In Search of Subaltern Consciousness

Abstract

“In Search of Subaltern Consciousness” starts from the undeniable truth that the representation of society's Other (often now referred to as “subaltern”) is always a mediated, partial, and imaginative construction, especially by writers who, by the very fact of their literacy, belong to an elite. Focusing on the central example of the revisionary Indian historical project of subaltern studies, the essay argues for the value to historical study of the more dramatic, speculative, and open-ended ways of representing subaltern consciousness that literature can contribute, even to revisionary history. A broad context comes from consideration of a wide range of fiction and non-fiction writers, including Orwell, Nehru, Gandhi, E. P. Thompson, Premchand, and Chekhov. The diverse examples demonstrate that the search for subaltern consciousness remains a continuing, if always elusive and complex concern of the humane imagination in many diverse prose genres, only artificially separable from each other.