2 S 6 G A Y A T R I C H A K R A V O R T Y S P I V A K

legal instrument o f social justice that can accommodate the subaltern, a

consuming interest only to be mentioned here.

N O T E S

1 Spivak, "French Feminism," "'Draupadi' by Mahasweta Devi." 2 Spivek, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, pp. 19-36. 3 Marx, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," p. 239.

4 Derrida, Rogues, p. 109. 5 The idea of the oppressed themselves becoming suboppressors without proper

pedagogy comes from Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, pp. 29-34. 6 Agglutianations.com, November 3,2003. 7 Indeed, as Harvey points out, the position is already present in Marx. See Karl

Marx, "The British Rule in India," in Surveys from Exile, pp. 306-307. The ques-tioning of the teleological view of Marxism is most strongly associated with Louis Althusser's structuralist project. The subalternist questioning, legitimizing Marx's position by reversal, can lean dangerously toward nationalism.

8 Spivak, "Nationalism and the Imagination." 9 Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents, pp. 236-252 and passim. 10 Gramsci, "Some Aspects of the Southern Question"; Guha, "On Some Aspects."

11 Guha, Domination Withou: Hegemony, p. 134 and passim. 12 Hege\, Philosophy of Right, pp. 10-12 (translation modified).

13 Kane, History of the Dharmasastra.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

A P P E N D I X C A N T H E S U B A L T E R N S P E A K ?

I I

An understanding of contemporary relations of power; and of the West-ern intellectual's role within them, requires an examination of the in-tersection of a theory of representation and the political economy of global capitalism. A theory of representation points, on the one hand, to the domain of ideology, meaning, and subjectivity, and, on the other hand, to the domain of politics, the state, and the law.

T he original title of this paper was "Power, Desire, Interest."' Indeed, whatever power these meditations command may have been earned by a politically interested refusal to push to the l imi t the founding presupposi-tions o f my desires, as far as they are w i t h i n my grasp. This vulgar three-stroke formula, applied both to the most resolutely committed and to the most ironic discourse, keeps track o f what Althusser so aptly named "ph i -losophies of denegation."-^ I have invoked my positionality i n this awkward way so as to accentuate the fact that calling the place o f the investigator into question remains a meaningless piety i n many recent critiques of the sov-ereign subject. Thus, although I w i l l attempt to foreground the precarious-ness of my position throughout, I know such gestures can never suffice.

This paper w i l l move, by a necessarily circuitous route, from a critique o f current Western efforts to problematize the subject to the question o f how the th i rd-wor ld subject is represented w i t h i n Western discourse. Along the way, I w i l l have occasion to suggest that a st i l l more radical decentering of the '-ibject is, i n fact, impl ic i t in both Marx and Derrida. And I w i l l have recourse, perhaps surprisingly, to an argument that Western intellectual production is, in many ways, complici t w i t h Western international econom-ic interests. I n the end, I w i l l offer an alternative analysis o f the relations between the discourses o f the West and the possibility o f speaking o f (or

2 3 8 A P P E N D I X ; C A N T H E S U B A L T E R N S P E A K ?

for) the subaltern woman. I w i l l draw my specific examples from the case of India, discussing at length the extraordinari ly paradoxical status o f the Bri t ish abolition of w i d o w sacrifice.

r

Some of the most radical cr i t ic ism coming out o f the West today is the result o f an interested desire to conserve the subject o f the West, o r the West as Subject. The theory of pluralized "subject-effects" gives an i l lusion of un-dermining subjective sovereignty while often providing a cover for this sub-ject o f knowledge. Al though the history o f Europe as Subject is narrativized by the law, poli t ical economy, and ideology of the West, this concealed Sub-ject pretends it has "no geo-political determinations." The much-publicized critique of the sovereign subject thus actually inaugurates a Subject. I w i l l argue for this conclusion by considering a text by t w o great practitioners of the critique: "Intellectuals and Power: A Conversation between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze."-''

I have chosen this friendly exchange between t w o activist philosophers o f history because i t undoes the opposition between authoritative theoreti-cal production and the unguarded practice of conversation, enabling one to glimpse the track o f ideology. The participants in this conversation empha-size the most important contributions o f French poststructuralist theory: first, that the networks o f power/desire/interest are so heterogeneous that their reduction to a coherent narrative is counterproductivea persistent critique is needed; and second, that intellectuals must a t tempt to disclose and know the discourse o f society's Other. Yet the two systetnatically ignore the question o f ideology and their o w n implicat ion i n intel lectual and eco-nomic history.

Al though one o f its chief presuppositions is the cr i t ique o f the sovereign subject, the conversation between Foucault and Deleuze is framed by two monolithic and anonymous subjects-in-revolution: "A Maois t " (FD, 205) and "the workers ' struggle" (FD, 217). Intellectuals, however, are named and differentiated; moreover, a Chinese Maoism is nowhere operative. Maoism here simply creates an aura o f narrative specificity, w h i c h w o u l d be a harm-less rhetorical banality were i t not that the innocent appropr ia t ion of the proper name "Maoism" for the eccentric phenomenon o f French intellec-tual "Maoism" and subsequent "New Philosophy" symptomaticaily renders "Asia" transparent.''

