certainly ensured the project’s attractiveness outside the narrow circle of Marxist historians of South Asia. But perhaps equally important was the blue-ribbon reception that the series received in the West starting in the early nineties. The Subaltern series had attracted some attention in the West during its initial years, but this was largely confined to area specialists and a small circle of historians. To be sure, it was seen as a bracing development that Indian historians were taking up themes that had so enlivened scholarship in the West in the recent past. But this was happening across the spectrum in area studies—in African studies, especially in South Africa, among Latin Americanists, and also in some quarters of Middle Eastern studies.17 There was nothing especially exotic or singular about the turn in Indian historiography. What made the Subalternists stand out was the incorporation of their project into the most dynamic trend in post-Marxist theorizing in the West, within which they found some powerful patrons. The first was, as mentioned, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who parachuted into the project in 1985 with her essay in the fourth volume. Even more significant was the publication, in 1987, of Selected Subaltern Studies, which included a foreword, and hence endorsement, by Edward Said, an imposing presence on the intellectual scene by the late 1980s whose 1978 book Orientalism had already become a modern classic. As a result, the publication of Selected Subaltern Studies not only brought the project to Western academic circles, but delivered it with the imprimatur of two leading lights of cultural theory.
The marriage of Subaltern Studies to post-Marxian cultural theory was a dramatic success. It was from a reading of the early volumes that a leading American scholar of South Asia claimed, with no hint of irony or embarrassment, that “Indians are, for perhaps the first time since colonization, showing sustained signs of reappropriating the capacity to represent themselves.”18 The framework being developed by the collective soon became an object for more general discussion among area-oriented scholars. A conspicuous marker of its impact was the decision by the American Historical Review, in 1994, to host a symposium on the project’s importance to the historiography of the Global South.19 But while the appearance of such a debate in the discipline’s flagship journal was certainly noteworthy, it was only one example of the growing notoriety of Subaltern Studies as a theoretical tendency. Anthologies of not merely the group’s essays but also of the surrounding debates began to appear.20 By the turn of the century, there was even a Latin American Subaltern Studies group21 and a journal devoted primarily to exploring the ramifications of the Subalternist approach for historical, cultural, and political analysis.22
1.3 SUBALTERN STUDIES AS THEORY
Subaltern Studies is a distinct, influential, and representative stream within postcolonial studies, perhaps more than any other. But can it be identified with the production of an interesting theory? If the phenomenon merely consisted in a revamped call for history from below, as seemed to be the case in its early years, or a jeremiad against the depredations of colonialism, or the celebration of Third World agency, then whatever else it achieved, it could hardly merit attention as a theoretical project. The matter is complicated somewhat by the fact that the obscurity of much poststructuralist theorizing resists easy delineation of its claims, and although Subaltern Studies is less given to such murkiness, the project is by no means free of it. No critic can approach the task of explicating its central theoretical commitments without trepidation. But, as it happens, members of the collective have, on a few occasions, offered a summary of the project’s core theoretical agenda. One of the more recent of these, an essay by Dipesh Chakrabarty titled “A Small History of Subaltern Studies,” is also the clearest and most comprehensive to date.23
One of the most striking revelations in Chakrabarty’s presentation is that Subaltern Studies was, from the start, a fundamentally theoretical enterprise. In other words, in the collective members’ own view, their work was oriented toward producing not just a new historiography but also a challenge to the dominant theories that framed historical analysis. A second, equally striking element in Chakrabarty’s account is that the theory taken by the Subalternist collective as its main interlocutor was not the mainstream, but rather the Marxism from which it emerged. Following a somewhat perfunctory initial account of nationalist and conservative historiography, which undoubtedly framed some early concerns of the collective, Chakrabarty settles into his essay’s primary task, which is to show how Subaltern Studies engaged, and then overcame, the blinders imposed by Marxist theory. The elevation of Marxist theory to such a central place in the Subalternist theoretical project may not be entirely accurate, for there is no doubt that liberal political philosophy has taken quite a beating at their hands. But there is no denying that the shadow of Marxism looms very large over the collective’s project, perhaps more so than any other framework. In what follows, I draw on Chakrabarty’s account to lay out the main propositions generated by the project and also try to explain very briefly the reasoning behind them.
Lurking behind the positive theory developed by Subaltern Studies is a story—a “narrative,” they would say—of political and economic modernization. This story forms the foil against which they develop their own theory. They often refer to it as Marxist in its essentials, though this is misleading. It is more an amalgam of liberal and Marxist elements, which cohere around a particularly Whiggish interpretation of the onset of modernity. The Marxism, therefore, is of a particular kind, and would scarcely be recognized by many contemporary Marxists. But that is another matter, and we will set it aside for now. The story appears in bits and pieces, not only in Chakrabarty’s account but also in essays by other Subaltern Studies theorists. Its elements are introduced only to be knocked down, and yet if we piece together the various strands, we can glean the story’s basic contours. Having a sense of its essential structure will help sharpen our understanding of what the Subalternists feel is novel about the framework they have developed.
THE CONVENTIONAL STORY
We will refer to the story against which Subaltern Studies frames its work as the Conventional Story. At its core is a set of claims about the onset and spread of capitalism: Modern society is the product of the rise of this economic system and its subsequent spread into the world. Capitalism struck its roots initially in Western Europe, coming to life through struggle—a political struggle against feudal rule, which constituted a block to bourgeois development. This political struggle was led by the bourgeoisie, a class of incipient capitalists functioning in the interstices of feudal society. In England and France, the bourgeoisie was able to gain a leading position in emerging political coalitions, because it was able to bring other social groups together under a common banner. In other words, capital succeeded in securing political hegemony over an antifeudal coalition. This it accomplished because it was able to present its own interests as the basis for the furtherance of its partners’ interests. Having established its leadership, the bourgeoisie led a struggle of increasing intensity against the monarchy, culminating in the classic bourgeois revolutions—the English in 1640, the French in 1789. These revolutions constituted the onset of bourgeois rule in the most advanced zones of Western Europe.
Once in power, the conquering bourgeoisie fundamentally transformed national economic and political institutions. It abolished feudal regulations in agriculture and, more haltingly, in cities, opening up the sluices for the spread of capitalism. On the political front, it did away with lordly despotism, established the rule of law, and most important, affirmed certain basic democratic rights for the people. In other words, it created the fundamental pillars of modern citizenship. This formed the basis for the emergence of modern politics—a politics organized around individual rights, the aggregation of different interests, and formal contestation in the public sphere. This was a politics fundamentally different from the premodern variety, which was confined to a narrow stratum of the lordly class and characterized by the dominance of religious discourse and the power of the courtly faction in matters of public contestation. What made all this possible was the emancipation of peasants and workers from feudal bonds, from the myriad sources of interpersonal domination around which the ancient regime had been organized. What took place was nothing less than a fundamental
