In prepping to write a thesis on postcolonial literature, I keep encountering the word \u201csubaltern.\u201d Writing Analytically and \u201cThe Method\u201d tell us to pay attention to repetition, and I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever actually read a solid definition of the term, so this is as good a keyword as any to begin.<\/p>\r\n
Culler credits keywords to Raymond Williams, a scholar I first encountered in Professor Seiler\u2019s course \u201cThe Generational.\u201d This is coincidentally also the class that inspired this thesis project (I\u2019ve been a bit of a Williams fangirl ever since). As part of the final project, we were tasked with assembling a generational anthology; I chose to try and chronicle \u201cthe Partitioned generation\u201d in novels. When it comes to the historical record of Partition, and specifically that of chronicling violence, women\u2019s\u2019 voices are largely absent from the archives. Fiction seems to play a significant role in bridging this gap, leading one to ask where real-life women fit into the narrative. This is where the subaltern fits in.<\/p>\r\n
In prepping to write a thesis on postcolonial literature, I keep encountering the word \u201csubaltern.\u201d Writing Analytically and \u201cThe Method\u201d tell us to pay attention to repetition, and I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever actually read a solid definition of the term, so this is as good a keyword as any to begin. Culler credits keywords … Continue reading Keywords (Raymond Williams Haunts Me): \u201cSubaltern\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5502,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145914],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2024-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5502"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
In A Very Short Introduction to Postcolonialism<\/em> by Robert J. C. Young, Young reiterates the views of Gayatri Spivak in regard to the subaltern, stating that \u201cparticularly in the case of women, especially working-class women or women of color, they are just absent: we do not find their voice because they were never able to be in a position to speak\u201d (Young 24). The subaltern refers to those pushed to the margins of society because they do not have a platform or the ability to speak in the colonizer\u2019s language. This explanation of \u201cthe subaltern\u201d by Young echoes Culler\u2019s description of keywords. According to Culler, Williams \u201csought to recover and explore a popular working-class culture that had been lost sight of as culture was identified with high literature\u201d (Culler 45). Working class culture was lost in the creation of a literary canon, just as women\u2019s voices were lost in the creation of a historical canon.<\/p>\r\n
In the context of my own research, there is no equivalent word for rape in Urdu; works translated from Urdu into English (an attempt to translate the subaltern) are forced to use figurative language or visual representations of silence\u2014things along the lines of ellipses and em dashes. To answer Spivak\u2019s question in the context of women and Partition narratives, the subaltern definitely cannot speak on sexual violence if a word for rape does not exist.
Works Cited
Young, Robert J. C. A Very Short Introduction to Postcolonialism<\/em>. Oxford University Press, 2020.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"