Subaltern Citizens and their Histories: Investigations from India and the USA

by Pandey; Gyanendra

• ISBN13: 9780415778329
• ISBN10: 0415778328
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-10-16
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Deploying the provocative idea of the '¬Üsubaltern citizen'¬", this book raises fundamental questions about subalternity and difference, dominance and subordination, in India and the United States. In contrast to other writings on subordinated and marginalized people, the essays presented here devote deliberate attention to diverse locations of subalternity: in the conditions and histories of slaves, dalits, peasants, illegal immigrants, homosexuals, schoolteachers, women of noble lineage; in the Third World and the First; in pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial times. With contributions from a diverse group of distinguished scholars, the anthology explores issues of gender and sexuality, migration, race, caste and class, education and law, culture and politics. The very juxtaposition of different bodies of scholarship serves to challenge common perceptions of inherited histories '¬ ; claims to American and Indian '¬Üexceptionalism'¬" '¬ ; and promotes a new awareness, not only of shared histories and shared struggles in the making of the modern world, but of particularities and facets of our different histories and societal conditions that are assumed as being well understood, and hence often taken for granted. Subaltern Citizens and Their Historieswill be essential reading for scholars of colonial, postcolonial and subaltern studies, American studies, US and South Asian social science and history.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Subaltern Citizens and their Histories Gyanendra Pandey

Can there be a subaltern middle class?

Race, Power, and Multipositionality: the Instance of Black Schoolteachers

Subaltern city, subaltern citizens: people of African descent in New Orleans

Recasting the womenG++s question: the girl-child/woman in the colonial encounter

Writing the Subaltern

The question of a pre-history

Casual sex: towards a G++prehistoryG++ of gay life in Bohemian America

Writing ordinary lives

Culture/Politics: the double bind of the Indian adivasi

The State and the People

Subordination, governance and the legislative state in early colonial India

Subaltern immigrants: Undocumented Workers and National Belonging in the United States Mary Odem

Could Slaves Enfranchise Themselves? Steven Hahn

Democracy and economic transformation in India

Afterword

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.