Subaltern Resistance Research Articles

Resistance to Oppression in Informal Work

Abstract This article takes the study of informal work and resistance to oppression in a new direction. The literature assumes that subaltern resistance is either collective, open, and occasional; or individual, covert, and habitual. The author argues that the reality is a complex mix of these responses, shaped by social power structures and legal frameworks. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with paid domestic workers in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, the author demonstrates that worker resistance is principally individual and multifaceted, including overt and covert, as well as habitual and occasional strategies. In all cases, entrenched racist and patriarchal structures and behaviors as well as the making and implementing of labor law shape social understandings of the nature of remunerated domestic labor and choices of resistance strategies. In this context, collective rights claiming remains challenging.

Neither Naïve Nor Fatalistic: Decolonizing Mining Partnerships With Indigenous Communities in Mongolia and Australia

Mining partnerships have often been promoted as opportunities for meaningful collaboration between corporations and Indigenous communities. However, these partnerships frequently lack a nuanced understanding of the colonial assumptions that underpin power imbalances and divergent perspectives. This study addresses this gap by examining how a multinational mining corporation, Indigenous communities, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) representing these communities (de)legitimize their mining partnerships within the framework of global stakeholder colonialism in Australia and Mongolia. The study shows how stakeholder colonialism coerces Indigenous communities into accepting a social reality where mining is inevitable, either with or without partnerships. This dynamic reflects the hegemonic power of mining corporations, which is sustained not by a balance of coercion and consent but by discursive coercion without consent. This implies that there is a failure of this hegemonic power to fully establish itself, opening the door for subaltern resistance and counter-hegemonic struggles by Indigenous peoples. By highlighting Indigenous perspectives that challenge the prevailing managerial views in mining corporations, this study disrupts the corporate narrative that portrays the sole social objectivity where mining is inevitable. Instead, it advocates for a more nuanced understanding that goes beyond a simplistic view of mining partnerships as either naïve democratic deliberation or fatalistic stakeholder colonialism.

Influencing factors of spatial conflicts in the Chinese urban environment from the perspective of spatial politics: empirical study based on NCA and fsQCA

In the ‘environmental era,’ the ubiquitous spatial conflicts in the urban environment have become a typical dilemma hindering sustainable urban development and inhibiting local governance. Based on the theory of spatial politics, with the use of Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) and fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), this article analyzes empirically 40 typical cases of spatial conflicts in the Chinese urban environment, to examine what conditions and their combinations contribute to the occurrence of environmental conflicts. It is found that a ‘lack of communicative space’ and a ‘lack of government trust’ are the sine qua non for urban environmental spatial conflict and that the existence of ‘spatial cognition differences,’ the use of ‘discourse framework,’ ‘technological power,’ ‘organizational strategies,’ and ‘social actors’ are found to be sufficient causes for the occurrence of spatial conflict in urban environments. Accordingly, the article constructs five contextualized models to explain the formation of spatial conflict in urban environments. In contrast to the traditional ‘institution-centered,’ ‘culture-centered,’ ‘identity-centered,’ and ‘media-centered’ approaches to the study of environmental resistance, this study based on the theory of spatial conflicts shall enhance our knowledge and understanding of the ‘spatial dimension’ in the phenomenon of environmental resistance. They reveal the political and social nature of the spatial production of urban environments, thus providing a theoretical framework for understanding the occurrence of environmental resistance from a spatial perspective, while providing a compatible and holistic insight into the ‘politics of elite resistance’ and the ‘politics of subaltern resistance,’ and outlining the possibility of bridging the theoretical differences.

