:
- redundant - everything gets tied to colonialism/nationalism so
much useful stuff (feminism, ecology) gets left out.
- as scholars working in a real world with a primarily Western
audience, subaltern studies writers are too quick to latch on (and
misinterpret) current buxxwords/ideas: postmodern, poststructural
- too simplistic and binary: western/domination/bad,
Indian/resistance/good. Enlightenment/bad, Hindutva/good. No room for
subtlety.
- India is a strongly political country so
15) The New Subaltern: A Silent
Interview, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Pp. 324-340.
(The book is point-counterpoint. Modern day scholarship is point
counterpoint. Graduates learn this model and apply it unconsciously to
daily life? Blogs/lists can acccelerate that process but will they also
accelerate the hardening of devisive lines in our culture???)
Is the book linear? Is that meaningful? What if it were hypertext?