Deleuze's reference to the workers' struggle is equally problematic; it obviously a genuflection; "We are unable to touch [power] i n any point of

^ 2 3 9 APPENDIX: CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK?

its application wi thou t finding ourselves confronted by this diffuse mass, so that we are necessarily led . . . to the desire to b low i t up completely. Every partial revolutionary attack or defense is l inked i n this way to the workers ' struggle" (FD, 217). The apparent banality signals a disavowal. The state-ment ignores the international division o f labor, a gesture that often marks poststructuralist poli t ical theory.^ The invocation o f the workers ' struggle is baleful in its very innocence; i t is incapable o f dealing w i t h global capital-ism: the subject-production o f worker and unemployed w i t h i n nation-state ideologies i n its Center; the increasing subtraction o f the w o r k i n g class i n the Periphery from the realization o f surplus value and thus from "human-istic" t raining in consumerism; and the large-scale presence o f paracapi-talist labor as wel l as the heterogeneous structural status o f agriculture in the Periphery. Ignor ing the international division o f labor; rendering "Asia" (and on occasion "Africa") transparent (unless the subject is ostensibly the "Th i rd World") ; reestablishing the legal subject o f socialized capitalthese are problems as common to much poststructuralist as to structuralist theo-ry. W h y should such occlusions be sanctioned i n precisely those intellectu-als w h o are our best prophets o f heterogeneity and the Other?

The l ink to the workers ' struggle is located i n the desire to b low up power at any point o f its application. This site is apparently based on a simple valo-rization o f any desire destructive of any power. Walter Benjamin comments on Baudelaire's comparable politics by way of quotations from Marx.

Marx continues in his description of the conspirateurs de profession as fol-lows: " , . . They have no other aim but the immediate one of overthrow-ing the existing government, and they profoundly despise the more theo-retical enlightenment o f the workers as to their class interests. Thus their angernot proletarian but plebianat the habits noirs (black coats), the more or less educated people who represent [vertreten] that side of the movement and of whom they can never become entirely independent, as they cannot o f the official representatives [Reprasentanten] of the party." Baudelaire's political insights do not go fundamentally beyond the in-sights of these professional conspirators He could perhaps have made Flaubert's statement, "Of all of politics I understand only one thing: the revolt," his own.*

The l ink to the workers ' struggle is located, simply, in desire. Elsewhere, Deleuze and Guattari have attempted an alternative definit ion o f desire, re-vising the one offered by psychoanalysis: "Desire does not lack anything; i t does not lack its object. I t is, rather, the subject that is lacking i n desire, or desire that lacks a fixed subject; there is no fixed subject except by repres-

sion. Desire and its object are a uni ty: i t is the machine, as a machine o f a

machine. Desire is machine, the object o f desire also a connected machine,

so that the product is lifted from the process of producing, and something

detaches itself f rom producing to product and gives a leftover to the vaga-

bond, nomad subject."^

This definit ion does not alter the specificity o f the desir ing subject (or

leftover subject-effect) that attaches to specific instances of desire or to pro-

duction of the desiring machine. Moreover, when the connection between

desire and the subject is taken as irrelevant or merely reversed, the subject-

effect that surreptitiously emerges is much like the generalized ideological

subject of the theorist. This may be the legal subject o f socialized capital,

neither labor nor management, ho ld ing a "strong" passport, using a "strong"

or "hard" currency, w i t h supposedly unquestioned access to due process. I t

is certainly not the desiring subject as Other. The failure of Deleuze and Guattari to consider the relations between

desire, power, and subjectivity renders them incapable o f art iculating a theory o f interests. I n this context, their indifference to ideology (a theory o f w h i c h is necessary for an understanding o f interests) is s t r ik ing but con-sistent. Foucault's commitment to "genealogical" speculation prevents h i m from locating, i n "great names" like M a r x and Freud, watersheds i n some continuous stream o f intellectual history.^ This commitment has created an unfortunate resistance i n Foucault's work to "mere" ideological critique. Western speculations on the ideological reproduction o f social relations be-long to that mainstream, and i t is w i t h i n this t radi t ion that Althusser writes: "The reproduction o f labour power requires not only a reproduction o f its skills, but also at the same time, a reproduction of its submission to the r u l -i n g ideology for the workers, and a reproduction o f the abil i ty to manipulate the ru l ing ideology correctly for the agents o f exploitation and repression, so that they, too, w i l l provide for the dominat ion o f the r u l i n g class ' i n and by words ' \par la parole]."''

When Foucault considers the pervasive heterogeneity of power, he does not ignore the immense inst i tut ional heterogeneity that Althusser here attempts to schematize. Similarly, i n speaking o f alliances and systems ot signs, the state and war-machines (milleplateaux), Deleuze and Guattari arc opening up that very field. Foucault cannot, however, admit that a developeJ theory o f ideology recognizes its o w n material production i n institutionalit>-as w e l l as i n the "effective instruments for the formation and accumulation of knowledge" (PK, 102). Because these philosophers seem obliged to ft-"' ject all arguments naming the concept o f ideology as only schematic rathe than textual, they are equally obliged to produce a mechanically schemati'-

2 4 1 APPENDIX: CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK?

O p p o s i t i o n between interest and desire. Thus they align themselves w i t h bourgeois sociologists who fill the place o f ideology w i t h a continuistic "un-conscious" o r a parasubjective "culture." The mechanical relation between desire and interest is clear i n such sentences as: "We never desire against our interests, because interest always follows and finds i tself where desire has placed i t " (FD, 215). A n undifferentiated desire is the agent, and power slips i n to create the effects o f desire: "power . . . produces positive effects at the level o f desireand also at the level o f knowledge" (PK, 59).

This parasubjective matrix, cross-hatched w i t h heterogeneity, ushers i n the unnamed Subject, at least for those intellectual workers influenced by the new hegemony of desire. The race for "the last instance" is now be-tween economics and power Because desire Is tacit ly defined on an o r tho-dox model, i t is uni tar i ly opposed to "being deceived." Ideology as "false consciousness" (being deceived) has been called into question by Althusser. Even Reich impl ied notions o f collective w i l l rather than a dichotomy o f deception and undeceived desire: "We must accept the scream o f Reich: no, the masses were not deceived; at a particular moment, they actually desired a fascist regime" (FD, 215).

