Refiguring the Subaltern

Abstract

The subaltern has frequently been understood as a figure of exclusion ever since it was first highlighted by the early Subaltern Studies collective’s creative reading of Antonio Gramsci’s carceral writings. In this article, I argue that a contextualist and diachronic study of the development of the notion of subaltern classes throughout Gramsci’s full Prison Notebooks reveals new resources for “refiguring” the subaltern. I propose three alternative figures to comprehend specific dimensions of Gramsci’s theorizations: the “irrepressible subaltern,” the “hegemonic subaltern,” and the “citizen-subaltern.” Far from being exhausted by the eclipse of the conditions it was initially called upon to theorize in Subaltern Studies, such a refigured notion of the subaltern has the potential to cast light both on the contradictory development of political modernity and on contemporary political processes.