Session 9

The question of foundations and their significance causes an interesting debate between Prakash and O'Hanlon and Washbrook. Frankly however, after reading the response that Prakash gives I understand the line that needs to be maintained between writing Indian history thematically and giving a particular theme totalizing value. However, according to my reading of his response even Gyan Prakash does not believe in abandoning the foundational categories entirely.

While going over this debate I was reminded of the time we talked about Shahid Amin's piece on Chauri Chaura. The idea that heterogeneity of local histories can be lost when compiled under the banner of a major theme (reference to Nigel Kelly and other history textbooks). This is all Prakash seems to be asking to avoid. However, the complete rejection of a thematic writing would be a disservice to the discipline and where I strongly disagree with Prakash is his extrapolation of the definition of myth and fiction.

The fact remains that even if empirical sources are not so fragmented and we get a complete picture, the picture will never be the truest representation of the past because there is only so much a historian can derive from an archive as we have discussed repeatedly over the course. Hence, there needs to some level of recognition that an interpretive leap simply has to be made but while being cognizant of the limitation of historical understanding and keeping in mind that it is not that the archives are just noise that need to be given a voice but rather a 'pregnant silence' that a voice can perhaps be extracted from as Prakash would put it.

Session 9

I think we all realise the futility of the discussion at hand. Are there any foundations? Are categories real? We can obviously never find any satisfactory answers to these questions because they are clearly not lines of historical enquiry. Instead, they are philosophical questions. So they have no straight answers and possibly no direct relevance to the study of history either.

That said, I am leaning heavily to O'Hanlon and Washbrook's side. They make some of the points we made in our last class. Any set of ideas -- even Gyan Prakash's -- is built on some foundations. These might not be the same foundations which prop up the hegemonic discourse but they are still a consistent and internally coherent amalgam of knowledge from which attacks on hegemony can be launched. As O'Hanlon and Washbrook implicitly point out, perhaps the best way out would be to acknowledge the contingent nature of our foundations, recognise their specificity in time and space, and then continue to use them regardless. 

If we have time in class, could we go over how Foucault's ideas feed into Said (and therefore Prakash)? I didn't understand this fully. 

Week 9

Prakash's complete rejection of categories he identifies as 'totalizing' rightly come under attack from O'Hanlon and Washbrook. Though he seems to believe that these categories are useless, O'Hanlon and Washbrook make a good point that these categories are useful because these categories are used by the oppressor and thus need to be engaged with. Prakash uses the example of women and the many different experiences they have to deal with to counter the idea of one universal idea of 'womanhood', but he seems to be ignoring that even though their experiences may be different, the discrimination they have to face arises from the very fact that they are women. In short, since it is the category that the oppressor uses, the oppressed may also identify with such totalizing identities thus giving them credence. Even though he clarifies that specific contexts shape universal categories, there seems to be no engagement with the fact that women for example may use the universal category of women in their politics and expressions.
In O'Hanlon and Washbrook's essay, their is no appreciation of the power dynamics of history writing. They seem to consider archival sources 'noise' that the historian makes into a voice; not only this, it is a historian's responsibility is to give it a voice. Prakash raises a good point about the silencing in history that precludes some voices from coming through. Trouillot's very significant contribution of making these silences visible and not attempting to give them a voice while pointing out the power distributions that cause these silences to occur is something O'Hanlon and Washbrook do not engage with. 

In a world of “Post-”

I wrote my last blog post on the conceptualization of time in Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe. Temporality unfolds not only in the ways in which historical subjects are said to associate with time and the way time is imagined as linear or cyclical but also in the ways historians write of the lineage of history writing.

Gyan Prakash divides Indian history writing into orientalist and post-orientalist histories. Rosalind O’Hanlon and David Washbrook critique Prakash’s analysis. For them the historians that Prakash has categorized as post-orientalist use many of the troupes of orientalism for instance Bernard Cohn’s use of India’s timelessness. They are also interested in exploring why post-modernism is popular in the academy and what does that tell us about the process of intellectual labor. Gyan Prakash responds to O’Hanlon and Washbrook by referring to deconstruction and the possibility for history writing that it opens up. This scholarly debate aside (which is admittedly a lot of fun) what is particularly interesting to my mind is the importance accorded to categories. “Post-” is a very popular word: Post-orientalist, post-foundationalist, post-modernist are words that are critical to this debate which can in many ways be seen as a debate about the place of terminology as much as it is about the ways of history writing.