These philosophers w i l l not entertain the thought o f constitutive contra-dictionthat is where they admittedly part company from the Left. I n the name o f desire, they reintroduce the undivided subject into the discourse of power Foucault often seems to conflate " individual" and "subject";'^ and the impact on his o w n metaphors is perhaps intensified in his followers. Be-cause o f the power o f the w o r d "power," Foucault admits to using the "met-aphor o f the point w h i c h progressively irradiates its surroundings." Such slips become the rule rather than the exception i n less careful hands. A n d that radiating point, animating an effectively heliocentric discourse, fills the empty place o f the agent w i t h the historical sun o f theory, the Subject o f Europe."

Foucault articulates another corollary o f the disavowal o f the role o f ide-ology in reproducing the social relations o f production: an unquestioned valorization o f the oppressed as subject, the "object being," as Deleuze ad-'i^iringly remarks, "to establish conditions where the prisoners themselves * o u I d be able to speak." Foucault adds that "the masses know perfectly wel l , clearly"once again the thematics of being undeceived"they know far bet-

than [the intellectual] and they certainly say i t very w e l l " (FD, 206,207). What happens to the critique o f the sovereign subject i n these p ro-

'louncements? The l imits o f this representationalist realism are reached * i t h Deleuze: "Reality is what actually happens i n a factory, i n a school, i n b r a c k s , i n a prison, i n a police station" ( F A 212). This foreclosing o f the

, 4 2 A P P E N D I X : C A N T H E S U B A L T E R N S P E A K S

necessity o f the difficult task o f counterhegemonic ideological production has not been salutary. I t has helped positivist empiricismthe just i fying foundation o f advanced capitalist neocolonialismto define its o w n arena as "concrete experience." "what actually happens." Indeed, the concrete expe-rience that is the guarantor o f the poli t ical appeal o f prisoners, soldiers, and schoolchildren is disclosed through the concrete experience of the intellec-tual, the one who diagnoses the episteme.'^ Neither Deleuze nor Foucault seems aware that the intellectual w i t h i n socialized capital, brandishing con-crete experience, can help consolidate the international division o f labor.

The unrecognized contradiction w i t h i n a posit ion that valorizes the concrete experience o f the oppressed, whi le being so uncrit ical about the historical role o f the intellectual, is maintained by a verbal slippage. Thus Deleuze makes this remarkable pronouncement: "A theor>' is like a box o f tools. No th ing to do w i t h the signifier" ( F A 208). Considering that the ver-balism of the theoretical wor ld and its access to any wor ld defined against i t as "practical" is irreducible, such a declaration helps only the intellectual anxious to prove that intellectual labor is jus t like manual labon I t is when signifiers are left to look after themselves that verbal slippages happen. The signifier "representation" is a case i n point . I n the same dismissive tone that severs theory's l ink to the signifier, Deleuze declares, "There is no more representation; there's nothing bu t action""action o f theory and action of practice wh ich relate to each other as relays and form networks" (FD, 206-7). Yet an important point is being made here: the production of theory is also a practice; the opposition between abstract "pure" theory and con-crete "applied" practice is too quick and easy.'^

I f this is, indeed, Deleuze's argument, his articulation o f i t is problem-atic. Two senses of representation are being run together: representation as "speaking for," as i n politics, and representation as "re-presentation," as in art or philosophy. Since theory is also only "action," the theoretician does not represent (speak for) the oppressed group. Indeed, the subject is not seen as a representative consciousness (one re-presenting reality adequate-ly) . These two senses o f representationwithin state formation and the law. on the one hand, and i n subject-predication, on the o the r -a re related but irreducibly discontinuous. To cover over the discontinuity w i t h an analog) that is presented as a proof reflects again a paradoxical subject-privileging.'"* Because "the person who speaks and acts . . . is always a multiplicity," no "theorizing in t e l l ec tua l . . . [or] party o r . . . union" can represent "those who act and struggle" (FD. 206). Are those who act and struj^gle mute, as opposed to those who act and speak (FD, 206)? These immense problems are buricJ in the differences between the "same" words: consciousness and conscience

2 4 , APPENWX: CAN THE SUBALTERN BREAK?

(both conscience in French), representation and re-presentation. The c r i -tique of ideological subject-constitution w i t h i n state formations and systems o f poli t ical economy can now be effaced, as can the active theoretical prac-tice o f the "transformation o f consciousness." The banality o f leftist in te l -lectuals' lists o f self-knowing, poli t ical ly canny subalterns stands revealed; representing them, the intellectuals represent themselves as transparent.

I f such a cri t ique and such a project are not to be given up, the shifting distinctions between representation w i t h i n the state and poli t ical economy; on the one hand, and w i t h i n the theory of the Subject, on the other, must not be obliterated. Let us consider the play o f vertreten ("represent" i n the first sense) and darstellen ("re-present" in the second sense) in a famous pas-sage in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, where Marx touches on "class" as a descriptive and transformative concept i n a manner somewhat more complex than Althusser's dis t inct ion between class instinct and class position wou ld allow.

