The South—Borges
At the beginning of this story, I thought the plot would be straightforward, but when I read it for the second time, I found different meanings in it. This short story gave me an impression I was reading a piece of prose, the style is concise, every phrase is a condensation of detailed plots but I can still feel it is poetic. The South also makes a lot of illusionary effects, as to me, the particularity of this story is the ambiguous boundary between the reality and the fiction.
It is quite common that a story being revised from real events, since Borges used to be injured on his forehead and got infection, he put his experience on the character, but what happened later in the story seems like a dream or the imagination of the character (or we can say the author). About this point, there exist some hints in the story:
Firstly, Dahlmann chose the romantic part from his ancestor, so it’s not strange for him to have some imaginary thoughts, and he bought The Arabian Nights, the context of which signifies the struggles with death endlessly. “To travel with this book so closely linked to the history of his torment was an affirmation that the torment was past, and was a joyous, secret challenge to the frustrated forces of evil.” His story originated from The Arabian Nights, and Dahlmann used The Arabian Nights to fight the real life (or his experience in the hospital). This book foreshadowed the choice of Dahlmann at the ending.
Secondly, there are several phrases signifying eternity. “While Dahlmann stroked the cat’s black fur, that this contact was illusory, that he and the cat were separated as though by a pane of glass, because man lives in time, in successiveness, while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant.” ”On the floor, curled against the bar, lay an old man, as motionless as an object. The many years had worn him away and polished him, as a stone is worn smooth by running water or a saying is polished by generations of humankind. He was small, dark, and dried up, and he seemed to be outside time, in a sort of eternity.” The spatiality and the temporality in this story are unconsciously expanded, eternity becomes the theme of this story.
Thirdly, the ending of the story is open. Beautiful scenery of the hometown brought Dahlmann the desire of starting a new life, but he would be face to face with danger again. He was not scared, he had experienced the most painful physical and mental sufferings during the treatmen. People are unable to get rid of real life, but real life can provide us the opportunities of experiencing eternal life. Dahlmann could be injured severely again, then he would get a new treatment, this means a circle was made and all start again from the beginning, he could never extricate himself from this predicament and encumbrance, but it’s his choice to determine the form of his own death (an eternal life), totally different from the last experience, it is a conscious choice; or he could be dead without any regrets, the death is a perfect way for him to maintain his dignity and have an extrication, he would be sent to an eternity.
Life is full of different experiences of death, agonies, horror and wonders. The South emphasizes on the choice of life. The old man is hence a representative figure of the South. When he saw Dahlmann, he knew what had happened to him and what he would continue to bear. He gave his dagger to Dahlmann and encouraged him with full of expectations to fight the bloody duel, Dahlman did not hesitate, the southern culture decided that Dahlman can only accept the challenge. This choice has reached the limits of the aesthetic, the pride of the human, is also a symbol of spiritual immortality. This is the principle of the South, it is cruel, but it is charming as well.
The South—Borges
At the beginning of this story, I thought the plot would be straightforward, but when I read it for the second time, I found different meanings in it. This short story gave me an impression I was reading a piece of prose, the style is concise, every phrase is a condensation of detailed plots but I can still feel it is poetic. The South also makes a lot of illusionary effects, as to me, the particularity of this story is the ambiguous boundary between the reality and the fiction.
It is quite common that a story being revised from real events, since Borges used to be injured on his forehead and got infection, he put his experience on the character, but what happened later in the story seems like a dream or the imagination of the character (or we can say the author). About this point, there exist some hints in the story:
Firstly, Dahlmann chose the romantic part from his ancestor, so it’s not strange for him to have some imaginary thoughts, and he bought The Arabian Nights, the context of which signifies the struggles with death endlessly. “To travel with this book so closely linked to the history of his torment was an affirmation that the torment was past, and was a joyous, secret challenge to the frustrated forces of evil.” His story originated from The Arabian Nights, and Dahlmann used The Arabian Nights to fight the real life (or his experience in the hospital). This book foreshadowed the choice of Dahlmann at the ending.
