Recovering the Subject Subaltern Studies and Histories of resistance in Colonial South Asia

Abstract

This review article discusses the four volumes of the Subaltern Studies project and a book by Ranajit Guha, the editor of series. O'hanlon critically examines older - colonial, national, and Marxist-economistic - historiographies against which the writers who belong to the Indian Subaltern project set their narratives. Such criticism benefits from research on other marginalized groups: women, Afro-Americans, and the British working class (the debate over work of E.P. Thompson). The author is critical of some of the participants in the Subaltern project for not adopting these critical insights fully into their counter-writing.