Marx's contention here is that the descriptive definit ion o f a class can , be a differential o n e - i t s cu t t ing off and difference f rom al l other classes:

" i n so far as mill ions o f families live under economic conditions o f exis-tence that cut o f f their mode o f life, their interest, and their formation from those o f the other classes and place them i n in imical confrontation \feindUch gageniiberstellen], they form a class."'* There is no such th ing as a "class instinct" at work here. I n fact, the collectivity o f familial existence, w h i c h might be considered the arena o f "instinct," is discontinuous w i t h , though operated by, the differential isolation o f classes. I n this context, one for more pertinent to the France o f the 1970s than i t can be to the inter-national periphery, the formation o f a class is artificial and economic, and the economic agency or interest is impersonal because i t is systematic and

1 heterogeneous. This agency or interest is tied to the Hegelian cri t ique o f the individual subject, for i t marks the subject's empty place in that process wi thou t a subject w h i c h is history and poli t ical economy. Here the capital-ist is defined as "the conscious bearer [Trdger] o f the limitless movement o f capital."'* M y point is that M a r x is not w o r k i n g to create an undivided

1 subject where desire and interest coincide. Class consciousness does not operate toward that goal. Both i n the economic area (capitalist) and in the I poli t ical (world-historical agent), Marx is obliged to construct models o f a 1 divided and dislocated subject whose parts are not continuous or coherent * i t h each other. A celebrated passage like the description o f capital as the ^austian monster brings this home vividly.'""

The fol lowing passage, cont inuing the quotation from The Eighteenth WUtnaire, is also work ing on the structural principle o f a dispersed and

2 4 4 A P P E N D I X ; C A N T H E S U B A L T E R N S P E A K ?

dislocated class subject: the (absent collective) consciousness of the small peasant proprietor class finds its "bearer" in a "representative" who ap-pears to w o r k i n another's interest. The w o r d "representative" here i s not "darstellen"; this sharpens the contrast Foucault and Deleuze slide over, the contrast, say, between a proxy and a portrait . There is, o f course, a relation-ship between them, one that has received political and ideological exac-erbation i n the European tradi t ion at least since the poet and the sophist, the actor and the orator, have both been seen as harmful. I n the guise of a post-Marxist description o f the scene o f power, we thus encounter a much older debate: between representation or rhetoric as tropology and as per-suasion. Darstellen belongs to the first constellation, verfrefenwith stron-ger suggestions of substitutionto the second. Again, they are related, but running them together, especially in order to say that beyond both is where oppressed subjects speak, act, and know for themselves, leads to an esscn-

tialist, Utopian politics. Here is Marx's passage, using "vertrefen" where the English use "repre-

sent," discussing a social "subject" whose consciousness and Verfretun^ (as much a substitution as a representation) are dislocated and incoherent: The small peasant proprietors "cannot represent themselves; they must be rep-resented. Their representative must appear simultaneously as their master, as an authori ty over them, as unrestricted governmental power that pro-tects them from the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above. The poli t ical influence [ in the place o f the class interest, since there is no unified class subject] of the small peasant proprietors therefore finds its last expression [the impl icat ion o f a chain o f substitutionsVerfretun-genis strong here] i n the executive force [Exekutivgewalt\ess personal In German] subordinating society to itself."

Not only does such a model of social indirection-necessary gaps betweenj the source o f "influence" ( in this case the small peasant proprietors), tlie "representative" (Louis Napoleon), and the historical-political phenom-enon (executive control)imply a crit ique of the subject as individual ag -^'nt bu t a crit ique even o f the subjectivity o f a collective agency. The necessarily dislocated machine o f history moves because "the identi ty o f the in tc ro t^ of these proprietors "fails to produce a feeling o f community, national link^-or a poli t ical organization." The event of representation as Vertretw^^i t i ^ the constellation of rhetoric-as-persuasion) behaves like a Darstellu'l'^ rhetoric-as-trope), taking its place i n the gap between the formation o ^ (descriptive) class and the nonformation o f a (transformative) class: m^^^ far as mil l ions o f families live under economic conditions o f existem-'-separate their mode o f life . . . they form a class. I n so far as . . . the id

2 4 6 A P P E N D I X : C A N T H E S U B A L T E R N S P E A K ?

marks its birth.^"^ Histor ical ly as we l l as i n today's global poli t ical economy,

the family's role i n patriarchal social relations is so heterogeneous and con-

tested that merely replacing the family in this problematic is not going to

break the frame. Nor does the solution lie in the positivist inclusion of a

monoli thic collectivity o f "women" i n the list o f the oppressed whose un-

fractured subjectivity allows them to speak for themselves against an equal-

ly monoli thic "same system." I n the context of the development o f a strategic, artificial , and second-

level "consciousness," Marx uses the concept o f the patronymic, always w i t h i n the broader concept of representation as Vertretung. The small peas-ant proprietors "are therefore incapable of making their class interest valid i n their proper name [im eigenen Namen], whether through a parliament or through a convention." The absence o f the nonfamilial artificial collective proper name is supplied by the only proper name "historical t radi t ion" can offerthe patronymic itselfthe Name o f the Father: "Histor ical t radit ion produced the French peasants' belief that a miracle wou ld occur, that a man named Napoleon would restore all their glory. And an individual turned up"the untranslatable "esfand sich" (there found itself an individual?) de-molishes all questions o f agency or the agent's connection w i t h his inter-est"who gave himself out to be that man" (this pretense is, by contrast, his only proper agency) "because he carried [ t rd^the w o r d used for the capi-talist's relationship to capital] the Napoleonic Code, w h i c h commands" that " inquiry into paternity is forbidden." W h i l e Marx here seems to be work ing w i t h i n a patriarchal metaphorics, one should note the textual subtlety of the passage. I t is the Law of the Father (the Napoleonic Code) that para-doxically prohibits the search for the natural father. Thus, it is according to a strict observance o f the historical Law o f the Father that the formed yet unformed class's faith i n the natural father is gainsaid.

