Charting Subaltern Studies and Marginal Literatures

Abstract

This article investigates the historical roots of the terms ‘marginal’ and ‘subaltern’ to explain the nature of marginalization as well as to reveal how subalternity occurs. The term, subaltern has progressively changed from the work of Antonio Gramsci to Gayatri Spivak and others. It is clearly understood that subaltern studies began as a kind of protest and as a form of alternative history to the one present. However, in recent reviews of the word ‘subaltern’ there has been some discomfort regarding the nature of subaltern studies. Writers and critics have wondered whether the term per chance emerged from a Brahminical arrogance to depict the nature of marginal writings. There have also been views that without the emergence of subaltern studies many meta-narratives and alternate views may not have emerged. The subaltern movement allowed for voicing the voices of the voiceless irrespective of who they were. The article besides reading the emergence and history of subaltern studies and literatures would also probe into the discursiveness of how scholars receive the notion of marginal or subaltern literature. This article’s focus is on bringing together the history and the politics of subaltern studies and the issue of literature of the marginalized. The first part of the paper’s discussion on literature of the subaltern pays attention to the definition, the history, the various works and writers who come under this umbrella term. The second part of the paper deals with how the marginalized is viewed and the focus of writers in this field.