[Music] hello good morning or good evening today I'll be talking about probably one of the most complex concept used in post-colonial studies the figure of the subaltern so in order to understand the concept of the Sabourin of course we have to go to its original source and which is the Italian Marxist antonio gramsci who uses the term for the first time in his book which he recorded while in prison and it is aptly called the prison notebooks but a lot of people believe that Gramsci was actually using the term subaltern as a coded word so that his work would pass through the prison censors instead of calling it the proletariat or giving it any other class designation and hence he was calling the people that he was referring to as the subaltern groups but what's important to keep in mind is that for Gramsci the subaltern groups were the groups classes and I'm reading his definition here from the prison notebooks what he suggests is that the subaltern classes by definition are not unified and cannot unite until they are able to become a state their history therefore is intertwined with that of civil society and thereby with the history of states and groups of states so even though they are not necessarily a viable class what kind of gives them an essence is is the very thing that they are kept divided or are divided and cannot become a constituency and that is the group that he calls the subaltern groups and then he also comes up with kind of six stages of how to study the subaltern groups and those are the stages from the beginning of their history to they coming to voice right but by and large a subaltern group for Antonio Gramsci is a group that exists within a dominant hegemonic order right but has no place in it no political space in it whose views are not taken into account now keep in mind when Gramsci theorizes hegemony what he basically suggests is that hegemony is established through a willing consent of the people that people give a certain regime or right to rule and those people of obviously constitute a class now the subaltern classes would be outside of that hegemonic project their opinions are not even heard right and that to graham she is the subaltern group or a subaltern group and so the project of politics maybe then is to bring them to hoist or to record their histories or retrieve their histories because their history exist within the dominant history and is often silenced or erased so the purpose of the project a project to you know give the Suburbans their voice not give but for them to claim it they will then have to offer a competing history of their own groups their own cultures right and that's where it becomes important for post-colonial studies is because if you see the larger structure of colonialism there is always official history mostly written by Europeans so the first impulse in post-colonial struggles then is to retrieve your own history right and then posit is it against the dominant history of Europeans but there is a catch and that is where chronojet Guha and the Balkan Studies group come in because what they argue let's say within the context of India that even after independence the Indian historiography is known mainly Bozo historiography mainstream historiography which tells the stories of the bourgeois classes right and we still doesn't account for the subaltern histories histories of the silenced people histories of the vote less people people who might be outside of caste people who don't belong to the dominant classes so the entire project of subaltern studies then is the retrieval of those silenced histories and recording of those silenced histories and if you have looked at looked at the works produced by subaltern studies collective you know there are 10 volumes of it right behind me on that shelf so for an Ajit Guha and the subaltern Studies group the project then is to bring the narratives and the stories in the histories of silenced classes isolated classes record them and juxtapose them with the dominant history which has excluded them okay now what we are learning from this then is that the subaltern groups they can be collectivities and they can exist as groups but maybe they either if we go by Gramsci do not have a politics or a political voice and in most cases we tend to assume civil subaltern status as almost essential in all mode of essential terms and that is why when we read spear X can the subaltern speak is very hard for us to understand as to what is it that she is suggesting now I will do a longer lecture on can the civil can speak itself but here just a few points about it the first thing to keep in mind in is that in that essay what speevak is challenging is an assertion made by Keith Kalu's in one of his interviews where he says representation has withered away and and people can speak for themselves right that is the point that she is contesting in can the subaltern speak because what her point is that's both Foucault and Deleuze can say that because they are not keeping in mind the global division of labour where the metropolitan centers hold all the power and labor intensive jobs have gone to the developing world and if you elide that then you can posit that people have come to power and they can speak for themselves and the role of the intellectual is to relay that knowledge to the powers that be right and so what she is trying to suggest in that is that we need a general theory of Radiology which reminds us constantly of the global division of labor and to that the intellectual must not give up on the job of politically representing the subaltern classes that that there is a danger in assuming that the subaltern classes have come to voice and that is where she employs a certain kind of strategic essentialism which she later you know say is that what she is not an essentialist but that that for a subaltern to be a subaltern a subaltern has to be voiceless has to lack political power and it's that condition that renders a group or an individual into a small term and so that's there is a certain degree of essentialism involved over there and then within the subaltern Studies group you know there are also arguments that one group in SP once we work ourselves says that in her introduction I think to one of the accepted volumes of suburban studies that depending on where you are your location let's say within India or Pakistan regionally the subaltern groups can shift you could be a suburban group in one part of the nation but you could be a dominant group in another part of the nation so there is no universally attributable suburban status that can be assigned to someone now for Spivak the ultimate suburban subject is the figure of the suburban women right who is placed in this position through global capital but also through local customs so within even a suburban group the figure of the woman you know costless woman woman from the rural parts of India and Pakistan they become the ultimate suburban because not only are they controlled within the public sphere but their voice is also controlled within the domestic or home sphere right so overall the concept itself comes from Antonio Gramsci who according to some sources uses the term subaltern to avoid using the term proletariat but it takes a life of its own because he starts discussing the suburban classes in his work and and attributes to them certain things that they are not part of the hegemonic order their voices are not heard and maybe their consent is not sort like within a given regime then the concept is appropriated and redefined by ranjith Guha and other people of supportin studies group who then within the field of indian historiography take it upon themselves to retrieve record and render in writing in speech the silenced histories of the subaltern groups and then the biggest debate launches when speevak right sir can the subaltern speak and within that as i said her at her main effort is not necessarily to define what makes us a burton but that assuming that the scible term can know his or her place and has come to voice has certain attendant dangers and that the critics post-colonial critics and scholars must not make that assumption and then give up on their responsibility to stand in solidarity with the suburban groups and make an attempt to politically and otherwise represent them now there are certain mistakes we make usually you know we kind of equate subaltern status with being oppressed and also you could sometimes you I have heard people living in the metropolitan cultures like having great jobs in academia and elsewhere but simply because they are ethnic or racial minority they think of themselves as a suburban group and that in my opinion is is a misuse of the term because their location still compared to their global counterparts is a privileged position and that they have political voice they can vote they can organize with other groups so to sum up you know very complicated debate as a group or as an individual if you have no say in how you are governed if no one seeks your consent if your voice is not heard if no one reaches out to you to seek your consent to govern you right and if you're kept outside the promise of national economy national Civic Society if you cannot claim the status of a political class then you are a supporter and you're a part of a subaltern group so these are some of the things you should keep in I know it's a pretty complex concept I hope this was a little bit of a help I will put some additional resources and description for you to read there is a wonderful article on the history of the concept by al-habib Louie he happens to be my facebook friend too so I'll post a link to that article as well and you know if you have any questions if you like me to explain further please do comment and post your questions there and if you would like to stay updated about what I do next please do subscribe to the channel thank you so much for joining me and I will see you next [Music] [Music]