I have dwel t so long on this passage i n M a r x because i t spells out the inner dynamics of Vertretung, or representation i n the political context. Representation in the economic context is Darstellung, the philosophical concept of representation as staging or, indeed, signification, wh ich relates to the divided subject in an indirect way. The most obvious passage is well known: " I n the exchange relationship [Austauschverhdltnis] o f commodi-ties their exchange-value appeared to us totally independent o f their use-value. But i f we subtract their use-value from the product o f labour, we ob-tain their value, as i t was just determined [bestimmt]. The common clement wh ich represents itself [sich darstellt] i n the exchange relation, or the ex change value o f the commodity, is thus its value."^'

According to Marx , under capitalism, value, as produced in necessary and surplus labor, is computed as the representation/sign of object'

2 4 7 APPENDIX: CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK?

labor ( w h i c h is rigorously distinguished from human activity). Conversely, i n the absence o f a theory o f exploitation as the extraction (production), appropriation, and realization o f (surplus) value as representation of labor power, capitalist exploitation must be seen as a variety o f domination (the mechanics o f power as such). "The thrust o f Marxism." Deleuze suggests, "was to determine the problem [that power is more diffuse than the struc-ture o f exploitat ion and state formation] essentially i n terms o f interests (power is held by a ru l ing class defined by its interests)" (FD, 214).

One cannot object to this minimalist summary o f Marx's project, jus t as one cannot ignore that, in parts o f the Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guat-tar i bu i ld their case on a br i l l iant i f "poetic" grasp of Marx's theory o f the money form. Yet we might consolidate our critique in the fo l lowing way: the relationship between global capitalism (exploitat ion i n economics) and nation-state alliances (dominat ion i n geopolitics) is so macrological that i t cannot account for the micrological texture o f power. To move toward such an accounting one must move toward theories o f ideologyof subject formations that micrologically and often erratically operate the interests that congeal the macrologies. Such theories cannot afford to overlook the category o f representation i n its two senses. They must note how the stag-ing o f the wor ld in representationits scene o f wr i t i ng , its Darstellung dissimulates the choice o f and need for "heroes," paternal proxies, agents o f power-Vertretung.

M y view is that radical practice should attend to this double session of representations rather than reintroduce the individual subject through to-talizing concepts o f power and desire. I t is also my view that, i n keeping the area o f class practice on a second level o f abstraction, M a r x was i n effect keeping open the (Kantian and) Hegelian cri t ique o f the individual subject as agent.^^ This v iew does not oblige me to ignore that, by impl ic i t ly de-fining the family and the mother tongue as the ground level where culture and convention seem nature's o w n way o f organizing "her" o w n subversion, Marx himself rehearses an ancient subterfuge.^^ I n the context o f poststruc-turalist claims to crit ical practice, this seems more recuperable than the clandestine restoration of subjective essentialism.

The reduction o f M a r x to a benevolent bu t dated figure most often serves the interest o f launching a new theory o f interpretation. I n the Foucault-Delf'i'.ze conversation, the issue seems to be that there is no representation, '^o signifier (Is i t to be presumed that the signifier has already been dis-patched? There is, then, no sign-structure operating experience, and thus '^'ght one lay semiotics to rest?); theory is a relay of practice (thus laying problems of theoretical practice to rest) and the oppressed can know and ^Peak for themselves. This reintroduces the constitutive subject on at least

2 4 8 A P P E N D I X : C A N T H E S U B A L T E R N S P E A K 7

two levels; the Subject of desire and power as an irreducible methodological presupposition; and the self-proximate, i f not self-identical, subject of the oppressed. Further, the intellectuals, who are neither o f these S/subjects, become transparent i n the relay race, for they merely report on the non-represented subject and analyze (wi thout analyzing) the workings o f (the unnamed Subject irreducibly presupposed by) power and desire. The pro-duced "transparency" marks the place o f "interest"; i t is maintained by ve-hement denegation: "Now this role o f referee, judge, and universal witness is one wh ich I absolutely refuse to adopt." One responsibility o f the cri t ic might be to read and w r i t e so that the impossibili ty o f such interested indi -vidualistic refusals of the institutional privileges of power bestowed on the subject is taken seriously. The refusal o f the sign-system blocks the way to a developed theory o f ideology. Here, too, the peculiar tone o f denegation is heard. To Jacques-Alain Mi l le r ' s suggestion that "the inst i tut ion is itself discursive," Foucault responds, "Yes, i f you like, but i t doesn't much matter for my notion o f the apparatus to be able to say that this is discursive and that i s n ' t . . . given that my problem isn't a linguistic one" (PK, 198). W h y this conflation o f language and discourse from the master o f discourse analysis?

Edward W. Said's critique of power in Foucault as a captivating and mys-t i fying category that allows h i m "to obliterate the role o f classes, the role of economics, the role o f insurgency and rebellion," is most pertinent here.^^ I add to Said's analysis the notion of the surreptitious subject o f power and desire marked by the transparency o f the intellectual. Curiously enough, Paul Bove faults Said for emphasizing the importance o f the intellectual, whereas "Foucault's project essentially is a challenge to the leading role of both hegemonic and oppositional intellectuals.^^ I have suggested that this "challenge" is deceptive precisely because i t ignores what Said emphasiz-esthe critic's institutional responsibility. >

This S/subject, curiously sewn together into a transparency by denega-tions, belongs to the exploiters' side o f the international division o f labor. I t is impossible for contemporary French intellectuals to imagine the kind o f Power and Desire that would inhabit the unnamed subject of the Other of Europe. I t is not only that everything they read, cr i t ical or uncritical, is caught w i t h i n the debate o f the production o f that Other, supporting or cr i t iquing the constitution o f the Subject as Europe. I t is also that, in the constitution o f that Other o f Europe, great care was taken to obliterate the textual ingredients w i t h wh ich such a subject could cathect, could occupy