“Post” reaffirms a point of departure from something. It is one way to deal with the ambivalence of subject-position that Prakash identifies. For Prakash it is also one way in which deconstruction can be applied to history and historical difference can be explained and understood. Prakash says it is not about a narrative of origins and about writing a history that “would only return to origins” rather it is about the possibility of re-inscribing assumptions of history writing. This question of ambivalence and historical difference is an important one because it not only shapes the way history is written but also the ways in which one imagines oneself as a subject (Prakash’s acceptance of hanging onto two horses inconstantly). But is a world of post- and what came before the only way to understand this ambivalence of writing and being? 

Of Foundations and Horses- Session 9

This week's readings, on top of touching on many of the themes we have been discussing in the past few classes, were also highly amusing (particularly- Prakash's response to O Hanlon and Washbrook). 

I agree that Prakash's advocacy of the "mythical" may be a bit of a stretch for the field of history. Yes, fiction and myths contribute to our understanding of a particular time period or context. Yes, they may even present a situation in a form that allows us to empathize and connect with individuals and groups across time. We can also agree that any practice of history writing, be it with or against the grain, has an act of interpretation, of an "imaginative leap"- it is never "purely objective". However, that is not to say that all histories are mere fiction, as Hayden White states. It is not to say that the line between fiction and history is merely an imaginary one, that it can be done away with. History needs to maintain some distance from the voices it is writing about. Writers can be self reflexive and state their biases, acknowledge their own positions, and state their political motivations and implications. They can acknowledge that the sources, too, are colored by power relations. In taking history as an academic discipline, we must maintain some distance- as we have discussed in the previous classes. 

I also understand the tendency to disparage the approach that calls all categories, structures, and approaches "subjective" (or "relativist" or any of the jargon that we are so accustomed to hearing from post-modernists in academic disciplines). To go down that path is to make conversation and writing impossible- it is to erase the distinction between good histories and bad histories, it is to do away with distinction between history and fiction. I agree with Trouillot here that we need to maintain a balance here- we cannot go down either extreme. 

That said, I think O Hanlon and Washbrook misconstrue the argument presented by Prakash when they reduce his critique of foundational, totalizing systems and narratives to a mere "Subjective" approach, that is supposedly categorical of postmodernism. What is (somewhat) implied in his first article, and is explicitly stated in his response to them, is that these systems are important and powerful, but that we must look beyond just them. 

There is an uneasiness in accepting ambivalence, he states. A shirking of the possibility of riding two horses, so to say. This discomfort has surfaced time and again in our class discussions, where we either go down the path of "We cannot write subaltern histories because we do not have the sources", or we give too much credit to grand narratives and structures (the foundational structures Prakash speaks of). Ambivalence allows for too many possibilities, it does not give us a clear path forward, or a clear mode of thinking. It cannot tell us what to believe. Why, it is important to ask, is that a bad thing? Why can we not use that as a method of resistance? Why can we not hold two contradicting ideas in our heads and see how they relate to one another in different contexts? Can we not use it as a tool against the hegemonic systems that have dominated our histories for far too long?  

As Prakash writes, domination can never be complete- neither class, nor the state, nor any grand structure or narrative can eradicate its opposition. There will always be differences that need to be explained or accounted for.  That, in itself, should give us some hope and some direction for the future.   

Tied again to this move away from foundational narratives is a mode of history writing that is more self reflexive- albeit not as clear cut. This is where the Subaltern Collective fits in. It acknowledges and accounts for totalizing systems, as Prakash writes (they would not be called totalizing were they not so powerful and pervasive), but still attempt to look at other categories, other means of explanations. They look for, (and I hope this doesn't sound presumptuous or pretentious)- subaltern categories and fields; for interpretations we would not ordinarily have. In consciously trying to account for the silences in history, in trying (sometimes too idealistically) to give a voice to them, they still add to our understanding. Once again, this method of history writing is not to discard academic rigor, it is not to throw away archives and sources and make up voices based on pure imagination- it is to exercise caution in acknowledging difference. 

Whether it is with the grain, or against it, whether it focuses on silences or what is said, whether it looks at structures within themselves to see the relations or power, or outside them for alternatives, these modes of thinking and writing are useful. They allow us to see subjects and conditions in a relational aspect, they allow us to avoid the tendency to essentialize out of convenience, they give us a nuanced understanding of the past. The past is more than just "noise" for us to decipher. It is for us to evaluate and re-evaluate- to keep coming back to, to pose questions to, given the times that we live in, and what it is we need to understand. 

Session 9

The idea of India as a construct is highlighted by Gyan Prakash which is never really understood with all its contradictions. How systems of knowledge production perpetuate this "backward" view of India is highlighted- an India that is faltering on its march to modernity. Prakash mentions how attempts to dislodge "western tradition" from the colonial world would do great disservice to the "third world"-it really would be rendered inferior to the West and all attempts at contesting hegemonic structures and revealing new histories would come to an abrupt halt.

