Thoughts etc on the Zehmisch article

• There are very urgent and practical reasons for us as historians to promote non hegemonic ways of thinking. Post enlightenment rationalism is the dominant framework deployed when questions of redressing inequality and promoting human welfare arise today. This mode of thinking is “strategically deaf” to subaltern concerns. We as discerning postmodernist/poststructuralist theorists can help create a culture of acceptance of subaltern discourses and help make the world a better place. (Not being sarcastic)
• Enabling subalterns to “speak for themselves within hegemonic frameworks”. The word “within” is interesting and offers a key to Spivak’s thought.
• In today's world how far is “anarchism” possible for subalterns who do not wish to participate in the state? The state has never been so powerful and intrusive as it is in this day and age.
• Anarchist anthropology is a welcome break from how we have conceived of the subaltern so far.
• But can the case of anarchist groups be used to illustrate the plight of all subalterns? Tribes living in the forests of South East Asia (Scott) or the Andaman Ranchis might be doing fairly well for themselves but this certainly wouldn't be the case for perhaps the majority of subalterns world wide. Peasants and factory workers everywhere would see an improvement in their condition if they were allowed to be part of the hegemonic discourse.
• Nevertheless, as far as the Ranchis themselves are concerned, it is very fascinating to read of their inhabitation of the “margin” in the Andaman islands and the different ways the “bourgeois” hegemons and the Ranchis themselves have of looking at it.
• Playing stereotypes to one's advantage to promote internal cohesion and to resist outside interference.
• The idea that there should be ethnographic fieldwork in the vernacular to “enable . . . communication between subalterns and hegemonic groups”. Is this what the subaltern studies theorists are also trying to do in their own way?
• Finally, it's so pleasing to see that the stories of contemporary subalterns like the Ranchis are discoverable (even if the process might have to be difficult). This compared to the stories of historical subaltern actors, seemingly doomed to permanent irrecoverability.