Left-Wing and the 'Other' History: Gayatri Spivak's 'Can the Subaltern Speak?'

Gayatri Spivak

One of the most influential works in postcolonial studies is Can the Subaltern Speak? (1983) by Gayatri Spivak. Spivak, in her own words, is a 'practical Marxist-feminist-deconstructionist' applying feminist, Marxist, and some postmodernist ideas to society, thought, and the past. Hence, this post will focus on both 'Left-wing' and the 'Other' history. Can the Subaltern Speak? is a complicated text and by applying both deconstructionism and Marxism it can become confusing. Today we will look at Can the Subaltern Speak? and discuss why Spivak wrote it, her ideas, and the issues she arises from the text.

What is Postcolonialism and Subalterns?

Antonio Gramsci

Postcolonial thought can be found in a variety of different subjects including philosophy, literature, and history. I would consider myself heavily inspired by postcolonial schools of thought. Postcolonialism aims to analyse and criticise colonial and imperial thoughts, and their impacts on culture and society in colonised societies. In particular, postcolonialism has looked anew at certain givens in thought, such as rationality and logic. We often see a rejection of Enlightenment thought, to certain degrees - the Enlightenment emerged in a European worldview to explain Europe, something which cannot properly map onto other societies. Dipesh Chakrabarty, as an example, criticised Henry Reynolds for calling Walter Arthur as 'the first Aboriginal nationalist' as it was applying a Eurocentric idea to a culture who would not viewed it in that sense. Postcolonial studies have produced many major figures including Frantz Fanon and Edward Said. Said's Orientalist theory has been very influential in this - Orientalism saw the intellectual creation of Orient by the Occident during colonialism. This polarisation created through misunderstanding or power dynamics 'the Oriental becomes more Orient, the Westerner becomes more Western'. You may notice similarities with postmodernist thought and you would be correct in noticing this - postcolonialism is heavily inspired by postmodernism. Marxism has played a great influence in postcolonial thought - Fanon, Said, and Spivak were all inspired by Marx himself. However, postcolonial thought has criticised complete application of Marxism to colonial theory. Again, Marx and Engels wrote in a very European context and their ideas were born in a European context. There is one particular aspect of Marxist thought which postcolonialism truly embraced - the subaltern.

Edward Said, one of the major postcolonial theorists

As you could probably see I am very influenced by the idea of the subaltern - hence why half of this series is described as the 'Other'. One of the major theoretical forces behind the subaltern was Italian communist Antonio Gramsci - he is perhaps one of the most influential Marxists with his ideas inspiring Said, Spivak, Fanon, Zygmunt Bauman, and Eric Hobsbawm to just name a few. Gramsci had been incarcerated by Mussolini's fascist regime and 'subaltern' was used in his prison notes as code for 'proletariat'. The subaltern is a group or population socially, politically, and geographically excluded from hegemonic power structures in society. As a result, we saw attempts to give voice to the subaltern including 'history told from bottom'. Marxist historians especially focused on Gramsci's subaltern concept - a good example is E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (1963). The subaltern became integral to postcolonial studies - what better way to break from imperial history by studying history through the voices of the colonised? One of the major contributions to this was Subaltern Studies - a series of essays from 1979 to 1980 edited by Ranajit Guha aiming to study history from below. However, this is where Spivak comes in.

Problems with Subaltern Studies and Postcolonialism

Most of the criticisms of Subaltern Studies and postcolonialism will be discussed when we look at Spivak's essay itself, so to avoid repetition we'll only look at some of the criticisms. A key issue is that, especially with Subaltern Studies, attempts at discussing history from below often face issues about who is classed as an 'other'. Let's use a contemporary example. In the United States today there are many groups who can be classed as an 'other' - does a straight, cis, white male who is working class as a subaltern, or does a white, cis, gay man? Race and ethnicity in a country like the US are clear indicators of being subalterns but we face issues with this - different races face different forms of marginalisation, and factors such as class, sexuality, sex, and gender can impact this as well. This remains complicated in colonial settings. To avoid relying on imperial sources many postcolonial historians and theorists relied on indigenous sources, however, most of these sources were written by an indigenous elite. Colonialism was not simply European colonisers against colonised peoples - a local elite in many areas served as mediators between colonisers and the colonised. Dipesh Chakrabarty argued that elites and dominant groups could be classed as subalterns as: they were subjected to colonisation, could be subalterns in other regions, or could have subaltern pasts. However, by focusing solely on them early postcolonialism ended repeating elite ideas - just a colonised elite. There were other issues. For example, in Orientalism Edward Said focused on elite Western culture in creating Orientalist views - ranging from arts to political debates to Shakespeare - and not non-elite culture in forming Orientalism. Furthermore, Said had a habit of stripping agency away from the subaltern - Orientalism was thrust upon them universally. Said has escaped harshest of critiques as it was evident that he was aware of his own flaws.

