Subalternity and Difference: Investigations from the North and the South (Intersections: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories)

by Gyanendra Pandey (Editor)

• New

  Paperback
  2012

  $70.21

  Focusing on the idea of difference as a marker of subalternity, this book looks at the ways in which ordinary citizens have sought to present and identify themselves in ways that defy the conventional categorisations of governments and historical experience.

  Inspired particularly by questions arising within the feminist movement, chapters examine the ways in which liberal democracies are able to accommodate and live with difference. The reader is encouraged to question normative ontological conventions of society and politics, as well as question some of the revolutionary ideologies which have sought to achieve radical change in the societies concerned by encouraging people to identify with particular class interests. The book goes on to analyse the concept of the Subaltern and the meaning of Subalternity, insisting that it should be understood though action and self-identification in relationship to repression, rather than as an abstract academic tool of analysis.

  The book marks a new approach to the study of disenfranchised and minoritized populations, challenges simplistic pronouncements of `difference' based on culture rather than politics. It is an essential read for students and scholars of History, Anthropology, and Colonial and Postcolonial studies.

• New

  Hardcover
  2011

  $140.26

  Focusing on concepts that have been central to investigation of the history and politics of marginalized and disenfranchised populations, this book asks how discourses of `subalternity' and `difference' simultaneously constitute and interrupt each other. The authors explore the historical production of conditions of marginality and minority, and challenge simplistic notions of difference as emanating from culture rather than politics. They return, thereby, to a question that feminist and other oppositional movements have raised, of how modern societies and states take account of, and manage, social, economic and cultural difference. The different contributions investigate this question in a variety of historical and political contexts, from India and Ecuador, to Britain and the USA.

  The resulting study is of invaluable interest to students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines, including History, Anthropology, Gender and Queer and Colonial and Postcolonial Studies.