Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism 1485
the representation of the history of these societies. So much so that even contestatory projects, including Subaltern Studies, Chakrabarty acknowledges, write of non-Western histories in terms of failed transitions. Such images of aborted transitions reinforce the subalternity of non-Western histories and the dominance of Europe as History. 28
The dominance of Europe as history not ' only subalternizes non-Western societies but also serves the aims of their nation-states. Indeed, Subaltern Studies developed its critique of history in the course of its examination of Indian nationalism and the nation-state. Guha ' s reconstruction of the language of peasant politics in his Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India is premised on the argument that nationalist historiography engaged in a systematic appropriation of peasants in the service of elite nationalism. Chatterjee ' s work contains an extended analysis of Jawaharlal Nehru ' s Discovery of India, a foundational nationalist text, showing the use of History, Reason, and Progress in the normalization of peasant " irrationality." 29 The inescapable conclusion from such analyses is that " history," authorized by European imperialism and the Indian nation-state, functions as a discipline, empowering certain forms of knowledge while disempowering others.
If history functions as a discipline that renders certain forms of thought and action " irrational " and subaltern, then should not the critique extend to the techniques and procedures it utilizes? Addressing this question, Chakrabarty turns to " one of the most elementary rules of evidence in academic historywriting: that your sources must be verifiable." 30 Pointing out that this rule assumes the existence of a " public sphere," which public archives and history writing are expected to reproduce, he suggests that the canons of historical research cannot help but live a problematic life in societies such as India. The idea of " public life " and " free access to information " must contend with the fact that knowledge is privileged and " belongs and circulates in the numerous and particularistic networks of kinship, community, gendered spaces, [ and ] ageing structures." If this is the case, then, Chakrabarty asks, how can we assume the universality of the canons of history writings: " Whose universals are they?" 31
IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT " Europe " or " the West " in Subaltern Studies refers to an imaginary though powerful entity created by a historical process that authorized it as the home of Reason, Progress, and Modernity. To undo the authority of such an entity, distributed and universalized by imperialism and nationalism, requires, in Chakrabarty ' s words, the " provincialization of Europe." But neither nativism nor cultural relativism animates this project of provincializ-
28 Chakrabarty, " Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History," 4-5. In this essay, Chakrabarty
includes the initial orientation of Subaltern Studies toward the question of transition, as reflected in Guha ' s programmatic statements in " On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India " and Chakrabarty ' s own Rethinking Working-Class History.
29Jawaharlal Nehru, Discovery of India( New York, 1946); Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the
Colonial World.
30 Chakrabarty," Trafficking in History and Theory," 106.
31 Chakrabarty," Trafficking in History and Theory," 107.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW DECEMBER 1994