Secondly, there are several phrases signifying eternity. “While Dahlmann stroked the cat’s black fur, that this contact was illusory, that he and the cat were separated as though by a pane of glass, because man lives in time, in successiveness, while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant.” ”On the floor, curled against the bar, lay an old man, as motionless as an object. The many years had worn him away and polished him, as a stone is worn smooth by running water or a saying is polished by generations of humankind. He was small, dark, and dried up, and he seemed to be outside time, in a sort of eternity.” The spatiality and the temporality in this story are unconsciously expanded, eternity becomes the theme of this story.
Thirdly, the ending of the story is open. Beautiful scenery of the hometown brought Dahlmann the desire of starting a new life, but he would be face to face with danger again. He was not scared, he had experienced the most painful physical and mental sufferings during the treatmen. People are unable to get rid of real life, but real life can provide us the opportunities of experiencing eternal life. Dahlmann could be injured severely again, then he would get a new treatment, this means a circle was made and all start again from the beginning, he could never extricate himself from this predicament and encumbrance, but it’s his choice to determine the form of his own death (an eternal life), totally different from the last experience, it is a conscious choice; or he could be dead without any regrets, the death is a perfect way for him to maintain his dignity and have an extrication, he would be sent to an eternity.
Life is full of different experiences of death, agonies, horror and wonders. The South emphasizes on the choice of life. The old man is hence a representative figure of the South. When he saw Dahlmann, he knew what had happened to him and what he would continue to bear. He gave his dagger to Dahlmann and encouraged him with full of expectations to fight the bloody duel, Dahlman did not hesitate, the southern culture decided that Dahlman can only accept the challenge. This choice has reached the limits of the aesthetic, the pride of the human, is also a symbol of spiritual immortality. This is the principle of the South, it is cruel, but it is charming as well.
Impressions on “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency” on Guha
In The Prose of Counter-Insurgency, Ranajit Guha analyses the historiography of insurgency in Colonial India. The main argument I am getting from Guha’s paper is that one side of the story is not told, one voice is not accounted for ; that of the insurgents.
I believe a major problem for social historians of long passed events is the non-existence of primary documents coming from the ‘other’ side, often the opressed, the colonized, the conquered. Various texts – letters, travel journals, official correspondence… – are mostly, if not completely, produced by the side in control ; therefore any analyst, even if he wants to be impartial – is somewhat biased since he only has access to that one side of the story. It would be like a judge who has to pronounce a judgement after being able to hear only one party. With today’s technology and communication tools as well as with awareness of this previous caveat in history, all voices are better recorded and eventually (and hopefully) taken into account when analyses are made. A challenge that will certainly become important is to assess the credibility of these countless documents.
That they are primary, secondary or tertiary, all accounts of the Insurgency events adopt the side of the colonizer or of its supporters. Using primary documents, Guha shows how most parts of the text are not simple facts but bear important judgement values from the authors. Also, lexical choices are important in giving a direction to the way the texts are perceived. By example, insurgents rather than peasants, daring and wantom atrocities on the inhabitants rather than resistance to oppression give an image of criminals to people who may in fact fight for their freedom. It is certainly a phenomenon that resonates today when revolutionaries are treated like terrorists (it’s not to say that most terrorists are not in fact… terrorists ; but maybe not all).
Guha mentions the presence of the 1st person and present tense in the primary accounts as obvious signs of impartiality in the rendition of an event, but one has to be careful when analysing a text that seems neutral. The use of the 3rd person along with aorist (past) tenses is certainly not a guarantee of impartiality. In fact, such a text may be more pernicious as it poses as neutral while being filled with editorial comments. It is therefore important to understand the intention and possible bias from the author : What does he want to achieve ? How can he gain from this story ? What are his personal or philosophical affiliations ?… In this sense, Guha analyses differ from Barthes and Foucault for whom the text can somehow be detached from its author.