In response to Prakash, Rosalind O' Hanlon and Washbrook highlight that while Prakash mentions the dire need for "emancipation", he does not state what exactly we require emancipation from. According to them, Prakash himself engages in that which he tells other not to do: he warns them against writing history around the major themes of global transition but then writes about Indian historiographical development in precisely these terms, seeing the determinants of its progression passing from imperialism to nationalism to a liberal hegemony centered on the United States. Here, Hanlon and Washroom's argument is more appealing as they highlight the necessity of certain structures. They highlight how some sources and voices in history in and of themselves are just noise: "Other" histories uncovered do not speak of themselves any more than "facts" of history do. Here, once again the authors are highlighting the need to situate the "other" histories within the dominant framework of history- where micro history is constrained by the framework provided by macro-history. Another critique of Prakash that seems very valid is the authors' assertion of how even dominant hegemonic structures do not predetermine the outcomes as no hegemonic structure can pervade and exhaust all social experience, least of all oe which fails to meet so many human and social needs. Indeed, it is only within these structures that resistance, emancipation or difference can be meaningfully identified or measured at all.

Gyan, David and Rosalind - Of name calling, horses and Post-Modernism

Ignoring the name calling that goes throughout the three pieces, I thought that after Gyan's Can the Subaltern ride? the difference between the two approaches which seemed stark to begin with was considerably lessened. The biggest contention I had with Gyan was almost the wholesale abandonment of any categories that could potentially be conceptualized as 'totalizing'; something which received the most concentrated attack by O'Hanlon and Washbrook as well. However, in his later piece, Gyan shows how his formulation does not disregard the importance of class (or any other category for that matter) but the privileging of one category over another. In his formulation, or from what I understood from it, argued that particulars of a specific phenomenon have to be paid attention to. I for one failed to see why David or Rosalind would have a contention with that; it is obvious, especially after Dipesh's work that specific context shapes even universalizing concepts such as capitalism. Secondly, to argue that class can not be the sole category of analysis is something one can get on board with. However, it is important to note here that, for me, Gyan's argument in the first piece was significantly weirder than it was in the second.

Another thing that I can get on board with Gyan is his formulation of the archive. David and Rosalind's conception of the archive as 'noise' seems rather simplistic; especially given what we know about the archive from Trouillot. The archives are not produced in a vacuum; this much we know. However, where Gyan takes this formulation has to be challenged. He writes; "in repeating that encounter, how does the historian today not replicate the early nineteenth-century staging of sati as a contest between tradition and modernity...". This I thought, was extremely bizarre. It takes away not only the interpretive power of the historian (in effect, letting him/her off the hook) but assumes the hegemony of the archive, or the narrative in it, to be so pervasive as to disallow any and all contentions. Furthermore, Gyan does not go onto giving us an alternative to this problem. While it is true that the Historian cannot recover the voice of the women (Spivak), does that mean automatically that this debate cannot be seen as anything but the dominant discourse in which it played out? I don't think so. This point is important because it deals with other points as well. Can we speak of Capitalist Modernity, without actually buying into the totalizing narratives that accompany it? I think this is certainly possible. Dipesh, for me, comes across as one example of a writer who is able to do this.

While it would be easy to disregard Gyan as some 'post-modernist', I think there are valuable points that he makes; this does not mean that they are applicable or valid to the extent that he makes them. Neither does it mean that the names he calls David and Rosalind are valid; that, to be honest, was just mean. The only step further would have been had he called them 'Liberal Fascists' :-P
While there is nothing to challenge the constructed nature of categories such as class, women and others, I agree with O'Hanlon and Washbrook that we use them simply out of convenience (this should of course, not force us to stop from showing their constructed nature). In many ways, I conceive of categories such as class and women as Weber's 'ideal types'; they allow us to simply make sense of a messy world. Additionally, I think there is value in the point Rosalind and David make time and again about politics; how scarce would it be to have any solidarity politics, or any politics for that matter in Gyan's conceptualization?

Finally, I think that we need to pay attention to the fact that certain categories, while being constructed, are what people use to conceive of themselves and how they identify themselves. Given this, it seems oddly huberistic (Not sure if this is a word) for a historian to come in and assert that this category is problematic. If people identify as a class, one can use class a means of analysis (while keeping in mind that it too is constructed) to analyze and understand simply because that is how people themselves are understanding themselves. Who are we to tell historical subjects, as to how they should or should not identify; or what the value of the particular category they ascribe to is?  

