Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

HOW RANAJIT GUHA CAME TO LATIN AMERICAN SUBALTERN STUDIES Author(s): Patricia Seed Source: Dispositio, Vol. 25, No. 52 (2005), pp. 107-111 Published by: Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41491790 . Accessed: 01/09/2013 06:58
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52, vol XXV 107-112 Dispositio/n ofMichigan andLiteratures, ofRomance 2005Department University Languages

GUHA CAME TO LATIN RANAJIT STUDIES AMERICAN SUBALTERN HOW

Patricia Seed Rice University

interested in SubalternStudies in thelate 1980s, not long afterthe volumes began to appear, and began lobbyingour uni/became versitylibraryto purchase themin 1987. The task turnedout to be an immense hassle, because even thoughthe volumes were being proPress imprint, duced underthe OxfordUniversity theywere assembled and At Oxford Press in Delhi. the time, (New York) had less University printed thanperfect connectionswiththeirDelhi office.Eightmonthswas thetime it would take to ordera Subaltern Studies volume fromDelhi, and at that speed theyhad to be sendingthebooks by elephantto Bombay,and thenby to Gibraltar, and by glass bottleto dhow to Aden, and possibly by trireme New York via the Florida Gulf Stream. However, once I got them I was delightedto read these early volabout readinghistoricaltexts umes- I foundthe theoreticalsophistication fascinating.Here, for the firsttime, I was reading historianswho ques- the still widely held belief that of the archives tioned the transparency sources could somehow simple and oftennaive readings of documentary the truth. produce There was, and still is, nothingnaturalabout reading. We learn it in schools, wherewe are taughtwhatand how to read,how to summarize,and above all how to judge. Teachers drill these techniques into our heads, so thatby the time academically successful studentsreach college or univerforreading. sity, theyhave successfullyassimilatedall theculturalcriteria At no point are studentsof history about historical or cultural taught in writingstyles.They are not taughtabout sixteenth or eighdifferences salutation in and are teenth-century styles epistolarygenres, unpreparedto

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understand the clues providedby the opening and closing lines of a letter. Nor are they instructed that a topic sentence in French does not appear a sentence where topic paragraph belongs in English, thatthe introductory remainsregardedas a sign of intelor chapternecessaryin English writing in Dutch writings, etc. As a result,studentsbringtheir lectual immaturity into their sources,and take out contemporary readingof primary prejudices exactlyas much as theyhave taken in. Teachers compound theproblemby about the documentsin twentieth-century allowing writing language familthehistoricaltextinto a culturally transiar to them thereby transforming to own culture and artifact their parent peculiar period. This super-imposedcultural transparency of explanation cloaks an unexamined projection of contemporary political and cultural issues into the past. Perhaps one of the best examples (for US readers) is the phrase "race relations."As JulieNovock has recently discovered,thephrase "race relations" firstappeared in 1900 in a privatelyprintedU.S. pamphleton labor laws. It became widely deployed to analyze a broad varietyof social But what US politics duringthe twentieth century. injusticescharacterizing can we make of books such as Charles Boxer's Race Relations in thePorto excuse our conduct tugueseColonial Empire,1415-1825)1 Are we trying - or thatwe are not to blame others discriminated as well that by claiming forour contemporary problemsbecause people in the past handed us these In what are the agendas, implications,and assumptions problems? short, behind such use of anachronistic terminology? For me, themost appealing dimensionof the SubalternStudies group restedin its willingnessto confront potentially troublingissues of reading historical texts. How do you understandwhat you read? How do you explain it,and why? In the springof 1989 my husband was invitedto be a visitorto the in Canberra HumanitiesResearch Centreat AustralianNational University fortheirwinterterm,which began at the end of June.I was verypleased because I knew thatRanajit Guha, the intellectualfounderof the Subaltern Studies movement, was at thattime a Research Associate withthe School I wrote to of Asian and Pacific Studies at AustralianNational University. meet and talkwith and made arrangements to him in advance of our arrival, him duringour stayin Canberra. old daughterand her suitcase We arrived,trailedby our three-year full of possessions she declared indispensable for life in Australia. Other interesting people in Canberra at the time included Derek Freeman (of the