Modes of (R)existence in Brazilian Traditional Cultures: Ancestry and Queerness in the Subversive Performance of the Carimbó Cobra Venenosa

Abstract: Based on collaborative research on the Carimbó Cobra Venenosa group, this article discusses how traditional expressions are shaped by LGBTQIA+ performers and how perceptions of the LGBTQIA+ community are potentially altered when feminist and queer artists perform traditional folk genres. Carimbó is a form of music, dance, and sociability typical of the state of Pará (Amazonia, Northern Brazil). Although it has historically been a source of Black and popular subaltern resistance, it has also been structured by sexist, binary, and heteronormative perspectives. Cobra Venenosa is a carimbó group that invests in a subversive performance in which LGBTQIA+ activism is key. Cobra's aesthetic and political choices are characteristic of contemporary performative arts and artivism. However, the ensemble claims to be pau e corda —a vernacular category referring to carimbó traditional styles. Cobra's insistence on simultaneously occupying these two places challenges the limits of traditional carimbó from within. This article contributes to the visibility of feminist and queer experiences in the universe of traditional cultures, revealing the presence of distinct values, practices, subjects, and conflicts. It dialogues with feminist, queer, intersectional, and decolonial studies, and points to potential theoretical and analytical gains resulting from the study of nonconformant cases.

Modes of (R)existence in Brazilian Traditional Cultures: Ancestry and Queerness in the Subversive Performance of the Carimbó Cobra Venenosa

Abstract: Based on collaborative research on the Carimbó Cobra Venenosa group, this article discusses how traditional expressions are shaped by LGBTQIA+ performers and how perceptions of the LGBTQIA+ community are potentially altered when feminist and queer artists perform traditional folk genres. Carimbó is a form of music, dance, and sociability typical of the state of Pará (Amazonia, Northern Brazil). Although it has historically been a source of Black and popular subaltern resistance, it has also been structured by sexist, binary, and heteronormative perspectives. Cobra Venenosa is a carimbó group that invests in a subversive performance in which LGBTQIA+ activism is key. Cobra's aesthetic and political choices are characteristic of contemporary performative arts and artivism. However, the ensemble claims to be pau e corda —a vernacular category referring to carimbó traditional styles. Cobra's insistence on simultaneously occupying these two places challenges the limits of traditional carimbó from within. This article contributes to the visibility of feminist and queer experiences in the universe of traditional cultures, revealing the presence of distinct values, practices, subjects, and conflicts. It dialogues with feminist, queer, intersectional, and decolonial studies, and points to potential theoretical and analytical gains resulting from the study of nonconformant cases.

Contesting the Universality of the Refugee Convention: Decolonization and the Additional Protocol

AbstractRecent scholarship has insightfully explored the colonial roots of the UN Refugee Convention of 1951. In this work I seek to extend this line of argument by situating the adoption of the Additional Protocol of the Refugee Convention (1967) in relation to the transformations of international order following the Second World War. Contra the conventional account, this article shows that the Additional Protocol was created in no small part due to fears that the UN Refugee Convention would be unable to claim universal status due to competing ‘regional’ refugee conventions. Breaking down four meanings of ‘universal’ and drawing on archival documents of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the Asian-African Legal Consultative Committee and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, I explore efforts by newly independent African and Asian countries to find voice in an exclusionary international order. Reading the Bangkok Principles and OAU Convention as collective subaltern resistance against efforts to discipline newly independent states offers new insights into contemporary international struggles and brings refugee studies into productive dialogue with critical international relations.

From Insurgent to Petitioner: Representational Shifts in Subaltern Resistance in the Late Nineteenth-Century French Colonial Context

Abstract The first part of this essay addresses what a microhistory of petitions has to offer to subaltern studies. The second part illustrates this with a late nineteenth-century case-study revolving around a Kabyle man formerly belonging to the intermediate sphere between French-colonial and local Algerian society. Concretely, the focus lies on Ahmed ben Ali ben Aouadi and the political knowledge to which his 1888-petition to the French Chamber of Deputies and its chairman testified. This written interaction must be seen as an attempt to challenge the institutional framing of his family’s subaltern identity and to reclaim their property, confiscated by the French state. The third section of this essay reveals an interactive exchange between this colonial subject’s subaltern resistance and the institutional counter-resistance of the French colonizer’s legislative and executive authorities, which extended far beyond Aouadi’s second petition in 1892, and thus challenges our notions of political agency and success.

