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formed as an aftermath acknowledges that it inhabits the structures of Western domination that it seeks to undo . In this sense , postcolonial criticism is deliberately interdisciplinary , arising in the interstices of disciplines of power / knowledge that it critiques . This is what Homi Bhabha calls an in-between , hybrid position of practice and negotiation , or what Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak terms catachresis : " reversing , displacing , and seizing the apparatus of value-coding ." 3
The dissemination of Subaltern Studies , beginning in 1982 as an intervention in South Asian historiography and developing into a vigorous postcolonial critique , must be placed in such a complex , catachrestic reworking of knowledge . The challenge it poses to the existing historical scholarship has been felt not only in South Asian studies but also in the historiography of other regions and in disciplines other than history . The term " subaltern " now appears with growing frequency in studies on Africa , Latin America , and Europe , and subalternist analysis has become a recognizable mode of critical scholarship in history , literature , and anthropology .
THE FORMATION OF SUBALTERN STUDIES as an intervention in South Asian historiography occurred in the wake of the growing crisis of the Indian state in the 1970s . The dominance of the nation-state , cobbled together through compromises and coercion during the nationalist struggle against British rule , became precarious as its program of capitalist modernity sharpened social and political inequalities and conflicts . Faced with the outbreak of powerful movements of different ideological hues that challenged its claim to represent the people , the state resorted increasingly to repression to preserve its dominance . But repression was not the only means adopted . The state combined coercive measures with the powers of patronage and money , on the one hand , and the appeal of populist slogans and programs , on the other , to make a fresh bid for its legitimacy . These measures , pioneered by the Indira Gandhi government , secured the dominance of the state but corroded the authority of its institutions . The key components of the modern nation-state-political parties , the electoral process , parliamentary bodies , the bureaucracy , law , and the ideology of development-survived , but their claim to represent the culture and politics of the masses suffered crippling blows .
In the field of historical scholarship , the perilous position of the nation-state in the 1970s became evident in the increasingly embattled nationalist historiography . Attacked relentlessly by the " Cambridge School ," which represented India ' s colonial history as nothing but a chronicle of competition among its elites , nationalism ' s fabric of legitimacy was torn apart . 4 This school exposed the
3Homi K . Bhabha , The Location of Culture ( London , 1994 ), 22-26 ; Spivak , " Poststructuralism , Marginality , Postcoloniality and Value ," 228 .
4 The classic statement of the " Cambridge School " is to be found in Anil Seal ' s study The Emergence of Indian Nationalism : Competition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century ( Cambridge , 1968 ), which contended that Indian nationalism was produced by the educated elites in their competition for " loaves and fishes " of office . This was modified in Locality , Province and Nation : Essays on Indian Politics , 1870-1940 , J . Gallagher , G . Jognson , and Anil Seal , eds . ( Cambridge , 1973 ), which advanced the view that nationalism emerged from the involvement of local and regional elites in colonial
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW DECEMBER 1994