Read me at: --- On Thu, 14/10/10, Abhishek Hazra <abhishek.ha...@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Abhishek Hazra <abhishek.ha...@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [silk] The subaltern studies collective? To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Date: Thursday, 14 October, 2010, 13:49 very important clarifications! thank you. i will not get into an extended discussion of the historiography of the subaltern studies. but the interested can refer to Sumit Sarkar' perceptive (and in my view shot through with a certain ironic sadness) essay - "The Decline of the Subaltern in Subaltern Studies" (collected in his book Writing Social History). this was written after his separation from the core editorial collective. Towards the end of the essay, reflecting on varying fortunes of third world scholarship in a first world academy and the entrenched euro-centrism of the academia, he offers the observation: "Orientalism thrives at the very heart of the anti-Orientalist brigade" recently for a project, i re-read after many years Guha's "Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India" and was struck by the prose, which was of register very different from what one generally expects from post-colonial studies scholarship. accessible, of course, but also marked, by, what shall i say, 'passion' (ya, can sound like a silly romantic term) - trying to articulate a manifesto of sorts for a fresh engagement with colonial history. speaking of an against the grain reading of colonial archives, i am looking forward to reading Mahmood Farooqui's recently published, "Besieged, Voices from Delhi, 1857' abhishek On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Indrajit Gupta <bonoba...@yahoo.co.in> wrote: --- On Thu, 14/10/10, Abhishek Hazra <abhishek.ha...@gmail.com> wrote: From: Abhishek Hazra <abhishek.ha...@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [silk] The subaltern studies collective? To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Date: Thursday, 14 October, 2010, 9:41 it might come across as "name -dropping" but your reference to Eagleton reminded me of the recently departed Frank Kermode [1] and his consistent attempts at introducing 'theory' within the Leavisite bastions of Cambridge. Kermode's own work always remained a brilliant example of accessibility that was still sharp, intelligent and scholarly. Some here may remember the Fontana Masters Series that Kermode edited in the 70s and its popular introductions to Freud, Gramsci etc. [1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/18/frank-kermode-dies-aged-90 abhishek On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 9:28 AM, Supriya Nair <supriya.n...@gmail.com> wrote: I'm not alone in calling her language obtuse - her fellow post-modernists (I don't think it's very nice to take a commonly understood term like "modern" and overlay it with a specific technical meaning, I hate this about Agile programmers too, who I usually abhor, but that's for another thread) claim she's nuts too. Oh cultural theorists, when will they learn that ad hominem attacks along the lines of 'I claim you are nuts Gayatari Chakravorty-Spivak! And I am a theorist, so I should know!' are not generally the best way of ensuring their ideas go down in history? I am not well-read on deconstructionism: while I have enjoyed Terry Eagleton's criticism of Spivak (via Derrida), I read it as part of an ongoing conversation on the nature of language itself, as Shruthi highlighted in one of her last emails. Perhaps if it were a debate, Eagleton, who is fantastically eloquent no matter how self-contradictory or lazily constructed his arguments are, will always emerge the winner, simply because there will be more people - in the short term - who find him believable. Supriya -- roswitha.blogspot.com | roswitha.tumblr.com It seems as if people are unclear about the difference between Subaltern Studies, a perfectly clear and intelligible historiographical departure from conventional historical methods, and deconstructionist philosophy derived from Derrida, which was Gayatri Spivak's main academic plank before she clambered aboard the Subaltern Studies ship. What follows is from a point of view extremely hostile to her interpretation of recent Indian history, her slanderous, libellous treatment of individuals whom she dislikes on an ideological plane, and her repeated and sustained view that her opponents must be intellectually and ethically challenged. The figures I respect are on both sides of the divide, but with a tilt towards the conventional Communists, in spite of their unacceptable political beliefs, and away from this otherwise very meaningful historiography (Sumit Sarkar, for instance, who got involved and then carefully detached himself with considerable and visible distaste). To understand what I mean, read Partha Chatterji's book on the Bhowal Sanyasi and his claims, and his almost-throwaway analysis of the condition of the Bengal countryside, of the Bengali intellectuals in professional service of the Raj and others of the erstwhile middle classes and mercantile and land-owning classes in a comprador relationship with the Raj. The original Subaltern Studies 'view' of history began deep within the recesses of