On Essentialism and History Writing

In the Elementary Aspects, Guha had conceptualized a framework of binaries of domination/subordination, political/pre-political and elite/non-elite. His belief that the subaltern could be understood through a point of comparison led him to imagine its existence in an “autonomous domain” of Indian politics. This signaled a movement in the concept of subalternity towards a parallel sphere of influence “that neither originated from elite politics,  nor did its existence depend upon the latter”. It was not “pre-political” as Guha shows in his analysis of peasant insurgency, that the subaltern had a consciousness of its own which worked through some “elementary forms” of resistance; negation, desecration some “elementary forms” of resistance: negation, desecration, inversion, solidarity, territoriality, transmission. What this structure suggests is that Guha was not aiming at producing a narrow and particular historiography of a few peasant insurgencies. By arguing against the idea of subaltern activities as “spontaneous” and “unpremeditated affairs” he established a template that could be unproblematically mapped onto every insurgency and could explain its inherent logic. To my mind, this represented a structure that ignored the possibility of historical difference. Guha’s elementary framework sees itself as forming the “pillars of politics and of any collective action everywhere what so ever”. To me, Guha through his structural technique, was implicated in some kind of essentialism and was even “foundational” in the way Gyan Prakash understands the term: as categories “which are at some level fixed and essential, as if history were “ultimately founded in and representable through some identity-individual, class, structure”. On the other hand, Gyan Prakash situates Subaltern Studies Project as a post foundational history directed towards a post-structuralist thought.  He claims it has overcome the depictions of India in Orientalist texts as passive and separate and in nationalist texts as autonomous and essential. In as far as Prakash talks about a need to move beyond essentializing categories, one can agree. But given Guha’s structural analysis of peasant insurgency as an example, this essentialism seems to be prevalent even in Subaltern Studies. Prakash seems to negate his own stance.  He sees this field as emancipatory in that it looks beyond essences to the significance of “power relations”. But then he is so annoying when he says “it should be clear that Subaltern Studies project shares some of the  structuralist and post-structuralist critiques of the autonomous and sovereign subject”.

 Rosy Hanlon and Washbrook perhaps make a better case by suggesting that what Prakash overlooks is the significance of categories. “we cannot do without some categories, and some means of evaluating orders of certainty in order to comprehend, to explain, to elucidate and to do. They need to be understood as inventions of our own necessity”.  I get the feeling  in their essay that somehow history writing cannot be completely divorced from what Prakash thinks of as "foundationalism" . If foundationalism was something critical to nationalist and Orientalist forms of history writing, then perhaps we yet haven’t made the break to really be thinking of a “post”-foundational history.  Already, ideas such as “post-Orientalist”, “post structuralist” , “post-colonialism”, “post-modernism” and so on are very problematic  as they suggest a rupture in time when what we see is a continuity of ideas. 

Gyan vs Washbrook

       I found the dialogue/debate between Gyan and Wasbrook quite useful with respect to the possibilities/limitations created by the move towards a postmodernist/poststructuralist method of history writing. Although, I do agree with Gyan’s critique of the Orientalist project, and its tendency to essentialize, distance and oppose the other, however I find this whole concept of a “post foundational” history quite unsettling. I agree with Gyan in his assertion that we need to move beyond essentializing categories, and make sure we are cognizant of the historically contingent nature of our categories, but I think he fails to historicize his own position. Furthermore, as Washbrook argues, categories/concepts do not have to be necessarily essentializing in nature. Rather, they can treated as particular tools to make sense of historical reality. I am forced to question whether the solution to grand totalizing theories really can be found by having  no definitions at all, no concepts and no categories. Isn’t it more important to be aware of the way in which we employ the categories that we employ rather than doing away with them?

                Also, I don’t understand the problem of using particular identities such as class, structures, and individuals in order to center one’s narrative. Obviously, these categories must not be the sole basis of one’s causal explanation, and must be viewed as subjective and historically contingent formulations, however I don’t quite understand this need to move away from any kind of foundation on which to base historical analysis. To be sure, even though Gyan is constantly critiquing the dominant categories we employ, yet he is ultimately concerned with the “third world” – a category he refers to throughout the text. I also found Washbrook’s critique of the way in which the emancipatory potential of the post foundational histories is curtailed due their emphasis on positionality quite important Indeed, in order to be political, we have to quite explicitly pin down our subject of emancipation rather than always focus on the ever shifting positions/relational concepts that tend to depoliticize the subject. I mean what more can post foundational critiques offer us other than making us aware of the conflation of the subject and the object in historical reality.

                I think the Washbrook’s critique however is also quite contradictory as well  – at one point he argues that totalizing themes aren’t really a problem, yet he then criticizes postmodernist scholarship precisely because it too attempts to rely on these abstract totalizing themes and theories. Also, I am not sure what Washbrook himself has to offer rather than a critique of post foundational history - what other alternative is there? 

