class , caste , age , gender and office or in any other way ’. 5 This subaltern was developed and maintained , these academics argued , in British colonisation , during which the production and dissemination of Indian / South Asian history was controlled by both British administrators and Indian elites working as knowledge agents of the colonising force . This control over the historiography not only silenced voices of dissent and trajectories of dominated classes , it also failed to account for the contributions and struggles of these classes . Ultimately , it created a path by which Indian national identity could never be realised outside of its colonial mould , and could never be articulated , comprehensively , by the Indian bourgeoisie . 6 In other words , Indian history is eternalised through the colonial legacy , and even during attempts to interrupt this pattern , historical excavations reveal reproductions of the same types of knowledge .
This theoretical examination of the subaltern is further , and more closely complicated with the introduction of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ’ s seminal work . In her analysis of how the subaltern is situated , her focus moves in narrowly on the Indian female : ‘ in the context of colonial production , the subaltern has no history and cannot speak , the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow ’. 7 Her conclusion that ‘ the subaltern cannot speak […] representation has not withered away ,’ 8 is not a desperate longing ; rather it is a deep call to action . However , the call is not to speak for , speak with , or interpret , but rather to find pathways to let the subaltern speak for itself . 9 While Spivak takes issue with Eurocentric interpretations of how hegemony functions , this paper argues that a First World subaltern – specifically in Flint – is developing now . This could be described as a regression of the originally Eurocentric theory of subalternity , as certain First World spaces , such as Flint , are evolving into near-reproductions of occupied colonial spaces , wherein clear classes emerge as hegemonic and subordinate – and where economic , social and political categorisation reduces the dominated communities not merely to subclasses , but to disposable classes .
5 Ranajit Guha , ed ., Subaltern Studies , Volume VII ( Noida : OUP India , 1994 ), 103 . 6 El Habib Louai , “ Retracing the Concept of the Subaltern from Gramsci to Spivak : Historical
Developments and New Applications ,” African Journal of History and Culture 4 ( 2012 ): 6 . 7 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak , “ Can The Subaltern Speak ?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of
Culture , ed . Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg ( Urbana and Chicago : University of Illinois Press , 1988 ), 275 . 8 Ibid ., 308 .
9 Louai , “ Retracing the Concept ,” 7 .
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