In sum, it seems to me that an important implicit message of Guha is to give a voive to all parties in a situation of conflict.
Spivak
I think that Spivak`s text is a very interesting reading of the work that have been doing by the subaltern group studies. In a very “polite” tone, is proposing to change the focus of this kind of studies. Turn them from exposing the “Indian” and “objective” point of view, to use the theoretical tool of the deconstruction. Spivak quote often the text of Guha to show in which way the Indian historian is reproducing the same critic that he makes to British historians. Guha speaks about the self-consciousness of the peasant rebels something that is very related, according to Spivak, with the Marxism. According to Spivak, Guha`s ideas would lead to a “inevitably objectify of the subaltern and be caught in the game of knowledge and power” (207). This means that whilu you try to show “what actually happened” from the “Indians point of view” you are sentencing to the subaltern to be a saturated category.
It is at this point where appear one of the main issues of the “subaltern studies”. What is the relation of the subaltern studies with the subaltern? This is the relation of the observer with the observed. And that, in the end, is one the biggest issues in this kind of theoretical discussions. Because we know that the group of subaltern studies are not the peasants rebels of the XIX century, not just for being “Indians” you became “the voice” of what was muted by the Empire. And this is very interesting when Spivak talks about the case of women. The concept “subaltern” has, in some way, the same characteristic than the concept of “class”. Many things can be in. And just a few can be out. So, the notion of “subaltern” it is not actually a very specific category. It is defined by the opposition with the “hegemonic” group. Hence, distinctions like gender, race and ethnicity are hard to manage under this big name of “the subaltern”.
Spivak
I think that Spivak`s text is a very interesting reading of the work that have been doing by the subaltern group studies. In a very “polite” tone, is proposing to change the focus of this kind of studies. Turn them from exposing the “Indian” and “objective” point of view, to use the theoretical tool of the deconstruction. Spivak quote often the text of Guha to show in which way the Indian historian is reproducing the same critic that he makes to British historians. Guha speaks about the self-consciousness of the peasant rebels something that is very related, according to Spivak, with the Marxism. According to Spivak, Guha`s ideas would lead to a “inevitably objectify of the subaltern and be caught in the game of knowledge and power” (207). This means that whilu you try to show “what actually happened” from the “Indians point of view” you are sentencing to the subaltern to be a saturated category.
It is at this point where appear one of the main issues of the “subaltern studies”. What is the relation of the subaltern studies with the subaltern? This is the relation of the observer with the observed. And that, in the end, is one the biggest issues in this kind of theoretical discussions. Because we know that the group of subaltern studies are not the peasants rebels of the XIX century, not just for being “Indians” you became “the voice” of what was muted by the Empire. And this is very interesting when Spivak talks about the case of women. The concept “subaltern” has, in some way, the same characteristic than the concept of “class”. Many things can be in. And just a few can be out. So, the notion of “subaltern” it is not actually a very specific category. It is defined by the opposition with the “hegemonic” group. Hence, distinctions like gender, race and ethnicity are hard to manage under this big name of “the subaltern”.
Guha
Many things pointed by Guha would sound quiet obvious now a days. But, if it’s obvious, is because he (they) said it and was took into account. In my opinion, this is a text related to theory of history (hence, very important to be read here). It is a text of theory of history especially because the main discussion is about the historiographic discourse of the British historians (or what was understood by a historian) in the XVIII-XIX century about the insurgencies in India. His first argument is to point that there is no neutrality or objectivity (something that is fully accepted today) in the sources that are used by this historians, and of course, their text aren’t either. Guha shows that the vocabulary used by the British to refer to the rebellions is full of words that express their dislike of the situation. In many of the examples he gives we can find expressions like “fanatics”, “breaking the established order”, etc., concepts that reflect the point of view of the empire. Thus, we assist to the appear of the “prose of counter-insurgency”, where the the historiographic text is much more than a simple “tale” of “what happened”. It is actually a judgment and a sentence to the “rebels”.