Session 8 - Challenging the rules of the game

I find a high degree of resonance between Trouillot's conception of the 'rules of the game' and Chakrabarty's Provincializing Europe. In many ways, the two texts directly speak to each other. For me, what Dipesh highlights as the act of 'translation' can also be understood as certain acts being translated into a schema that fits into the 'rules of the game'. But what is interesting is how these
'rules' are European in conception  yet become an integral part of history of any and all regions; every history is a variation of European history. It is interesting to note that if Dipesh's suggestions are taken into account, we are not only talking about changing the 'rules' of history but in many ways, language itself. How do we speak of certain things that are to us, 'un-thinkable'? And there is no doubt to my mind that the lived experiences of many in South Asia, are to us, products of 'Western Academia', un-thinkable. Recall how we encountered great difficulty when we discussed the issue of the Thacoor in Guha's work; this text is raising precisely that issue. How do we make sense of the testimonies of the people; do we interpret them into a secular framework and if not, how do we interpret them?

The other observation which I found fascinating in Dipesh's work was that of the Indian Scientist who believed in both Astronomy and Astrology. This observation speaks directly to a lot of experiences in our own lifetime. How then, do we make sense of these experiences? I think that as Dipesh points out, there seems to be two different sets of belief systems that seem to be operating; one secular, i.e, European and one indigenous. But, the question then becomes; can there be no convergence between them? I got the sense that Dipesh seemed to be almost arguing that even in Bengali literature this convergence was rather missing. And of course, in the practice of history writing, this convergence is entirely missing. As Dipesh points out, the History of South Asia is always written by somebody outside the experiences; a 'neutral' observer. I think the mention of three African authors could help us give direction as to how we can go about bring these two modes of 'thinking almost' into conversation with each other.

Dipesh also speaks with Guha in this text. How is Guha's methodology being challenged by Dipesh? Guha's practice seems to be to interpret or rather translate the actions of the 'people' into a language that we can understand. Yet, this act of interpretation can be seen as decisionist reading of History. My question is; if we stick to the 'European' mode of History writing, which inevitably out of constraint of the discipline we have to, is there really another way of writing about the 'Thacoor'?

The Thing Called Time

          I recently read James Elkin’s The Object Stares Back at You. Among other things it talked about the conditions of seeing, that blindness isn’t the opposite of vision rather it is its constant companion even the foundation of seeing itself. This came back to me when I read Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe: in trying to free itself from the first-Europe and then rest of the world model, his arguments are in constant conversation with European theorists. Similarly, historicism and what Chakrabarty calls decisionism aren’t opposites but mutually constitutive. But how does time feature into all of this?

          One of the important things that Chakrabarty aims to do is to problematize the notion of singular united time and to explore diverse ways of being in the world by delving on examples from the Bengali context. This then is a critique of historicism in non-western societies. If one were to use historicism, Chakrabarty writes that history of non-western societies would be like a "waiting room" where time is secular and those who haven’t realized political modernity in western terms wait for its arrival. Here is where the intervention of the subaltern studies collective occurs—the collective tries to democratize history through ideas of time itself (whether they succeed or not is a separate question). This challenges notions of singular united historical time in which we all exist as monolithic subjects. If read generously, the subaltern studies can also be seen as a critique of secular time. For instance, Guha puts it beautifully “the possibility of calling upon God [or gods] without being under an obligation to first establish his [or their] reality.”

             Chakrabarty also ties in ideas of past with futurity. Constantly fragmentary and irreducibly plural nature of the now affects our conceptions of the past.  The past is incomplete and perennially inaccessible in its full form to the historian who objectifies it through history. History then as much a project about futurity (a fragmented one) as much it is about the past. In many ways the subaltern collective is about futurity as well. Because the past haunts the moment that we have arrived in, shapes the questions that ask of archives which somehow constitute pastness it also retrieves futures by creating them, if not rendering them partially visible. Where does that leave us? In a fragmentary world of constantly shifting time that allows for multiple ways of being to translate some of its traces onto history. This plurality of time shapes the historian’s conception of their world and history writing. Consider Galeano’s larger than life almost super-natural history that reminds one of Marquez’s fiction. To write history then is an act of saving the past and a declaration of possibilities of future. Conceptions of time too are political. 

Session 8

In this session’s reading, Chakrabarty highlights the constraints that are placed on scholarship because of the western episteme. He argues that the present in the non-west is not singular and knowable through the experience of Europe, rather that it is fragmented and contains many strands.

We have already come across the idea that history does not unfold through a series of universal stages in Chakrabarty’s work. In his analysis of the working conditions of the jute mills in Calcutta, Chakravarty showed how traditional modes of organization persisted in what would conventionally be considered a capitalist system of production. The labor force in mills was recruited and supervised by sardars; men who fulfilled the role of factory foremen but also possessed extra-economic authority that was parallel to that of a village headman. The conventional European episteme would consider the existence of such traditional authority as “pre-modern” and would predict that such “primitive” modes of organization would eventually be swept away by modernity.