Can the Subaltern Speak?
In 1983 Spivak wrote her criticism of Eurocentrism, postcolonialism and Subaltern Studies. Spivak argued that in both academia and postcolonialism there was a continued desire to have Europe, and European thought, remain the subject of discussion. Written records and indigenous intellectual texts were central to postcolonialism, but as a result it reduced other forms of indigenous thought to the periphery - other forms of thought were described as 'myth' or 'folklore' and thus discarded. The transparency of the intellectual was taken as a given - Sanskrit sources in India were produced by Brahmans who wanted to use discourse to their advantage. Instead, we have to undertake 'measuring silences'. Unorganised peasant labour, subsistence farmers, tribes, and communities of zero workers in India had no access to this. The issue becomes worse when discussing women 'the international division of labour, the subject of exploitation cannot know and speak the text of female exploitation...The woman is doubly in the shadow'. There were also issues of homogenising the subaltern which Spivak wished to critique. She reiterated what Guha stated that 'The same class or element which was dominant in one area...could be among the dominated in another'. India's colonial experience was different to that of Africa which was different to Latin America. Even in India colonialism was felt differently - Kashmir differed to Bengal which differed to the Punjab, and varied further based on ethnicity, gender, caste, class, and whether you lived in a town, city, or the country. Despite this, European aspects of thought were applied to come to terms with this so we have a double bind of applying European thought to a colonised setting, and using an indigenous elite. Spivak argued that 'radical practice should attend to this double session of representations rather than reintroduce the individual subject through totalizing concepts of power and desire'. Furthermore, she criticised postcolonial historians for having a knee-jerk reaction when looking at society and culture in pre-colonial, or colonial, settings. 'A nostalgia for lost origins can be detrimental to the exploration of social realities within the critique of imperialism'. Imperialism's legacies continue to plague India today - religious intolerance, intense misogyny, caste discrimination, and racism. These were made worse by British rule, but Spivak criticised postcolonial historians for romanticising a past implying that they were invented by Britain. Instead, Britain exploited these issues in order to rule.

A British depiction of suttee

Spivak particularly wanted to write the essay based on the historiography concerning one particular event. Among high-caste Hindus when a husband died his wife was immolated on his funeral pyre in a custom called sati, or suttee. Very few cases of sati actually happened - between 1800 and independence in 1947 there were around 100 cases out of a population of tens of millions - but the British East India Company (EIC) viewed it as an endemic issue. In 1829 the EIC banned the custom, and there would be several more attempts to ban it. Spivak's description of this has now become the phrase to describe justifications of colonialism: White men are saving brown women from brown men. Colonial and imperial historians repeated this justification - even when they viewed empire negatively it was seen as being needed to eradicate sati. Postcolonial historians instead looked at indigenous sources which painted a different image - women apparently wanted to immolate themselves. They wanted to keep up tradition so willingly immolated themselves. However, Spivak highlighted one key issue - both sources were not written by women. 'One diagnosis of female free will is substituted for another'. Women's voices, voices of the subaltern, were sidelined in favour of male voices - whether it be from the East India Company or from Brahmans. Spivak pessimistically concludes stating that 'The subaltern cannot speak'. The subaltern was always the object, not the subject, of study. We lose the voice of the subaltern consequently.

Legacies
Gayatri Spivak's essay greatly influenced postcolonial thought - so much so she is now seen as one of the 'founders of postcolonialism', something Spivak has refused to fully accept. Nevertheless, we have seen postcolonial history trying to avoid, or acknowledging, the over-reliance on indigenous elite sources. Increased engagement with oral stories has allowed engagement with subaltern voices - historians have managed to interview Scheduled Castes and women about their experiences during the Partition of India in 1947. Unfortunately, this is an impossibility, or a near impossibility, for discussing women's views of sati. Spivak never offered answers, just questions. It is something that anyone studying history or looking at politics has to take into account - how do we allow the subaltern to speak?

The sources I have used are as follows:
-Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 'Can the Subaltern Speak?', in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, (London: 1988), 271-314
-Robert Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, (Malden: 2016)
-Rochona Majumdar, Writing Postcolonial History, (London: 2010)
-Edward Said, Orientalism, (London: 1978)
-Vivek Chibber, Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, (London: 2013)
-Dipesh Chaktrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, (New Delhi: 2000)
-Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, (eds.), Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, (London: 1973)

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