Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Historiography

Abstract

The author focuses on Subaltern Studies, and pays particular attention to Neo-Marxist Ranajit Guha, widely credited wish establishing this field. The author further argues that subaltern studies would escape the confines of Marxism and would found itself inescapably linked with post-colonial studies. This, suggests the paper, means that subaltern studies in fact surpassed a tradition of writing "history from below", which had been pioneered by British Marxist writers. It instead had a post-colonial view, linked to Edward Said’s critique of orientalism, as well as to Homi Bhabha’s discourse analysis and Gayatri Spivak’s ideas. From its onset, Subaltern Studies has asked questions about the methods of writing history, and separated inevitably from the traditional English Marxist method of chronicling working-class history. While Subaltern Studies indeed descended from this tradition, it quickly became a critique of the academic field of history.