O papel das fake news e insultos verbais na estratégia antipolítica da extrema direita brasileira

Abstract This paper, which is based on the polemical discourse perspective (Amossy, 2017), has two objectives, namely analyzing Fake News as a disinformation strategy used by the Brazilian Far Right, and investigating the resignification of verbal insults as a subaltern resistance tactic. Through Queer Linguistics (Borba, 2015), we suggest the conceptual distinction between “strategies” and “tactics” (Certeau, 2007), as well as “subaltern resignification” as a solution for the “Paradox of Tolerance” (Popper, 1974). Furthermore, we use semantic chains (Morais, 2018) to formalize the “architecture of disinformation” and the “architecture of information.” Our analysis is based on a few statements given by Bolsonarists in interviews, in the Federal Senate Committee and five tweets posted on former Federal Deputy Jean Wyllys’ official Twitter account. We conclude that linguistic expressions that reiterate situations of symbolic violence are the primary foundation for legitimizing physical and structural violence against LGBT people. Despite this fact, the controversial clash indicates the possibility of a tactical emergence of new political and social subjects who were previously subordinate.

Performative Act of the Subaltern: A Postcolonial Figure of Subaltern Resistance in Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi

This paper attempts to evaluate the resistance to the ethnic and gender subalternity portrayed by Mahasweta Devi n the story, Draupadi. Mahasweta Devi portrays a figure of resistance to the multi-layered subalternity through the rejection of gender performative acts in both theatrical and non-theatrical contexts of subaltern. The story, Draupadi, challenges the conventional phallocentric representation of gender subalterns and colonial domination over marginalized ethnicity through the construction of the character, Dopdi Mejhen (or Draupadi), a young Santal widow, fighting for the socioeconomic freedom of her tribe, who radically stands naked exposing her blood spotted body against the oppressive colonizer after extreme physical oppression, to protest the patriarchal and colonial domination over her body and ethnic community. She is subaltern by her class, caste and gender; but liberates herself from subalternity through non-cooperation resistance. This paper applies the theory of ‘subalternity’ of Ranajit Guha and Chakravorty Spivak to bring out the aspects of multi-layered subalternity and intellectual location of the resistance; and theory of ‘gender performativity’ of Judith Butler to evaluate the resistance of gender subalternity. This research proves that the conquering resistance to the colonial domination and subalternity is the result of the non-cooperative movement against dominant elitism, rejection of gender performative acts in both theatrical and nontheatrical contexts, radical stand against ethnic representation, existential tactic to disrupt the essential codes and dominant administrative colonial power.

Performative Act of the Subaltern: A Postcolonial Figure of Subaltern Resistance in Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi

This paper attempts to evaluate the resistance to the ethnic and gender subalternity portrayed by Mahasweta Devi in the story, Draupadi. Mahasweta Devi portrays a figure of resistance to the multilayered subalternity through the rejection of gender performative acts in both theatrical and non-theatrical contexts of subaltern. The story, Draupadi, challenges the conventional phallocentric representation of gender subalterns and colonial domination over marginalized ethnicity through the construction of the character, Dopdi Mejhen (or Draupadi), a young Santal widow, fighting for the socioeconomic freedom of her tribe, who radically stands naked exposing her blood spotted body against the oppressive colonizer after extreme physical oppression, to protest the patriarchal and colonial domination over her body and ethnic community. She is subaltern by her class, caste and gender; but liberates herself from subalternity through noncooperational resistance. This paper applies the theory of ‘subalternity’ of Ranajit Guha and Chakravorty Spivak to bring out the aspects of multilayered subalternity and intellectual location of the resistance; and the theory of ‘gender performativity’ of Judith Butler to evaluate the resistance of gender subalternity. This research proves that the conquering resistance to the colonial domination and subalternity is the result of the non-cooperative movement against dominant elitism, rejection of gender performative acts, radical stand against ethnic representation, existential tactic to disrupt the essential codes and dominant administrative colonial power.

