With the subaltern, I know everyone has their own takes on what the role of the subaltern is and why does that even matter. While Prof. Graban was asking the class's opinions, I was sitting there thinking about the subaltern itself. I'm not sure if I missed this point, or if it wasn't actually a point at all, but does the subaltern need to be unaware their group is subaltern? I mean, I believe they at least know they are the minority (I assume they know, anyway), but do they know that they are the quintessential minority. I use the word quintessential here because the subaltern, to me, is the perfect and exact embodiment of a minority group. So turning back to my question, is the subaltern truly aware of their situation, or are they perfectly oblivious of the present situation. Do they have to have agency?
So what does that say of their situation? The subaltern needs someone to speak for them, as we discussed in class. From what I've gathered, the majority is the only group who can speak for the subaltern, but do they just assume what the subaltern wants, or do they actually ask? I suppose the majority just assumes what the subaltern wants to fulfill their own selfish needs. With that "voice" comes responsibility and agency. I would say the subaltern here, in fact, does have agency because without the subaltern, the majority wouldn't have to speak for anybody but themselves (not to say they aren't only speaking for themselves anyway).
From what I read of Spivak, I see the subaltern as a minority group within a minority group. For example, African American gay men could be considered subaltern because they are either spoken for as gay men of African Americans' but rarely as both even though there is a clear intersection of race and sexuality as well as other factors that go into their human status. In her essay, Spivak says that "Simply by being postcolonial or the member of an ethnic minority, we are not 'subaltern'" (Spivak 808). I wrestled with this concept as well, immediately wanting to assign the tag of subalternity to any minority group that shows a difference from the normative values of society. If this was the case, there would be a clear understanding that the subaltern is not voiceless, especially when viewing the advancement of minority groups in the United States. The civil rights movement was trumpeted by leaders of the disenfranchised minority group, the people speaking directly for themselves as opposed to, say a white representative speaking for them. The concept of the subaltern is still complicated for me but it seems that Spivak wants to emphasize that there is more to it than just otherness.
ReplyDeleteI wondered this myself and I believe that Ricky stated it quite well, as a minority group within a minority group. I think that to function as a subaltern, there has to be some kind of deniability. I don't think that people who are subaltern identify as subaltern ( I may be completely wrong though). This though presents a problem. If an actual subaltern group does not identify as one, then they lose agency by thinking they have it. Only when they identify as being subaltern can they have a voice, but according to Spivak, being subaltern means they have no voice. But then again, if a group identifies as subaltern and then represents themselves, the only ones who can, then I think that they can get away from being subaltern. But they'd first have to be aware, which is something they aren't, thus staying subaltern and truly having neither agency nor voice.
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