in Theses 1–4, that capitalism mutated after its arrival in the colonies, losing its universalizing drive and generating a political order fundamentally different from the order established in early modern Europe. This argument, however, is based on a somewhat tendentious interpretation of the European experience and of capitalism’s “universalizing drive.” I will show that the arguments promoted by Subaltern Studies on both these issues are fundamentally flawed, because they build into their very definition of capitalism elements that are specific only to its very recent incarnation. Once we generate a more accurate analysis of European modernization, the apparent deviation of the East from some putative norm is revealed as chimerical. In other words, the political conflicts, institutional setups, forms of power, and other factors in postcolonial capitalism turn out to be not so very different from those of its European ancestor.51 Hence, Subalternist theorists are simply mistaken in their insistence that the basic course of modernity in the East cannot be explained through the lens of capitalism. This is the fundamental thrust of my argument in chapters 2 to 6.
The second way in which the Subalternists misrepresent the relationship between capitalism and modernity is not by obscuring the role of the former but by denying it altogether. In other words, they evacuate capitalism from domains in which its influence has in fact been critical. I will demonstrate this in chapter 10, where I examine Partha Chatterjee’s analysis of nationalist ideology. He notes, correctly, that a defining feature of colonial nationalism was a commitment to scientific and economic modernization. The ideology of nationalism thus tended to promote national modernization as a basic goal. Chatterjee argues that the turn to modernization came about because national elites had internalized Western discourse, but I will show this argument to be entirely mistaken. Nationalist elites promoted modernization not because they were the victims of indoctrination but because of the pressures of governing in a capitalist world economy. What Chatterjee presents as an effect of discourse was in fact a recognition of real, material pressures from global capitalism. This is an example of how Subalternist theorists simply whisk capitalism out of the picture, even where it played a central role.
It is not that members of the collective pretend capitalism is irrelevant or has no material reality. Indeed, they invoke it constantly. They agree that any viable theory of the modern must take into account its connection to capitalism. The problem is that even while recognizing its importance, they obscure its dynamics—in some instances by endowing it with properties it does not have, in others by denying it powers it does indeed have, and in a few cases, such as Chatterjee’s, by “disappearing” it altogether. The result is most curious: while claiming to theorize capitalism’s global adventure, they separate the concept from its referent. It is shorn of any properties we might justifiably associate with it. Hence, far from illumining the peculiar trajectory of development in the East, Subalternist theorists shroud it in further mystery. They raise central questions about such matters as the course of political development, the structure of power, social agency, and nationalism but fail time and again to answer them properly, for the connections between these phenomena and broader structural transformations are simply lost from view. In sum, Subalternist theorists do not answer the very question they raise—namely, how the entry of capitalism into the colonial world affected the evolution of its cultural and political institutions.
THE CRITICAL FAILURE
Regarding the status of Subaltern Studies as critique, there are two dimensions of the failure on this front.
The less obvious, though by no means less important, dimension of the failure can be stated quite simply: one cannot adequately criticize a social phenomenon if one systematically misunderstands how it works. Subaltern Studies theorists cannot formulate a critique of globalizing capitalism if their theorization of its basic properties is mistaken. They are unable to separate those phenomena that are generated by capital, from those that are independent of it. Even more important, however, their arguments are not merely erroneous; in fact, they amount to a highly romanticized, even sanitized, presentation of capitalism. This is especially evident in Guha’s work but also figures prominently in Chakrabarty’s. The romanticization is not intended; it is simply a consequence of the fact that they identify capitalism with its newly minted liberal incarnations. Instead of taking liberal, democratic capitalism to be a recent phenomenon, brought about through centuries of struggle, they build its particular features into their bedrock definition of the system. Furthermore, not only do they build liberal freedoms into the definition of capital, they attribute the advent of those freedoms to the European bourgeoisie. Naturally, in a comparison between this idealized picture and the reality of postcolonial capitalism, the latter appears deformed and denatured. But when we replace the idealized picture with a more accurate one, it generates very different conclusions with respect to not only postcolonial capitalism but also the quality of modernity. This is a central pillar of my argument in chapters 3, 4, and 5.
The more obvious failing on the critical front is that, far from landing a blow against colonialist and Orientalist presentations of the East, Subaltern Studies has ended up promoting them. I show this especially in chapters 7 and 8, but it also arises in chapters 9 and 10. This is not true of all of the collective’s members, though. Guha’s work is largely free of Orientalism, wheras it is a central plank for both Chakrabarty and Chatterjee,52 who both insist that laboring classes in India were motivated by fundamentally different conceptions of the self than were their counterparts in the West. Others have noted this aspect of the Subaltern Studies framework and have issued strong objections. I join in this criticism, but in a different vein. Many critics have urged that the Subalternist depictions of agency be rejected because of their Orientalism. The offensiveness of an argument, however, cannot be grounds for its rejection. The fact is, both Chatterjee and Chakrabarty go to considerable lengths to support their arguments empirically and theoretically. The bulk of chapters 7 and 8 is therefore dedicated to arguing that their Orientalism is not just objectionable but wrong—their own evidence undermines the claims they make about agency in the East. I augment this argument by offering a bare-bones, but I hope credible, theory of social agency, which is unabashedly universalistic while aiming to avoid charges of parochialism. To minimize accusations of cultural bias, I mainly use as evidence the empirical work of Guha, Chatterjee, and Chakrabarty themselves.
So much for what the book is. Now some words on what it is not. This is not meant to be a history or intellectual biography of Subaltern Studies. I make no claim whatsoever to exhaustiveness or even comprehensiveness. My concern is to address components of the Subalternist project that have had real influence and have, in turn, been highlighted by members of the collective as their most important contributions. My intention is to examine the ideas that have become associated with the project in the broader intellectual culture, not to address the project in its entirety. As it happens, I do believe that I address most of the main arguments produced by members of the collective. Mainly because the book threatened to grow beyond a reasonable length, I have had no choice but to omit some. Perhaps the most conspicuous by its absence is Partha Chatterjee’s recent work on political society in postcolonial formations. Also missing are Gyanendra Pandey’s defense of the fragment and the overall debate on secularism. These are all important issues, but some of them have already received attention, and others will have to just be taken up at another time.
Moreover, this book largely avoids the task of tracing the theoretical lineage of the Subalternists’ arguments. As a result, even though the influence of Gramsci and Althusser is evident to those familiar with the relevant literature, I do not analyze the nature of this connection. Nor do I assess how their ideas have been reconfigured at the hands of Subalternist theorists.53 Again, this is partly because of the need to keep the book to a manageable size (and it is already longer than I had either wished or intended), but primarily because of my desire that the reader not be distracted by whether Subalternists have correctly interpreted a given theorist. What matters is not whether they are true to this or that theoretical tradition but whether they have produced sound arguments, and it is that final product—their arguments