Performative Act of the Subaltern: A Postcolonial Figure of Subaltern Resistance in Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi

This paper attempts to evaluate the resistance to the ethnic and gender subalternity portrayed by Mahasweta Devi in the story, Draupadi. Mahasweta Devi portrays a figure of resistance to the multilayered subalternity through the rejection of gender performative acts in both theatrical and non-theatrical contexts of subaltern. The story, Draupadi, challenges the conventional phallocentric representation of gender subalterns and colonial domination over marginalized ethnicity through the construction of the character, Dopdi Mejhen (or Draupadi), a young Santal widow, fighting for the socioeconomic freedom of her tribe, who radically stands naked exposing her blood spotted body against the oppressive colonizer after extreme physical oppression, to protest the patriarchal and colonial domination over her body and ethnic community. She is subaltern by her class, caste and gender; but liberates herself from subalternity through noncooperational resistance. This paper applies the theory of ‘subalternity’ of Ranajit Guha and Chakravorty Spivak to bring out the aspects of multilayered subalternity and intellectual location of the resistance; and the theory of ‘gender performativity’ of Judith Butler to evaluate the resistance of gender subalternity. This research proves that the conquering resistance to the colonial domination and subalternity is the result of the non-cooperative movement against dominant elitism, rejection of gender performative acts, radical stand against ethnic representation, existential tactic to disrupt the essential codes and dominant administrative colonial power.

Postmodern Ethics, Premodern Farce

Postmodern Ethics, Premodern Farce

Justine Moritz, a subaltern in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley represents series of critical issues like disability, gender, inequality, masculinity, and among those issues and concerns, the representation of the “subaltern,” especially of the “female gendered subaltern,” is particularly significant because it plays a decisive role in examining the social context of the novel. In contemporary literary criticism, postcolonial theory is one of the most gripping schools of thought. The subaltern, as a theoretical concept in literary criticism, stays under the umbrella of Postcolonial theory. “Subaltern,” a term was first familiarized by Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist and political activist, refers to people represented as being of inferior status or rank; subordinate of rank, power, authority and action. This essay, the result of my study on the novel and the subaltern, argues that Justine Moritz is a subaltern and her representation in the novel, voice and silence, alienation, resistance and death are integral components of her subalternity. It considers the illustration of Justine Moritz as a character, the treatment she gets as a member of the community and as an individual, her social mobility, her being trapped in an oppressive system, her being abused by the creature, her psycho-alienation and her struggle and resistance to establish her own agency as a subaltern. It will review the concept of “subaltern” given by such critics and thinkers as Antonio Gramsci, Ranajit Guha, and Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak. Then, it will interpret close reading with a special focus on the character of Justine Moritz to find out her positionality and relevance to “subalternity,” with reference to the establishment of her individual subaltern agency through her death. However, analysis in this essay will examine how hegemony and supremacy of the dominant class plays constructive role, and will also include examples of subaltern resistance against the hegemonic power structure though this act of resistance leads to death and destruction. The methodology of this essay is analytical and

Subaltern subjectivity and embodiment in human rights practices

Abstract This article problematises the representation of subaltern resistance in practices of human rights. It critiques the normative framing of the subaltern by those practices, a framing which it argues contributes to their subjugation. Against such framing, the article follows the 2011 Egyptian uprising through the film Rags & Tatters, offering a practice of freedom beyond human rights and through self-recollection.

Theme of Resistance in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance

This research attempts to focus on the growing acts of resistance from the part of subalterns in A Fine Balance. Here, by criticizing the atrocities and perpetration of so-called upper class people and authorities over subalterns and showing the subaltern resistance, the writers try to show the growing subaltern consciousness in India. The marginalized characters undergo trial and tribulation in the novel. In the novel, Avinash is brutally murdered, Maneck commits suicide, Ishvar and Om are forced to undergo sterilization which leaves them deformed and destitute. Similarly, Dina loses her much needed independence and self respect and the society presented by Mistry is not an idealized one. Superstition, violence and gender inequalities are rampant. It is also the site of the repetition of caste-based brutality. The lower castes are beaten, tortured and killed for trivial reasons. By showing his characters in the position of resisting the brutalities and atrocities of upper class people and authorities, this research work argues that Mistry attempts to focus on the growing consciousness and resistance among subalterns in post-independent and Post Revolution Indian society, where subalterns want nothing but equality, justice, freedom, coexistence, and of course, communal harmony.

