A Subaltern Studies Reader, 1986-1995

1997

Ranajit Guha, editor

A new collection from the founders of postcolonial studies

These essays chart the course of subaltern history from an early concentration on peasant revolts and popular insurgency to an engagement with the more complex processes of domination and subordination in a variety of the changing institutions and practices of evolving modernity.

Contributors: Shahid Amin, David Arnold, Gautam Bhadra, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Partha Chatterjee, David Hardiman, and Gyanendra Pandey.

These are among the most important articles published in Indian history in the last decade.

David Ludden, University of Pennsylvania

The Subaltern Studies Collective, founded in 1982, was begun with the goal of developing a new critique of both colonialist and nationalist perspectives in the historiography of colonized countries. Its most famous members—Gayatri Spivak, Partha Chatterjee, and others—were instrumental in establishing the discipline best known as postcolonial studies. A selection of the definitive and most influential work from the collective’s eponymous journal, these essays chart the course of subaltern history from an early concentration on peasant revolts and popular insurgency to an engagement with the more complex processes of domination and subordination in a variety of the changing institutions and practices of evolving modernity.

Focusing on India, the authors examine institutions such as colonial law and colonial prisons, popular notions of kinship and disease, the position of women in colonial society, popular memories of anticolonial and sectarian violence, and the problems of postcolonial historiography. In his introduction, Ranajit Guha gives a valuable account of subaltern history’s genealogy and legacies, its purpose and accomplishments, the developments that have broadened its empirical and theoretical bases, and its importance to the scholarly community in general.

Contributors: Shahid Amin, Delhi U; David Arnold, School of Oriental and African Studies, London; Gautam Bhadra, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta; Dipesh Chakrabarty, U of Chicago; Partha Chatterjee, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta; David Hardiman, U of Warwick; Gyanendra Pandey, U of Delhi.

Ranajit Guha is one of the founders of the Subaltern Studies Collective. Now retired, he lives in Canberra, Australia.

These are among the most important articles published in Indian history in the last decade.

David Ludden, University of Pennsylvania