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[[File:Subaltern_Studies.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|Selected Subaltern Studies]]
Historical articles in the edit collection <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195052897/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0195052897&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=922bfd5fbd977f5e09c5b208d231afdc Selected Subaltern Studies]</i> by historians and social theorists Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Vinay Bahl, Florencia Mallon and others, examine the origin, development, and potential of Subaltern Studies within the academic community. The selected works discussed below address the social and economic implications of this post-colonial approach to historical interpretation. Introduced in India by historian Ranajit Guha in the early 1980s, <i>Selected Subaltern Studies</i> departs from both colonial and Marxist interpretations of the popular experience of the Indian people under colonial domination, seeking to recognize the agency and purpose embedded in their insurgency and resistance.
In <i>Selected Subaltern Studies</i>, Guha enumerates the dangers and limitations of the historiography of colonial India and suggests a new way to read official and administrative colonial archive records. His treatment of institutionalized colonial dishonesty is dynamic and successful as he offers analytical tools that enable historians to ‘read against the grain’ as they cull colonial archives, and recognize the “code of pacification” (Guha 59) that obscures the power and intent of subaltern insurgency. Using concepts of hegemony and resistance first articulated by Antonio Gramsci, Guha makes a profound contribution to the academic effort to separate the historian’s perspective from that of the state.
Marxist historian Bahl offers criticisms of Subaltern Studies in her article "Situating and Rethinking Subaltern Studies for Writing Working Class History" that point out the archival limitations mentioned above, as well as many other issues. Concerned with the abandonment of the Marxist paradigm, Bahl attacks the academic origins and social implications of Subaltern Studies. For example, Bahl points to the Western influences apparent in Subaltern Studies and questions the legitimacy of an approach that at once rejects Western historiography and relies on Western tools of historical interpretation such as postmodernism in order to replace examination of class consciousness with inquiry into the production of meaning. This argument is not compelling, as it implies academic integrity somehow follows from an ethnocentric censorship of ideas. Concerns with the social implications of Subaltern Studies are more convincing, as the world situation reflects many of the fears articulated by Bahl. The replacement of the ideas of class consciousness and struggle with the focus on identity and ‘difference’ provide the language that enables academics, economists and politicians to ignore the material reality of the poor and its underlying causes, and to abandon the struggle against exploitation and inequality.
Bahl, and Arif Derlik, offer a more nuanced and profound critique of Subaltern Studies in the introduction to the book, History after the Three Worlds. They voice fears that Postmodernism, Multiculturalism and Sublternism will be but tools in the hands of dominant social and economic powers, tools with which they will render indigenous cultures more manageable and profitable. The article, The Promise and Dilemma of Subaltern Studies, by Florencia Mallon, is a provocative addition to this debate, as it credits the advent of Subaltern Studies for providing alternatives to Eurocentric historiography, while acknowledging the contradictions within Subaltern Studies, for example , the way it minimizes issues such as gender, and within subalterns themselves, as they are often both the dominators and the dominated. <div class="portal" style="width:60%;">==Related DailyHistory.org Articles==*[[What textiles were British women bringing with them to India?]]*[[Social History of American Medicine Top Ten Booklist]]*[[Gilded Age/Progressive Era History Top Ten Booklist]]*[[Why was Britain able to establish an Empire in India?]]*[[American Legal History Top Ten Booklist]]</div> [[Category:Book Review]] [[Category:Indian History]][[Category:Subaltern Studies]] [[Category:Historiography]] {{Contributors}}
