Session 12

Dirlik's piece on Eurocentrism talks about its inescapability in certain ways, explaining the links between eurocentrism and modernity, and then postcolonialism and globalism. 

Considering the fact that the subaltern collective comes specifically from the context of postcolonialism, it is tied inherently to eurocentrism, which is, in many ways, inescapable. One must be careful to not exaggerate the binaries between Europe and the third world, and the "values" associated with these categories. If Europe is the bringer of Science and modern values then, it cannot be said that the East was the opposite. To show fluidity and heterogenity, Dirlik argues, is a task that writers in postcolonialism take seriously. Yet at the same time, one cannot reasonably say that some of these "values" existed – in the shape that we see them, at least- outside of Europe. When speaking of capitalism for instance, one cannot simply argue that capitalism was present in other parts of the world in the shape that became dominant. We can find traces of it, but the global form it emerged in was a European model. Attempts to diminish Europe's centrality, then, become difficult. For if we also argue that Europe did not exist in itself- that it too, clearly, was formed through interactions with the colonized world, then what structures and ideologies can we attribute to it? 

How do we apply this to the Subaltern though? Is the Subaltern being defined in opposition to Europe? Or to the native elite? Or to a particular gender? The point is, that when speaking of relations of power, questions of resistance, difference, and representation are inevitable. But what does one do with them? Fluidity must be recognized, yet one should not ignore how power dynamics tilted it in the favor of one side. Consciousness and subjectivity of the Subaltern must be recognized, yet one cannot overstretch that if one is to write these histories, one cannot take them at their word and has to maintain distance from the logic of the "thakkur". One must try to uncover/recover/make these voices speak- yet one does not have the resources to always do so. One must not essentialize or romanticize, but one must write histories of the oppressed. It seems most of our classes have been spent discussing the dangers of either extreme- but then what do we do? When almost all approaches are problematic, what approach are we to take? How are we to move forward? 

This text gives a strong argument, to my mind, for why these histories are important. For despite elements of essentialism or romanticism which may creep in when reading sources "against the grain" in writing subaltern histories, it goes some ways in bringing to attention a marginalized group, and attempting to give it voice (despite the problems that come with it).  

"One of the most remarkable pieties of our times is that to speak of oppression is to erase the subjectivities of the oppressed, which does not seem to realize that not to speak of oppression, but still operate within the teleologies of modernist categories, is to return the responsibility for oppression to its victims."  

The above argument makes sense, but then the way to write these histories is not safe from the endless problems I have highlighted above. If even self-reflexivity is not enough, and neither are attempts to speak to the subaltern (the ones that exist in the same time period that is, for we cannot "uncover" those voices in the archives), then how is one to proceed?

The only answer I can think of is to not pay excessive heed to the critics. One should be careful and try to go through the checklist of techniques we have already discussed, but these criticisms should not stop one from still trying to write these histories, or to keep posing questions.