Skip to main content

Reflections on the "non-narrativisibility" of the subaltern and the CCA

Upon reading Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak" and Mohan Dutta and Ambar Basu's "Negotiating our Postcolonial Selves", I noted the point made that work involving the subaltern comes "with no guarantees" because the subaltern is heterogeneous and hence, "non-narrativisible".

The understanding I derive from this is that the researcher, with all his or her privileges, cannot ever fully be in the shoes or fully understand the subaltern participant because he or she can never have the same lived experiences of that person. We need to come to terms with the other's difference and accept the impossibility of ever knowing it because it exceeds our understanding or expectations.

Here, I am reminded of the time when I began my study into the benzene poisoning of factory migrant workers in southern China in 2013. At a meeting with four collaborators, three of whom were themselves subaltern victims of occupational illnesses, I presented my interview questions. Very soon however the discussion turned into strong critique of my questions.

"Your questions are too superficial", "you are not getting into, or digging deep enough into the heart of the matter", "there are areas you have totally missed out."

I was at first shocked, and then injured and wounded. I could feel my ears and face getting hot -- and probably red too if I had been able to see myself. I was at first defensive and as I battled internally wondering how I should respond, a small niggling thought emerged: Why do I need to fight this? Should I not listen? I have never had an occupational disease, nor have I ever worked in a factory, so why am I pretending so hard that I know better than these people?

Fast forward two years, and I now attempt to juxtapose that event, that post-dinner discussion in a hotel room, to the concept that the subaltern is "non-narrativisible", and that subaltern studies come "with no guarantees" because the lived experience of the subaltern is outside, entirely removed from my own lived experiences. I can only, in the words of Spivak, "suspend as far as possible the clamour of his (my) own consciousness" as I continue in my work of documenting the topic of my study, an activity that I consider to be one of being in solidarity with my participants.

But here, as I get more conscious of my reflexivity, I ask the question: is it possible to "suspend my own consciousness"? Is that even humanly possible? For in walking and talking and trying to understand my participants, am I not deploying my entire being and consciousness to make sense of their experiences? Here, my positionality is not something I can turn my back on, but it is something that is very much a part of me - my identity which I carry with me as I figure out my questions, my probes as I make sense of the lived experiences of my subaltern friends and how they came to be in the state that they are now. This same identity, with all its naivety and feebleness, which will attempt to co-construct the journey ahead with my subaltern friends.


Popular posts from this blog

The whiteness of binaries that erase the Global South: On Communicative Inversions and the invitation to Vijay Prashad in Aotearoa

When I learned through my activist networks that the public intellectual Vijay Prashad was coming to Aotearoa, I was filled with joy. In my early years in the U.S., when learning the basics of the struggle against the fascist forces of Hindutva, I came in conversation with Vijay's work. Two of his critical interventions, the book, The Karma of Brown Folk , and the journal article " The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva " co-authored with Biju Matthew and published in Ethnic and Racial Studies shaped my early activism. These pieces of work are core readings in understanding the workings of Hindutva fascism and how it mobilizes cultural tropes to serve fascist agendas. Much later, I felt overjoyed learning about his West Bengal roots and his actual commitment to the politics of the Left, reflected in the organising of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political register that shaped much of my earliest lessons around Global South resistance, collectivization, and orga...
Read more

Upper caste Indian women in the diaspora, DEI, and the politics of hate

Figure 1: Trump, Vance and their partners responding to the remarks by Mariann Edgar Budde   Emergent from the struggles of the civil rights movement , led by African Americans , organized against the oppressive history of settler colonialism and slavery that forms the backbone of US society, structures around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) formed an integral role in forging spaces for diverse recognition and representation.  These struggles around affirmative action, diversity, equity and inclusion were at the heart of the changes to white only immigration policies, building pathways for migration of diverse peoples from the Global South.  The changes to the immigration policies created opportunities for Indians to migrate to the US, with a rise of Indian immigration into the US since the 1970s into educational institutions, research and development infrastructures, and technology-finance infrastructures. These migratory structures into the US were leveraged by l...
Read more

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems wit...
Read more