Subaltern resistance and the (‘bad’) politics of culture: A response to John Beverley

Abstract

In his reply to my critique of the Latin American subaltern studies project, John Beverley insists there can be no normative model of modernity. Because of this, resistance by (undifferentiated) peasants in defence of individual proprietorship, indigenous culture and agrarian tradition is now a legitimate part of the struggle against capitalism, a result being that rural movements are no longer about class but identity politics and thus the national question. Against this it is argued that the recuperation by the subaltern studies project both of an essentialist peasant culture/economy and of indigenous nationalist agency stems from the idealized concept of popular culture held by the new left in the 1960s and 1970s. Not only does the subaltern framework leave intact the existing class structure, and reproduce the populist mobilizing discourse of the 1930s political right, but it also (and therefore) undermines international working class solidarity. It is, in short, a conservative form of anti-capitalism. As such, it corresponds to a discourse which more accurately merits the label ‘bad politics’ that Beverley wishes to affix to Marxist criticism of the South Asian and Latin American subaltern studies project.