Chakrabarty however, would argue that since the modern has been defined by the European experience, it would be incorrect to gauge the “progress” of a society that is not European by the concept of modernity. To be fair though, Chakrabarty himself uses the word “pre-capitalist” to refer to modes of organization in the jute mills of Calcutta and this is confusing because it suggests that these modes of organization are on their way to true capitalism.

The usage of the word “pre-captialist” however, does not signify a gap in Chakrabarty’s understanding of modernity and capitalism in Bengal, rather it points to a difficulty that Chakrabarty has highlighted in this session’s reading. . He says that “European thought is at once both indispensable and inadequate…”. Because scholarship is located strictly within the western episteme, it is very difficult to describe the conditions and the experiences of the non-west using European languages. Though Chakravarty is aware that the Bengali experience is fundamentally different from the European one, he is constrained by a language which contains terms that inherently refer to the European experience.

Contesting Universals

Dipesh Chakrabarty in Provincializing Europe emphasizes the historian's need to acknowledge the contradiction between the post-colonial experience and the persistence of Western categories in scholarly explanations of post-colonial modernity. As he points out: "European thought is at once both indispensable and inadequate in helping us to think through the experiences of political modernity in non-Western nations, and provincializing Europe becomes the task of exploring how this thought … may be renewed from and for the margins." Europe for him, is not only a geographical region, but also a body of scholarship that defines how academics view the world. This body of scholarship sees itself as universal and global. Chakrabarty’s concern is with contesting this idea of a universal form of knowledge through which he wishes to return Europe to its rightful place as one world region amongst many, without the privilege that it has continued to hold in academic circle. That is to say that Europe should no longer be considered as the template for modernity, as it is only one expression of this transition. In his introduction Chakrabarty says that  “universal categories that have arisen out of European thought are “indispensable and inadequate in representing this particular case of  non European modernity”.  Another point he raises is that of European knowledge being based on ‘rough translations’ that do not take into account  particularities and “plural genealogies”. A third factor that I found appealing was Chakrabarty’s inclination towards the “hermeneutic tradition” as a mode of engaging and understanding particularities. Hermeneutics as being acts of interpretation undercuts the idea of universal because interpretations differ within different contexts and once again bring us to focus on specificity. With that in mind, how does the chapter on Domestic Cruelty and the Birth of the Subject become relevant to Chakrabarty’s ideas? In this essay Chakrabarty takes the subject who observes and documents the suffering of widows as a point of analysis to think about how one would write a history of a modern Bengali subject of compassion from outside of European mode of thinking and seeing. By comparing the biographies of  Rammohun and Vidyasagar with what they themselves wrote, one finds different answers to the question of what made them compassionate. They themselves espoused a natural theory of compassion, the idea that compassion was a sentiment universally present in something called “human nature,”. But Chakrabarty argues that Bengali history cannot unproblematically be mapped onto  Enlightenment modes of thinking. Bengali biographies point to this fact whereby Rammohun Roy or Vidyasagar’s was due to their heart. There were thus two separate and unconnected theoretical ways of looking at compassion and personhood. One was the European-derived natural theory of sentiments. The other was derived from Indian aesthetics, inscribed in Bengali words used to describe the capacity for sympathy . They represented a different hermeneutic that ‘supplemented’ the European Enlightenment one. Chakrabarty argues that the modern Bengali subject who demonstrates a will to witness and document suffering is a “multiple” being. So Kalyani Datta can be understood  as a citizen subject but at the same time her work can be read as part of the history of the Bengali Bhadramahila. A third way of reading her act of  documenting suffering can be to think of “other ways of being civil and humane”. The modern post-colonial self exists in a multiplicity. But if this subject arises in opposition to what it is not- the modern subject of Enlightenment thought. If this subject too can only be realized by placing it in opposition to the European subject of modernity the knowledge of which becomes important to make the difference, then my question is how far can we think outside of European episteme? What is the utility of contesting universals, as Chakrabarty does when it is needed to understand the particular?

SESSION 8- Dipesh Chakrabarty

One of the main assumptions of Chakrabarty's arguments is the inescapability of certain structures and modes of thinking. We are, in some ways, stuck within the paradigm we are in- no matter how much we try to "read against the grain" or not project onto the past what we see in our present, or to even see the past "in its own terms". As discussed by Amin- the effort to discover "the true story" is a fruitless exercise- it cannot be recovered.