(invest?) its i t inerary not only by ideological and scientific production.^

but also by the ins t i tu t ion o f the law. However reductionistic an economi'^ analysis might seem, the French intellectuals forget at their peril that tln^

2A9 APPENDIX.- CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK,

entire overdetermmed enterprise was i n the interest o f a dynamic cmr, situation requiring that interests, motives (desires), and power (of knowl edge) be ruthlessly dislocated. To invoke that dislocation now as a radical discovery that should make us diagnose the economic (conditions o f exis-tence that separate out "classes" descriptively) as a piece o f dated analytic machinery may wel l be to continue the work o f that dislocation and unwi t -t ingly to help i n securing "a new balance o f hegemonic relations."^* I shall re turn to this argument shortly. I n the face o f the possibility that the in -tellectual is complicit i n the persistent consti tut ion o f Other as the Self's shadow, a possibility o f poli t ical practice for the intellectual w o u l d be to put the economic "under erasure," to see the economic factor as irreducible as i t reinscribes the social text, even as i t is erased, however imperfectly, when i t claims to be the final determinant or the transcendental signified.^^

The clearest available example o f such epistemic violence is the remotely orchestrated, far-flung, and heterogeneous project to constitute the colo-nial subject as Other. This project is also the asymmetrical obliteration o f the trace o f that Other i n its precarious Subject-ivity. I t is we l l known that Foucault locates epistemic violence, a complete overhaul o f the episteme, i n the redefinition o f sanity at the end o f the European eighteenth centu-ry.^^ But what i f that particular redefinition was only a part o f the narra-tive o f history i n Europe as we l l as i n the colonies? What i f the two projects o f epistemic overhaul worked as dislocated and unacknowledged parts o f a vast two-handed engine? Perhaps i t is no more than to ask that the subtext o f the palimpsestic narrative o f imperial ism be recognized as "subjugated knowledge," "a whole set o f knowledges that have been disqualified as inad- \ equate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naive knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level o f cognition or sci- ^ entificity" (PK. 82).

This is not to describe "the way things really were" or to privilege the narrative o f history as imperial ism as the best version o f history.^' I t is, rath-er, to offer an account o f how an explanation and narrative o f reality was es-tablished as the normative one. To elaborate on this, let us consider briefly the underpinnings o f the Bri t ish codification o f H i n d u Law.

First, a few disclaimers: I n the Uni ted States the th i rd-wor ld ism cur-'^n t ly afloat in humanistic disciplines is often openly ethnic. I was born i n India and received my primary, secondary, and university education there, 'deluding two years o f graduate work. M y Ind ian example could thus be

seen as a nostalgic investigation o f the lost roots o f my o w n identity. Yet

even as I know that one cannot freely enter the thickets o f "motivations." I

wou ld maintain that my chief project is to point out the positivist-idealist

variety o f such nostalgia. I t u rn to Indian material because, i n the absence

o f advanced disciplinary training, that accident o f b i r t h and education has

provided me w i t h a sense o f the historical canvas, a ho ld on some o f the per-

tinent languages that are useful tools for a bricoleur, especially when armed

w i t h the Marxis t skepticism of concrete experience as the final arbiter and

a critique o f disciplinary formations. Yet the Ind ian case cannot be taken as

representative o f all countries, nations, cultures, and the like that may be

invoked as the Other o f Europe as Self

Here, then, is a schematic summary o f the epistemic violence o f the codi-

fication o f H i n d u Law. I f i t clarifies the not ion o f epistemic violence, my

final discussion o f widow-sacrifice may gain added significance.

A t the end o f the eighteenth century, H i n d u law, insofar as i t can be de-scribed as a uni tary system, operated i n terms o f four texts that "staged" a four-part episteme defined by the subject's use o f memory: sruti (the heard), smriti (the remembered), sastra (the learned-from-another), and vyavahara (the performed-in-exchange). The origins o f what had been heard and what was remembered were not necessarily continuous or identical. Every invo-cation of sruti technically recited (or reopened) the event o f or igi nary "hear-ing" or revelation. The second two textsthe learned and the performed were seen as dialectically continuous. Legal theorists and practitioners were not i n any given case certain i f this structure described the body of law o r four ways o f settling a dispute. The legi t imation o f the polymorphous structure o f legal performance, "internally" noncoherent and open at both ends, through a binary vision, is the narrative o f codification I offer as an example o f epistemic violence.

The narrative o f the stabilization and codification o f H i n d u law is less wel l known than the story o f Indian education, so i t might be we l l to start there.^" Consider the often-quoted programmatic Vmes f rom Macaulay's in-famous "Minu te on Ind ian Education" (1835): "We must at present do our best to form a class w h o may be interpreters between us and the millions i w h o m we govern; a class o f persons, Indian i n b lood and colour, b u t English | i n taste, i n opinions, i n morals, and i n intellect. To that class we may leave i t to refine the vernacular dialects o f the countrv; to enrich those dialects wi th terms o f science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them b y degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass i ' the population."^' The education o f colonial subjects complements thi-' ' ' product ion i n law. One effect o f establishing a version o f the Br i t i sh sysf-

2 5 1 APPENDIX: CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK?

was the development of an uneasy separation between disciplinary forma-t ion in Sanskrit studies and the native, now alternative, t radit ion of Sanskrit "high culture." W i t h i n the former, the cultural explanations generated by authoritative scholars matched the epistemic violence o f the legal project.

