The Conditions of Subalternity: Reflections on Subjectivity, Experience and Hegemony

Abstract

This paper uses Gayatri Spivak's discussion of Sati and Ranajit Guha's interpretive account of Chandra's death in colonial India in order to critically re-examine the concept of subalternity that runs through various postcolonial theories.  It is argued that there is a major tendency in postcolonial theory to conflate hegemony with domination.  By introducing the concept of experience, enabled by a reading of Antonio Gramsci's theory, the paper relates subalternity to hegemony and discusses that the success or failure of hegemony involves the degree to which hegemonic re-grounding can succeed in maintaining the existential continuum of the subject.