Chakrabarty speaks of more than just the sources, however, which makes his work slightly more interesting. He speaks in the realm of ideas and structures. He states that where we can critically state that some categories or institutions, or modes of thinking are "created" (the idea of Europe, the importance of the nation-state), does not mean they exist only in the realm of ideas. There are numerous other accompanying practices and discourses which make them come into existence and become reality. This relates to our discussion of structuralism as well. Structures may be based on an idea, and be "created", but they have their own power as well, and the ability to wield violence. They take shape and form, they are given authority and respect (even deference).

Given this, historians, or any other social scientists cannot simply state they are moving beyond it, or can do away with them. Nor can they give them a status of "natural" and "pre-existing" as some often tend to do. So where we should question the framework, as we discussed last time, there are certain benefits to working within it as well; it gives us new insights, and unique avenues of reform and change. It is in criticisms that we can find altered (though not completely new) modes of thinking and being.

This reasoning is specially relevant for post-colonial studies and the Subaltern collective as a primarily post-colonial field. In some ways, there is no escaping the history that the collective is a response to; it still forms our identity, it still plays an integral role in what we do. Yet at the same time, we cannot go down the alternate deterministic route and blame EVERYTHING on European Colonialism (although to be fair, we can blame quite a lot on it).

Here again, there needs to be a balance. if even the method we critique them in is claimed by them, if our way of an alternative to their writing is a "fractured", less organized narrative, how are we not playing into those oriental tropes we so criticize? Where the "West" is modern, structured, organized, and the Orient is fractured. Even if these claims are false- they are given legitimacy by discourse and structures.

Perhaps the way out of these contradictory forces is to simply acknowledge and recognize biases. It is to employ what we discussed as central to the Subaltern project- "self relfexivity". If we can understand and recognize biases, we can recognize the way power operates, the way it has shaped our presents and our pasts (and probably our futures)- it allows us to not be paralyzed by the weight of our histories, or its limitations.

"The idea is to write into the history of modernity the ambivalences, contradictions, the use of force, and the tragedies and ironies that attend it."

Session 8

For me, one of the most interesting aspect of this reading was the question raised by the cultural studies scholar Lawrence Grossberg of whether history itself is not endangered by consumerist practices of contemporary capitalism. He asks "how do you produce historical observation
and analysis when every event is potentially evidence, potentially determining, and at the same time, changing too quickly to allow the comfortable leisure of academic criticism". This in a way highlights how the popular notion of historians "uncovering the truth" is an overstatement (to say the least)- revisions in scholarship keep adding on or challenging the previously discovered "truth".
Chakrabarty raises important questions of the interaction of Western notions of modernity within the South Asian context. Its secular trajectory could not be copy-pasted in India. In his work, Guha had shown "that practices which called upon gods, spirits, and other spectral and divine beings were part of the network of power and prestige within which both the subaltern and elite operated in South Asia". The peasant portrayed this dichotomy: though he was illiterate (or pre-political) according to Western standards to be granted "self-government", as an Indian he had the 'right' to self-rule; however, at the same time his contribution to the national cause was only secondary to the urban nationalist parties.
Here Guha also points how modernity was misconstrued within India: in what seemed “traditional” in this modernity were “traditional only in so far as [their] roots could be traced back to pre-colonial times, but [they were] by no means archaic in the sense of being outmoded".
While comparing notions of the secular and unsecular vis-a-vis conceptions of modernity, Chakrabarty mentions Gandhi's saying: 'being human means discovering the possibility of calling upon God [or gods] without being under an obligation to first establish his [or their] reality". For me, this is one of the most profound statement, especially in relation to the subaltern which has to be understood on his own terms. His "belief" does not have to be substantiated by any post-Enlightenment scientific standard to be considered "real".
Chakrabarty mentions how for generations, philosophers and thinkers who shape the nature of social science have produced theories that supposedly embrace the entirety of humanity. And it is within such theories that I perceive the subalternity of knowledge to be produced- where western accounts of non-western society are privileged over self-evaluations of non-westerners.
Modern India by Sumit Sarkar opens with the following sentence:“The sixty years or so that lie between the foundation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 and the achievement of independence in August 1947 witnessed perhaps the greatest transition in our
country’s long history". Does this imply that just as some regions as more important than others-a Eurocentric view rendering South Asian studies (on their own terms) into subalternity- are some histories or historical periods (eg, 1885-1947 in this case) more important than others?