Now, why would be important to read this text in a class like this? I think that history and literature share many things, and of them is precisely the act of reading texts/sources. Precisely, what Guha is doing is an act of reading. He is re-reading (critically) the text that were presented as the official version of what “actually happened” during the insurgencies. What he is realizing is that “their own” history was written by the empire who conquer them, not by themselves. And also, that most of the references they have about this kind of issues were legated by the empire. Pointing this out, Guha presents the importance of re-reading from a postcolonial point of view. This would mean that is important to read literature and theory (and of course history) as discourses touches by the domination. The colony is still there, and is important to see it. Only in that way you can re think your own identity, literature and history, by yourself.
Guha
Many things pointed by Guha would sound quiet obvious now a days. But, if it’s obvious, is because he (they) said it and was took into account. In my opinion, this is a text related to theory of history (hence, very important to be read here). It is a text of theory of history especially because the main discussion is about the historiographic discourse of the British historians (or what was understood by a historian) in the XVIII-XIX century about the insurgencies in India. His first argument is to point that there is no neutrality or objectivity (something that is fully accepted today) in the sources that are used by this historians, and of course, their text aren’t either. Guha shows that the vocabulary used by the British to refer to the rebellions is full of words that express their dislike of the situation. In many of the examples he gives we can find expressions like “fanatics”, “breaking the established order”, etc., concepts that reflect the point of view of the empire. Thus, we assist to the appear of the “prose of counter-insurgency”, where the the historiographic text is much more than a simple “tale” of “what happened”. It is actually a judgment and a sentence to the “rebels”.
Now, why would be important to read this text in a class like this? I think that history and literature share many things, and of them is precisely the act of reading texts/sources. Precisely, what Guha is doing is an act of reading. He is re-reading (critically) the text that were presented as the official version of what “actually happened” during the insurgencies. What he is realizing is that “their own” history was written by the empire who conquer them, not by themselves. And also, that most of the references they have about this kind of issues were legated by the empire. Pointing this out, Guha presents the importance of re-reading from a postcolonial point of view. This would mean that is important to read literature and theory (and of course history) as discourses touches by the domination. The colony is still there, and is important to see it. Only in that way you can re think your own identity, literature and history, by yourself.
Hearing Malala Speak
Spivak urges readers to deconstruct texts by acknowledging their complicity. She agrees with Said that literary writing reproduces Western hegemonic power over the Other and is interested in the way knowledge and power intersect. From colonization to globalization, socio-economic inequality has created texts that allow the West to ‘know’ the Third World. (What about the Second World?) However, although Spivak recognizes Said’s Orientalism and Guha’s conception of the heterogeneity of subaltern groups, she does not agree that this means that the subaltern subject as represented in dominant discourse can be read as existing outside it.
What about the women who refuse to sleep with their men if they go to war with the neighbouring tribe? (True story) Or, what about the chief that decides he wants the Canadian government to build a bridge at no cost, and protests outside the embassy until he gets it built?
Using Derrida’s theory of desconstruction, where change occurs from within the difference of the sign, and “self” is itself always production rather than ground, she claims that our sense of self is structured like writing. In other words, the iterability of identity, or the irreducible nature of identity precludes the existence of the agented subject outside of dominant discourse.
I still have problems with this! It seems that dominant discourse homogenizes the West, so that welfare mums in Vancouver, for example, are not part of the equation.
We are all subject-effects positioned in various discourses whose interests are written into our texts. This does not mean that we can escape these discourses completely, but that we can be aware of them (of subaltern silences) when we look at texts so that perhaps in time we can hear the voices of Others. We can transform “impossibility into possibility.”
Is it enough only to be aware of the mute Other? Is there nothing else readers and writers can do? Spivak doesn’t talk about action.