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now infamousMead-Freeman debate). Freeman met us at the door to his while he interviewedour home, but orderedus to remain in his entryway out of earshoton his lawn beforeletting us sit down. (Our limited daughter skills his for he continued to send us Austest, parenting obviously passed traliantoysuntiltheyear he died.) different Ranajit was an entirely person. Unlike many academics, he had been a left-wing to political activistforhis first twentyyears, turning academics after of constant Given his wearying political danger. leadership a small numberof South Asian scholarsto theUniversity skills,he recruited of Sussex (England) where he obtained a teachingpost. Dissatisfied with theportrayal of Indian history in the Britishacademic history departments of the time, and with the none-too-subtle disdain with which prominent Britishhistorianssuch as E. P. Thompson treatedhim and wrote left-wing about the historyof India, he resolved to embark upon a program of India's relationshipto Britain.And to do thathe began editing rethinking the series called Subaltern Studies. When we met in the winter(June) of which he 1989, he talked about Elementary Aspects ofPeasant Insurgency, consideredhis best work to date. When I read thebook forthe first time in thelibrary of theAustralianNational University, I was enthralled. Here was a man who had spent twentyyears of his life politicallyorganizingrural about theway Britishofficialsof his century India, writing (and before)had written about peasant rebellions in areas of the world in which he himself had worked. Here was the complete panoply of an insider's understand- who was travelingamong the information ings how drumstransmitted - how easy or difficult thatwas- all fromtheera immediately after regions the BritishwithdrawalfromIndia. To use the immediatepost-withdrawal the earlierperiod seemed knowledge of political organizingto understand reasonable,and veryexciting.Britishcolonial textscould notbe eminently assumed to transparently communicatethe activitiesof natives. Regardless of whether all of his insightswere correct, here at least was someone probthe act of lematizing reading. Not long afterarriving in Canberra,I met Ranajit one day forcoffee and he pulled out a white book thathad just arrivedin the post. Look at what has showed up, he said, showing me the book. It was the edited Selected SubalternStudies bearing his name afterGayatriSpivak's on the cover.This is thefirst I have heardof thisvolume,he said, astonishedthata book would appear withhis name on thecover without his consent.

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That first inauspicious forayby GayatriSpivak in factsignaled what was to become the receptionof SubalternStudies in the United States. Far the texts of the formerrulers of froma formeractivist's re-interpreting circles whichbothat the studiesbecame adopted in literary India, subaltern timeand since have been farmore willingto thinkcriticallyabout reading. the slim volume's publicationcoincided withthe South Asian Furthermore, - a task apparentin the of the colonial project world's literary rethinking worksof,most notably, GayatriSpivak and Homi Bhabha. Thus when JohnBeverley and Ileana Rodrguez wroteme in 1993 to in a Latin AmericanSubalternStudies group,I say thattheywere interested was more thanwilling to join. I had nevermet eitherone of them,but they had read an articleI had done fortheLatin AmericanResearch Review on thatI would colonial and postcolonial discourses, and had rightly thought in theproject. be interested I met Ileana Rodrguez, Michael Clark, and JohnBeverley for the firsttime at the organizationalmeeting of the Latin American Subaltern D.C. What I foundwas a largelycongenial Studies group in Washington, I group,withwhom sharedmore thanI had anticipated.Beyond our mutual admirationof the SubalternStudies collective, most of us had been active in Latin American politics priorto becoming academics. Ileana had been the most courageous of all, giving up a tenuredacademic position in the United States to become Vice-Ministerof Culturein Nicaragua duringthe Afterthe Sandinistaswere voted out of officeshe Sandinista government. was able to re-estabreturned to the United States where she, remarkably, circles. JavierSanjins, thenteaching lish herselfin Latin Americanliterary at Maryland,had been active in developing the political use of literature what we now call "talk radio" in his nativeBolivia. There we were, a group of academics who knew a lot about politics on the ground in various Latin American countries,and who wanted to fromand about Latin thinkabout the different ways in which literature - especially from within the America should be taught and understood United States. And theretoo was the basis of the connectionwithRanajit. Like us, Ranajit had been involved in politics beforehis academic experibothhis politicaland his academic experiencesto the ence, and had brought of writing history. In the mid 1990s, Latin American SubalternStudies was an intellecwhose members grew to include tually exciting and dynamic community field. WalterMignolo, Jos many of the best-knownnames in the literary

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Rabasa, Sara Castro-Klarenall came to participate, expandingthe range of whose intellectualprojectsI I and whose work scholars respected, literary came to understand sympathetically. And as forwhyLatin AmericanSubalternStudies neverhad quite the I thinkthe question is thatit did in anthropology? same impact in history Why is and was Subaltern equally well asked of its South Asian inspiration. circles thanitever was in historStudies farmore successfulin U.S. literary ical ones? For thatanswer,I think you would need to address a broaderculturaland historicalquestion, one that goes beyond the boundaries of this issue of Dispositio/n.

WORKS CITED 1994. New YorkRoutledge, Homi.TheLocationofCulture. Bhabha, 1415Colonial Empire, Boxer,CharlesRalph.Race Relationsin thePortuguese Clarendon 1825. Oxford: Press,1963. in ColonialIndia. Delhi: Guha,Ranajit. ofPeasantInsurgency Elementary Aspects 1983. Oxford, Vol. and Society. on South AsianHistory Studies.Writings , ed. Subaltern 1982-1989. 1-7.Delhi: Oxford Press, University of Oregon."PerPoliticalScience,University AssociateProfessor Novock,Julie. " 2003. sonalcommunication. Studies. and Chakravorty Guha,Ranajit,ed. SelectedSubaltern Spivak,Gayatri New York:Oxford Press,1988. University

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