A Global History of Runaways: Workers, Mobility, and Capitalism, 1600–1850

A Global History of Runaways: Workers, Mobility, and Capitalism, 1600–1850

Dancing Revolution: Bodies, Space and Sound in American Cultural History, by Christopher J. Smith

<i>Dancing Revolution: Bodies, Space and Sound in American Cultural History</i>, by Christopher J. Smith

“Depressed Sufferings”: Reading Dalit Life-Writings as Testimonies of Collective Resistance

Dalit life-writings have often been identified as reified spaces of protest against the Brahmanic oppression continuing since centuries in the Indian society. Banished to a space of invisibility, both metaphorical as well as physical margins of the Social Imaginary, Dalits continue to push back boundaries by transforming the ‘marginal’ space into a space of ‘subaltern resistance’. My aim in this paper is to interrogate the methods of collective resistance in the life-writings of Dalit women authors and show how the peripheral spatial geography becomes the central site of resistance. Both Baby Kamble’s The Prisons we Broke (2008), and Bama’s Karukku (1992) belong to entirely different historical periods, and therefore, inevitably differ in their plot-narratives and manner of expression. However, they converge in their emphasis on how the Dalit segregated spaces in their village assume an important role in awakening their collective consciousness first – as members of a community, and second – as women.

Reluctant Militants: Colonialism, Territory, and Sanusi Resistance on the Ottoman‐Saharan Frontier

AbstractLibya's enigmatic Sanusi brotherhood has been the subject of perennial debate since its emergence in Ottoman Cyrenaica in the mid nineteenth century, becoming a screen upon which apologists and detractors could project their own political anxieties and desires. For European critics, the brotherhood embodied the irrationality and fanaticism of the Islamic East. Its networks in North and Central Africa constituted an obstacle to their expansionist designs, while Sanusi prestige throughout the Muslim world rendered the brotherhood a threat to the entire colonial order of things. Nationalist historiography has generally endorsed this view, albeit with a positive valence, characterizing the Sanusiyya as an anticolonial social movement. Meanwhile, modern critical scholarship has tried to impose order on the chaos of the turn‐of‐the‐century Sahara by assigning to the fraternity the role of a “proto‐state.” This article proposes a new framework for understanding the history and sociology of the Sanusi. Drawing on theorists of subaltern resistance such as James Scott and Michael Adas—alongside Ottoman, British, French, and Italian primary sources—I demonstrate that the brotherhood began its life as an inward‐looking Islamic social justice movement with little evident interest in state building or the geopolitical controversies of the moment. I coin the term “reluctant militants” to describe its mercurial trajectory from frontier evangelism to armed struggle in response to French and Italian colonial encirclement. This process culminated in the Long War of 1911–1931, during which the Sanusiyya played a critical part in the struggles over post‐Ottoman reconstruction, from the Maghreb to Anatolia.

Seeking the Subaltern Consciousness in Nepali Cinema

This article overviews the resistance of the subaltern and the ongoing debate on seeking the subaltern consciousness within and outside the elitist structure. The first part of this article exposes the notion of subaltern and subaltern resistance consciousness concerning the development of the Nepali film industry. The second part discusses different dimensions of resistance of the subaltern in shifting politico-cultural contexts. It also unfolds the structure of representation of the subaltern transformed within transitions which are observed more vehemently through the different politico-cultural scenarios of filmmaking, particularly before and after the Maoist insurgency. The last part analyses the aspects or efforts of the self-formation of the subaltern in terms of- along with class- caste, ethnicity and gender with references to representative Nepali movies, i.e. Numafung, Batomuniko Phool and Uma flash hope within hopelessness.