Can the Subaltern Woman Run? Gender, race and agency in colonial missionary texts

Bibliographic Data

ID11820105
AuthorsKaren Vallgårda (0000-0003-2362-6754, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume39
Issue4
Pages472-486
Publication date2014-08-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueScandinavian Journal of History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0346-8755 • E-ISSN: 1502-7716
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03468755.2014.938112
OpenAlexW1973939570
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited24

This article challenges the contention that it is not feasible to trace the agency of subaltern female subjects in colonial documents without at the same time distorting and even violating that very agency. Taking as its prism a letter written by a male Danish missionary chronicling a young Pariah woman’s escape from missionary control in early 20th-century South India, it argues that while a search for authentic, autonomous agency is a highly dubious endeavour, relinquishing attempts to recover the acts and interventions of persons at the bottom of social hierarchies is equally problematic. Suggesting a reading ‘along as well as against the grain’, the article tracks the ways in which the subaltern woman’s agency has been simultaneously recorded and denied, and argues for the necessity of probing both the possibilities and impossibilities presented by this type of a source

Agency (philosophy · Colonialism · Microhistory · Pariah group · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Subaltern · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law