Her point is that there is no resistance or subaltern consciousness completely separate from dominant discourse. Guha seeks to avoid essentializing the subaltern group by pointing to its plurality, but Spivak argues that he still assumes that there is a subaltern consciousness.
Looking at the role of women in patriarchal communities, Spivak comes to the conclusion that if female subaltern consciousness is a “red herring” then so must be the subaltern subconscious.
The position of women in various communities “syntaxes patriarchal continuity even as she is herself drained of proper identity.” Similarly, the heterogeneous subaltern groups “syntaxes” hegemonic discourse. Therefore, only by working within discourses and acknowledging “the complicity between subject and object investigation” can women and men be producers of signs in Derrida’s process of propriation.
Questions:
Why do I still feel that the world is divided into the First and Third World without any in-between?
What practices go along with her theory? Yes, we should read texts carefully to see how they create inequality in the world, but what can the peasant girl do?
Are there different kinds of complicity, i.e. the International Monetary Fund vs. CUSO?
Guha
Guha’s analysis of the discourse of history ties in very nicely with Said’s Orientalism.
In hegemonic discourse on colonial history, the peasant insurrections of India are spontaneous and unpremeditated affairs in which agency, either individual or collective, played no role. In other words, in orientalist texts revolt occurs outside the consciousness of subaltern insurgency, which is therefore irrational, instinctive, and uncivilized.
The primary, secondary, and tertiary discourses of official history all serve to silence the subaltern voice in history. The immediacy of the official primary discourse, and the distance of the secondary public histories written as personal or ‘impartial’ accounts of administrators’ documentation of events function as indicative and interpretative texts that together produce an historical ‘truth’. This imbrication of discourses reveals an ambiguity in which, a la Barthes, the indices of language (metaphor/being/adjectives) disrupt its functions (metonymy/doing/verbs). The result is ‘loosely cobbled segments’ of meaning that contain gaps or moments of risk that open up alternative possibilities of meaning. (This has Derrida’s iterability and irreducible meaning of the mark written all over it!) Gaps!
Thus dystaxia and Barthes’ ‘organization shifters’ which historiographers use to write history produce both messages and counter-messages in which authors are equally complicit. “The discourse of history, hardly distinguished from policy, . . . becomes a form of colonialist knowledge . . . a discourse of power,” and this takes Guha to the tertiary discourse.
In tertiary discourse, which ostensibly provides a new perspective of past events, writers also create an imaginary past for the Other. As rebelling citizens they do not participate in history, for the causes of rebellion are part of a grander scheme of a universal struggle for freedom from colonial oppression. Adopting the insurgents’ position, the writer of tertiary discourse hopes to support their struggle. However, by claiming an understanding of their cause as one caused by imperialism as a whole as opposed to injustices unique to particular communities, these writers reinforce dominant discourse. Even the insurgent’s religion as part of her/his political consciousness, which is dismissed as fanaticism in secondary discourse, is described as only a tool to manipulate the masses. As with the other two discourses the rebel is not the conscious subject of her/his own history.
I am always suspicious of dividing the world into finite numbers. Are there really only three types of discourse?
I am interested in Guha’s notion of the ambiguity inherent in armed struggle. The historian’s blindness to nuance in the desire to create a monolithic, fixed Other negates the possibility of a frightening, heterogeneous collectivity of insurgents whose history cannot be controlled. GAPS for the subaltern?
Hearing Malala Speak
Spivak urges readers to deconstruct texts by acknowledging their complicity. She agrees with Said that literary writing reproduces Western hegemonic power over the Other and is interested in the way knowledge and power intersect. From colonization to globalization, socio-economic inequality has created texts that allow the West to ‘know’ the Third World. (What about the Second World?) However, although Spivak recognizes Said’s Orientalism and Guha’s conception of the heterogeneity of subaltern groups, she does not agree that this means that the subaltern subject as represented in dominant discourse can be read as existing outside it.
