Some Ironies and Anomalies in the History of Subaltern Studies

This chapter reminisces about the historical period and the fervent, debates and political processes that gave shape to Subaltern Studies in the early 1980s. It comments on the significance acquired by peasants in 1970s, particularly among Left ideologues and intellectuals. Here, peasants were rendered as an identifiable social group whose political potential was expected to occasion revolutions leading non-capitalist futures, and links it with the choice of the peasant as the paradigmatic subaltern. Chakrabarty reflects on the transition in Subaltern Studies from an important intervention in colonial and national(ist) history and historiography into global, postcolonial-global “studies” (instead of “discipline”) from the 1990s in tune with changing socio-political circumstances and academic imperatives

Geography · Political science · Subaltern · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Geology · History · Law · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

• Untethered subalterns

  Open Access•Ned Bertz•South Asian History and Culture•2026

  Add to list