I locate here the founding of the Asiatic Society o f Bengal in 1784, the Indian Inst i tute at Oxford in 1883, and the analytic and taxonomic work o f scholars like A r t h u r Macdonnell and A r t h u r Berriedale Kei th , who were both colonial administrators and organizers o f the matter o f Sanskrit. F rom their confident util i tarian-hegemonic plans for students and scholars o f Sanskrit, i t is impossible to guess at either the aggressive repression of Sanskrit in the general educational framework or the increasing "feudal-izat ion" o f the performative use o f Sanskrit in the everyday life o f Brah-manic-hegemonic India.-*^ A version o f history was gradually established in w h i c h the Brahmans were shown to have the same intentions as (thus provid ing the legit imation for) the codifying Bri t i sh: " I n order to preserve H i n d u society intact [the] successors [of the original Brahmans] had to re-duce everything to w r i t i n g and make them more and more r ig id . And that is what has preserved H i n d u society i n spite o f a succession of poli t ical upheavals and foreign invasions."^^ This is the 1925 verdict o f Mahamaho-padhyaya Haraprasad Shastri, learned Indian Sanskritist, a br i l l i an t repre-sentative o f the indigenous elite w i t h i n colonial production, w h o was asked to wr i te several chapters o f a "His tory o f Bengal" projected by the private secretary to the governor general o f Bengal i n 1916.^ '* To signal the asym-metry i n the relationship between authori ty and explanation (depending on the race-class of the authori ty) , compare this 1928 remark by Edward Thompson, English intellectual: "Hindu i sm was what it seemed to b e . . . . I t was a higher civi l izat ion that w o n [against i t ] , both w i t h Akbar and the English."^^ And add this, from a letter by an English soldier-scholar in the 1890s: "The study of Sanskrit, 'the language o f the gods' has afforded me intense enjoyment dur ing the last 25 years of my life i n India, but it has not, I am thankful to say. led me, as it has some, to give up a hearty belief in our own grand religion."^^

These authorities are the very best o f the sources for the nonspecialist f"rench intellectual's entry into the civi l izat ion o f the Other.^' I am, how-ever, not referring to intellectuals and scholars o f postcolonial production, ^ike Shastri, when I say that the Other as Subject is inaccessible to Foucault *nd Deleuze. I am th ink ing o f the general nonspecialist, nonacademic pop-^'ation across the class spectrum, for w h o m the episteme operates its silent P''Kramming function. Wi thou t considering the map of exploitation, on ^ h u t grid o f "oppression" wou ld they place this motley crew?

Let us now move to consider the margins (one can just as we l l say the silent, silenced center) o f the circui t marked out by this epistemic violence, men and women among the il l i terate peasantry, the tribals, the lowest strata o f the urban subproletariat. According to Foucault and Deleuze ( i n the First Wor ld , under the standardization and regimentation o f socialized capital, though they do not seem to recognize this) the oppressed, i f given the chance (the problem of representation cannot be bypassed here), and on the way to solidarity through alliance politics (a Marxis t thematic is at work here) can speak and know their conditions. We must now confront the fo l lowing question: On the other side o f the international division o f labor from socialized capital, inside and outside the circui t o f the epistemic vio-lence o f imperialist law and education supplementing an earlier economic

text, can the subaltern speak'i Antonio Gramsci's work on the "subaltern classes" extends the class-po-

sition/class-consciousness argument isolated i n The Eighteenth Brumaire. Perhaps because Gramsci criticizes the vanguardistic position o f the Lenin-ist intellectual, he is concerned w i t h the intellectual's role i n the subaltern's cultural and poli t ical movement In to the hegemony. This movement must be made to determine the production o f history as narrative (of t ru th) . In texts such as "The Southern Question," Gramsci considers the movement of historical-polit ical economy i n I taly w i t h i n what can be seen as an allegor}-o f reading taken from or prefiguring an international divis ion o f labor.''** Yet an account o f the phased development o f the subaltern is t h r o w n out o f joint when his cul tural macrology is operated, however remotely, by the epistem-ic interference w i t h legal and disciplinary definitions accompanying the im-perialist project. W h e n I move, at the end o f this essay, to the question of woman as subaltern, I w i l l suggest that the possibility of collectivit j ' itself Is persistently foreclosed through the manipulat ion of female agency.

The first part of my propositionthat the phased development oi

subaltern is complicated by the imperialist projectis confronted by lective o f intellectuals who may be called the "Subaltern Studies" group"

They must ask, Can the subaltern speak? Here we are w i t h i n Foucault's' discipline o f history and w i t h people who acknowledge his influence. I

project is to rethink Indian colonial historiography from the perspccti'-^

the discontinuous chain o f peasant insurgencies dur ing the colonial o^ "-

pation. This is indeed the problem o f "the permission to narrate" dis*-

by Said.^'' As Ranajit Guha argues. The historiography of Indian nationalism has for a longtime been do nated by elitism-colonialist elitism and bourgeois-nationalist cH' . . . shar[ing] the prejudice that the making of the Indian nation and

2 5 3 APPENDIX: CAN THP c,,^ '^^^ ^^BALTERN SPEAK?

development o f the consciousnessnationalismwhich confirmtd t h ' process were exclusively or predominantly elite achievements, i n ,^ ^ colonialist and neo-colonialist historiographies these achievements are credited to British colonial rulers, administrators, policies, institutions ^ and culture; in the nationalist and neo-nationalist w r i t i n g - t o Indian elite personalities, institutions, activities and ideas.*'

Certain varieties o f the Indian elite are at best native informants for first-w o r l d intellectuals interested i n the voice o f the Other. But one must nevertheless insist that the colonized subaltern subject is irretrievably heterogeneous.

