Subalternity

Subalternity ( Latin subalternus ; "subordinate", "of lower rank") denotes pejorative subservience and subservience or, with less pejorative connotation, subordination and lack of independence.

Subalternity at Gramsci

In the social and cultural-scientific sense, which deviates from the conventional meanings, subalternity as a translation from Italian is a term that Antonio Gramsci coined to describe social groups that are denied access to hegemonic parts of society. According to Gramsci, subordinate social classes are severely restricted in their ability to become aware of their political interests and potential political strength and to articulate themselves politically and publicly due to hegemonic structures and the exercise of rule by other parts of society. Examples of Gramsci's subordinate parts of societies are slavery in the Roman Empire and small farmers and workers in capitalist societies during Gramsci's lifetime. According to the Gramscian understanding, subalternity is based not only on the direct exercise of violence , but above all on the economically founded civil society hegemony that makes use of civil society communication and its (mostly hidden) control by the rulers.

Subalternity in postcolonialism

The term was picked up by the Subaltern Studies Group , a group of South Asian historians, in the 1980s. In a criticism of this group by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in their essay Can the Subaltern Speak? bordered to the term towards naturalizing ideas, and found that subalternity a result of hegemonic discourses and through the practice of social exclusion ( exclusion is made socially). With this definition of subalternity as a social construct, the term is often used in research on postcolonialism .

literature

• Saurabh Dube / Sanjay Seth / Ajay Skaria (Eds.): Dipesh Chakrabarty and the Global South: Subaltern Studies, Postcolonial Perspectives, and the Anthropocene , Routledge, London / New York 2020.
• Antonia Darder: Decolonizing Interpretive Research: A Subaltern Methodology for Social Change , Routledge, London / New York 2019.
• Nikita Dhawan: Can the Subaltern Speak German? And Other Risky Questions. Migrant Hybridism versus Subalternity. April 25, 2007, accessed April 23, 2013 . 
• Partha Chatterjee: A Brief History of Subaltern Studies . In: Gunilla Budde , Sebastian Conrad, Oliver Janz (Hrsg.): Transnational history: topics, tendencies and theories . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-525-36736-0 (review hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de ).
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak : Can the Subaltern speak? Post-colonialism and subaltern articulation . Turia & Kant, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-85132-506-5 .
• Hito Steyerl , Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodriguez (Ed.): Does the subaltern speak German? Migration and Post-Colonial Criticism . Unrast, Münster 2003, ISBN 3-89771-425-6 .
• Chakrabarty, Dipesh: Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies . University of Chicago Press 2002, ISBN 978-0-226-10039-5 .
• Ileana Rodríguez: The Latin American subaltern studies reader . Duke Univ. Press, North Carolina 2001, ISBN 0-8223-2712-0 .
• Guha, Ranajit: Subaltern Studies Reader, 1986-1995 . University of Minnesota Press 1997, ISBN 978-0-8166-2759-2 .
• Antonio Gramsci: Prison Notebooks . Ed .: Klaus Bochmann, Wolfgang Fritz Haug . 10 volumes. Argument Verlag, Hamburg / Berlin, DNB  551788003 (1991-2002).