contemporary Marxist scholarship. It rejected the old CPI/CPM interpretation of Indian history, and sought to highlight as an alternative history seen from the perspective of the 'underdog': the non-intellectual, the non-bhadralok, non-Caste Hindu classical mould ideologues of the two major left factions. It is emphatically not a Naxalite re-interpretation, although Dipesh was a major figure in the movement in the 60s, deep in the confidence of Kaka and the Politburo; the Subaltern Studies gang are more into Gramsci and, through him, a Hegelian (the 'Young Marx') interpretation of Marxist thought. For the unwary, it is necessary to point out that there is a difference, a yawning, gaping difference between Marxian, Marxist and Communist. This happened in the 70s and earlier; it was necessary for Ranajit Guha to come evangelising in the late 60s, and spend hours with potential recruits trying to persuade them to come on board. I have been personally present at more than one of these sessions, more or less as a piece of furniture; his targets were big birds, very influential intellectuals. Gayatri Spivak, also from Presidency, was English Honours, from an era of outstanding students and outstanding professors, at a time when the History department was slowly rotting away. She had nothing to do with History originally. I am told by experts in the line that her exploration of deconstructionism led her to philosophy and by natural stages to a consideration of Marx. It was in the 50s and 60s that the great European debates on the Young Marx and the Old Marx, between the iron-fisted Stalinists, Althusser and the like, and the Gramscians, who saw a strange, seemingly contradictory Hegelian twist in Marx in the early years, a twist that they believed indicated unexplored aspects of his philosophy obscured under his greater political presence. It is banal to talk of Rosa Luxembourg and Liebknecht in this context, but at one time, it was fresh new stuff, a really heady brew. That was also the time of Marcuse and Frantz Fanon; these authors were commonplaces in the intellectual milieu around Spivak, together with Camus, and to understand where she is coming from, it helps to have a rudimentary impression about the ideas and concepts that were being bandied around at this time, not in Calcutta alone, but in that year of hope 68, more or less around the world. Spivak's gravitation towards Subaltern Studies was, in a way, inevitable. Her contribution seems to be more conceptual than in the way of direct historical study, which is as it should be. It is not clear what her overall impact on the Subaltern Studies school is; that is a question that must be answered from within, or by a very knowledgeable outsider. She has never been known to be a lucid populariser; a female Carl Sagan she is not. However, contemporary studies in this space carry a vocabulary and, more than that, a syntax, which takes getting used to. If anyone is interested, I could put up examples, which make perfect sense to insiders, none whatsoever to Everyman. The cheap comment about her selection of a professional name needs to be treated with the contempt that it deserves. All in all, a troublesome and difficult genius, with deeply abhorrent personal traits.The only faint consolation I can draw is that her views themselves are so clearly derivative of her places and her times. Ironic and apt? -------------------------------------- Was yours a top-post? I ask with hope, as it will clear up various things for me. Meanwhile.... (1) I am aware of Guha's passion and evangelical zeal; he was treading a lonely furrow at the time. You already know about his late 60s visit (in those days, these visits from abroad were far less frequent than they are today, in style somewhere between a civil servant going on furlough and today's pack your own toothbrush please). On every visit, it was reported that he had met large numbers of academicians, and been engaged in feverish discussions with them for hours on end (every move of his was observed and reported on closely; in those days, policemen - sorry, JAP, even civil servants - found it difficult to distinguish between various shades of scarlet and crimson). He was preaching, and he got his little flock. It is an east Indian, Calcutta University flock, never mind the Sussex U bits and pieces, which is precisely why GCS hates being boxed, labelled and categorised in that box, with that label, within that category. (2) If you have the time and the inclination, and as you are planning to read Farooqui, you might look up the Hamdard Waqf and its extensive collection of manuscripts. You are probably aware that Bengal history before the British, the history of Sultanate and Mughal Bengal in particular, is still to be settled properly. Jadunath Sarkar himself wrote dolefully about the lack of evidence about Alivardi Khan's early days, until an obscure Muslim gentleman in Patna drew his attention to Karim Ali's hitherto unknown account written in Persian. It is clear that there are huge treasures waiting to be unearthed, and some usually reliable sources have said that this institution is doing some outstanding work collecting and translating manuscripts relating to history. Give it a shot IF you have the time and the inclination.