I found Chakarvarty’s discussion, in the introductory chapter, insightful for three reasons: 1) it calls attention to the contradictions presents within enlightenment thought itself, making it that much more difficult for scholars, who are indeed products of this mode of thinking, to fully ascribe agency to the peasant – the peasant is a citizen, but he/she also has to be made into the citizen. Indeed, these contradictions reveal why, even when the peasant is present at its own making, he/she is only present in a pre-political fashion. It reveals how our mode of thinking, creates certain opportunities, but also limits other possibilities. 2) It addresses the nature of global historical time, and the manner in which this historicist time, creates cultural difference, and in doing so, becomes a way of saying “not yet” to someone. Chakarvarty’s discussion is particularly relevant for our discussions, because it reveals that even our sense of time, contains within it a power relationship, and perpetuates subalternity by negating certain groups of their complete political agency. It also reveals that there is no way that we can truly speak of human agency if we keep ascribing to this evolutionary understanding of history – even implicitly. Enlightenment thought is based on the idea of progress – that history is moving in one direction, and that we are moving in one direction, but in doing so, it necessarily excludes those that are  left out of the mainstream of history, or choose to follow an opposing direction.  3) It deals with the importance of not only understanding the process of transition but also translation. I don’t really understand however why scholars are stuck in the paradigm of the pre-political and the political, why are these particular terms so important – what even makes the political the political. Does being political mean being more rational, and pre-political equate to being irrational. I just want to understand how we are defining the political, when the enlightenment concept of the political itself contains within it a number of contradictions.
In chapter 5, Chakarvarty deals with the relationship between the observer and the observed – which is mediated by this enlightenment mode of seeing. I found this chapter useful because it reveals that nothing is a given with respect to how we see/frame a particular problem – the mere fact that we even see suffering and feel empathy doesn’t mean that this is a universally applicable natural relationship. Rather, it is a product of a particular mode of seeing. But more importantly, Chakarvarty calls attention to how we understand the “other” (and its action) when it stands outside of our particular mode of seeing. Indeed, the mere fact that sati doesn’t generate compassion doesn’t mean that the community is not exercising reason. Indeed, reason itself needs to be understood as a historical concept. The dominant way of either ascribing enlightenment reason universal applicability, or of retreating into infinite individuality, are therefore both inadequate means of approaching the problem. The dichotomy of the individual and the universal, the objective and the subjective needs to be addressed if we are to engage with the other, without losing a sense of ourselves. Indeed, silencing equally occurs when we say that we are all the same, or that we are each uniquely different.

Approver's Testimony

One aspect of the difficulties faced while writing a subaltern history that has come up repeatedly in the course of our discussions, one that now seems painfully obvious, is the limited nature of the archive. In this piece, however, I feel like Shahid Amin has given us a new angle from which to view the same problem. I am referring to his emphasis on the need for a historian of the subaltern classes to "investigate the discursive practices within which statements [...] are produced". He alludes particularly to statements made in connection with legal proceedings, but it is important to qualify, as he does, that this needs to be done not to merely identify bias and arrive at some nominally "real" truth. It is important, however, as an acknowledgement of the fact that "most statements about the dominated are produced within well defined fields of power", and that an understanding of the specificities of that power as it operates in specific cases, is crucial to the writing of subaltern histories (167). Neither this notion of the role of power in the construction of historical narratives in general, nor this critical approach to court records and archives of legal documents, in particular, are new to us; we saw both last session with Trouillot and Guha. However, I felt as though, from his exploration of the Approver's Testimony and the Judicial Discourse in the Chauri Chaura case, I could see a more concrete example of how the sort of critical historiography indicated in last session’s readings might practically play out.

Trouillot’s explanation of how power enters into the writing of history and historical narratives at every stage of their creation (he names four) seemed especially relevant here, with regard to the overwhelmingly constructed nature of the entire case, the key aspect of which was the Approver’s Testimony. Amin’s treatment of the Approver’s Testimony and its subsequent readings, whether for legal or historical purposes, really brings this question of power to the forefront, especially its role in the creation of facts. Shikari is chosen as Approver because he is best suited for the role in the way the court has chosen to read the case or crime, and his testimony is most thoroughly molded to fit in with the same narrative. On a smaller scale, we saw the same happen in “Chandra’s Death”- the fact that the court chose to view it as a murder, and that this reading happened at the outset, not the culmination, of the legal proceedings, completely obscures the alternative reading that Guha presents. The thoroughness of Amin’s deconstruction of the Approver’s Testimony, and the variables that have gone into making it, was valuable for me because it helped, I think, solidify that distinction between the merely oppressed and the subaltern that we have been struggling with throughout. It reinforced the idea that it may be the degree to which the oppressed are at the mercy of the power of the dominating, that determines their subalternity. Here, the courts’ treatment of the accused, including the Approver, unfolds on the basis of a pre-configured approach to the case. From thereon, the primary spokesperson is decided accordingly, what he says is molded to fit, what does not fit is read so that it does, or presumably eliminated from the discourse. To risk an oversimplification, what is said, who says it, how it is said, and how it is read then and in the future, all are determined largely through the exercise of power, both overt and subtle.