What about the women who refuse to sleep with their men if they go to war with the neighbouring tribe? (True story) Or, what about the chief that decides he wants the Canadian government to build a bridge at no cost, and protests outside the embassy until he gets it built?
Using Derrida’s theory of desconstruction, where change occurs from within the difference of the sign, and “self” is itself always production rather than ground, she claims that our sense of self is structured like writing. In other words, the iterability of identity, or the irreducible nature of identity precludes the existence of the agented subject outside of dominant discourse.
I still have problems with this! It seems that dominant discourse homogenizes the West, so that welfare mums in Vancouver, for example, are not part of the equation.
We are all subject-effects positioned in various discourses whose interests are written into our texts. This does not mean that we can escape these discourses completely, but that we can be aware of them (of subaltern silences) when we look at texts so that perhaps in time we can hear the voices of Others. We can transform “impossibility into possibility.”
Is it enough only to be aware of the mute Other? Is there nothing else readers and writers can do? Spivak doesn’t talk about action.
Her point is that there is no resistance or subaltern consciousness completely separate from dominant discourse. Guha seeks to avoid essentializing the subaltern group by pointing to its plurality, but Spivak argues that he still assumes that there is a subaltern consciousness.
Looking at the role of women in patriarchal communities, Spivak comes to the conclusion that if female subaltern consciousness is a “red herring” then so must be the subaltern subconscious.
The position of women in various communities “syntaxes patriarchal continuity even as she is herself drained of proper identity.” Similarly, the heterogeneous subaltern groups “syntaxes” hegemonic discourse. Therefore, only by working within discourses and acknowledging “the complicity between subject and object investigation” can women and men be producers of signs in Derrida’s process of propriation.
Questions:
Why do I still feel that the world is divided into the First and Third World without any in-between?
What practices go along with her theory? Yes, we should read texts carefully to see how they create inequality in the world, but what can the peasant girl do?
Are there different kinds of complicity, i.e. the International Monetary Fund vs. CUSO?
Guha
Guha’s analysis of the discourse of history ties in very nicely with Said’s Orientalism.
In hegemonic discourse on colonial history, the peasant insurrections of India are spontaneous and unpremeditated affairs in which agency, either individual or collective, played no role. In other words, in orientalist texts revolt occurs outside the consciousness of subaltern insurgency, which is therefore irrational, instinctive, and uncivilized.
The primary, secondary, and tertiary discourses of official history all serve to silence the subaltern voice in history. The immediacy of the official primary discourse, and the distance of the secondary public histories written as personal or ‘impartial’ accounts of administrators’ documentation of events function as indicative and interpretative texts that together produce an historical ‘truth’. This imbrication of discourses reveals an ambiguity in which, a la Barthes, the indices of language (metaphor/being/adjectives) disrupt its functions (metonymy/doing/verbs). The result is ‘loosely cobbled segments’ of meaning that contain gaps or moments of risk that open up alternative possibilities of meaning. (This has Derrida’s iterability and irreducible meaning of the mark written all over it!) Gaps!
Thus dystaxia and Barthes’ ‘organization shifters’ which historiographers use to write history produce both messages and counter-messages in which authors are equally complicit. “The discourse of history, hardly distinguished from policy, . . . becomes a form of colonialist knowledge . . . a discourse of power,” and this takes Guha to the tertiary discourse.
In tertiary discourse, which ostensibly provides a new perspective of past events, writers also create an imaginary past for the Other. As rebelling citizens they do not participate in history, for the causes of rebellion are part of a grander scheme of a universal struggle for freedom from colonial oppression. Adopting the insurgents’ position, the writer of tertiary discourse hopes to support their struggle. However, by claiming an understanding of their cause as one caused by imperialism as a whole as opposed to injustices unique to particular communities, these writers reinforce dominant discourse. Even the insurgent’s religion as part of her/his political consciousness, which is dismissed as fanaticism in secondary discourse, is described as only a tool to manipulate the masses. As with the other two discourses the rebel is not the conscious subject of her/his own history.
I am always suspicious of dividing the world into finite numbers. Are there really only three types of discourse?
I am interested in Guha’s notion of the ambiguity inherent in armed struggle. The historian’s blindness to nuance in the desire to create a monolithic, fixed Other negates the possibility of a frightening, heterogeneous collectivity of insurgents whose history cannot be controlled. GAPS for the subaltern?
Guha and Spivak
Guha
This article had a very interesting take on how history is viewed in the eyes of the reader. I think one of the main aspects of the article is the manipulative description of the people who revolt and of their actions. As the author explains by giving examples of some of the metaphors used to describe these people as: “they break out like thunder storms, heave like earthquakes, spread like wildfires, infect like epidemics” which clearly gives the sense of a rebellion that is done without thinking, in a very wild and “natural” way (in a negative sense of the word), as uncivilized, more reflexive rather than intentional and conscious. The reading starts off by stating that there is a misconception that peasant revolts arise with a lack of consciousness on the part of that group of people. Or as Guha puts it “insurgency is regarded as external to the peasant’s consciousness and Cause is made to stand in as a phantom surrogate for Reason”. In fact, Guha wants to show that this is not so and that there is in fact a precursor to the revolt, that there is often an originating mobilization that does not include violence.
The author explains the reason why this kind of representation of the revolts is possible by talking about the three discourses that are used when talking about these events: primary, secondary and tertiary:
Primary: – almost always official (originated with bureaucrats, soldiers, sleuths, people who were directly employed by the government, or people not officially working for the government but with personal interest in supporting the government.
Secondary: -uses primary source as material but this material is transformed due to the time gap between the discourse and the event. Although supposed to be less biased and has more perspective, this is not usually the case.
Tertiary: – considered as “further removed in time” as it looks at events from the third person perspective. As discussed in the article: “This literature is distinguished by its effort to break away from the code of counterinsurgency. It adopts the insurgent’s point of view and regards, with him, as ‘fine’ what the other side calls ‘terrible’, and vice versa. It leaves the reader in no doubt that it wants the rebels and not their enemies to win”
This hierarchy is inherently flawed when adopted to analyze history. Primary sources are coming from the elite of society and thus, do not shed any light on the perspective of the “peasant revolts”. In addition, all negative discourse and misconceptions regarding peasant revolt is passed off as the most accurate information. It is not until we get to a tertiary level, before we start to get a sense of the standpoint of the so called other side. By that time, this information is passed off as nonsense and deemed fictitious and borderline propagandist. In today’s time, it is all about media control and what is allowed to be exposed to the public eye and what is not.
Spivak
The concept of the subaltern is very intriguing. Specifically, I had never thought to analyze history in such a critical way. Attempting to look at history through the lens of those who were oppressed and deemed inferior provides a different perspective of past events. Too often we are provided with reports detailing the happenings of the elite in society – information that seems to lack a connection with the masses. Instead, we should be hearing from those who are oppressed and deemed inferior. Colonialism has been discussed through history from a specific lens, one that stands to reinforce the Western society’s so called positive influence on the world. However, as a people we must ask ourselves how accurate is the history that is presented to us? Who gives a voice to the “other” side? Delving into this field of literature and historiography lends itself to the idea that accounting for all parties involved in the historical events of the world is essential to grasping a full understanding of the events that have shaped the past. Giving a voice to, as Spivak suggests, “the masses”, allows one to see history from the perspective of the majority as opposed to the perspective of a significant, elite minority. The idea here is that the focus be on non-elites. That is, subalterns are the agents of political and social change, not politically elite figures. The impact of this literature on the world of today and of the future is invaluable. With all the change occurring in the world (take for example the Arab Spring), we must be cognizant of how we view reform and more importantly, how we interpret for future generations. But can the subaltern give a voice to the masses without entering the realm of the dominant discourse? If not, would this then mean that the subaltern, once given access to the dominant discourse, can never speak for all subalterns?