Against the indigenous elite we may set what Guha calls "thepo/ifics o f the people," both outside ("this was an autonomous domain, for i t neither originated from elite politics nor d id its existence depend on the latter") and inside ("i t continued to operate vigorously in spite o f [colonialism], ad-just ing i tself to the conditions prevailing under the Raj and i n many respects developing entirely new strains i n both form and content") the c i rcui t o f colonial production.*^ I cannot entirely endorse this insistence on determi-nate vigor and full autonomy, for practical historiographic exigencies w i l l not allow such endorsements to privilege subaltern consciousness. Against the possible charge that his approach is essentialist, Guha constructs a defi-nition o f the people (the place o f that essence) that can be only an identity-in-differential. He proposes a dynamic stratification gr id describing colo-nial social product ion at large. Even the t h i r d group on the list, the buffer group, as it were, between the people and the great macrostructural domi -nant groups, is i tself defined as a place o f in-betweenness, what Derr ida has described as an "antre''-^^

E L I T E : 1. Dominant foreign groups.

2. Dominant indigenous groups on the all-India level.

3. Dominant indigenous groups at the regional and local levels.

4. The terms "people" and "subaltern classes" have been used as synonymous throughout this note. The social groups and ele-ments included i n this category represent the demographic dif-ference between the total Indian population and all those whom we have described as the "elite."

^ '^"^ 'der the th i rd item on this listthe antre o f situational indetermi-^an careful historians presuppose as they grapple w i t h the question,

subaltern speak? "Taken as a whole and in the abstract this . . . cat-c l i ^ j ^ ' ^as heterogeneous i n its composition and thanks to the uneven

of regional economic and social developments, differed from area

as* A P P E N D I X - , C A N T H E S U B A L T E R N S P E A K 7 to area. The same class or element wh ich was dominant i n one area . . . could be among the dominated i n another. This could and did create many ambi-

guities and contradictions i n attitudes and alliances, especially among the

lowest strata o f the rural gentry, impoverished landlords, r ich peasants and

upper middle class peasants all o f w h o m belonged, ideally speaking, to the category o f people or subaltern classes.

"The task of research" projected here is "to investigate, identify and mea-sure thespeci^c nature and degree of the deviation o f [the] elements [consti-tu t ing i tem 3] from the ideal and situate i t historically." "Investigate, iden-tify, and measure the specific": a program could hardly be more essentialist and taxonomic. Yet a curious methodological imperative is at work. I have argued that, i n the Foucault-Deleuze conversation, a postrepresentationalist vocabulary hides an essentialist agenda. I n subaltern studies, because o f the violence o f imperialist epistemic, social, and disciplinary' inscript ion, a proj-ect understood in essentialist terms must traffic i n a radical textual practice of differences. The object o f the group's investigation, i n the case not even o f the people as such but o f the floating buffer zone o f the regional elite-subaltern, is a deviation from an ideathe people or subalternwhich is i t-self defined as a difference from the elite. I t is toward this structure that the research is oriented, a predicament rather different from the self-diagnosed transparency o f the first-world radical intellectual. W h a t taxonomy can fix such a space? Whether or not they themselves perceive i tin fact Guha sees his definit ion o f "the people" w i t h i n the master-slave dialectictheir text articulates the difficult task of r ewr i t i ng its o w n conditions of impossibility-as the conditions o f its possibility.

"At the regional and local levels [the dominant indigenous groups] . . . i f belonging to social strata hierarchically inferior to those o f the dominant al l -Indian groups acted in the interests of the latter and not in conformity to interests corresponding truly to their own social being." When these writers speak, in their essentializing language, o f a gap between interest and action i n the intermediate group, their conclusions are closer to Marx than to the self-conscious naivete o f Deleuze's pronouncement on the issue. Guha, like Marx , speaks o f interest in terms o f the social rather than the l ibidinal being. The Name-of-the-Father imagery i n The Eighteenth Brumaire can help to emphasize that, on the level o f class or group action, "true correspondence to own being" is as artificial or social as the patronymic.

So much for the intermediate group marked i n i tem 3. For the "true" sub-altern group, whose identi ty is its difference, there is no unrepresentable subaltern subject that can know and speak itself; the intellectual's solution is not to abstain from representation. The problem is that the subject's i t i n -

2 5 S APPENDIX: CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK?

erary has not been traced so as to offer an object of seduction to the repre-senting intellectual. I n the slightly dated language o f the Indian group, the question becomes. H o w can we touch the consciousness o f the people, even as we investigate their politics? W i t h what voice-consciousness can the sub-altern speak? Their project, after all, is to rewri te the development o f the consciousness o f the Indian nation. The planned discontinuity of imperial-ism rigorously distinguishes this project, however old-fashioned its ar t icu-lation, from "rendering visible the medical and jur id ica l mechanisms that surrounded the story [of Pierre Riviere]." Foucault is correct in suggesting that "to make visible the unseen can also mean a change of level, address-ing oneself to a layer o f material w h i c h had hitherto had no pertinence for history and w h i c h had not been recognized as having any moral, aesthetic or historical value." I t is the slippage from rendering visible the mechanism to rendering vocal the individual , both avoiding "any k ind o f analysis of [the subject] whether psychological, psychoanalytical or linguistic," that is con-sistently troublesome (PK, 49-50) .

The critique by Aj i t K. Chaudhury, a West Bengali Marxist , o f Guha's search for the subaltern consciousness can be seen as a moment o f the pro-duction process that includes the subaltern. Chaudhury's perception that the Marxist view of the transformation o f consciousness involves the knowledge of social relations seems to me, i n principle, astute. Yet the heritage of the positivist ideology that has appropriated orthodox Marxism obliges h i m to add this rider; "This is not to belittle the importance o f understanding peas-ants' consciousness or workers ' consciousness in its pure form. This enriches our knowledge o f the peasant and the worker and, possibly, throws light on how a particular mode takes on different forms in different regions, which is considered a problem of second-order importance in classical Marxism.'"^^

This variety o f "internationalist" Marxism, wh ich believes in a pure, re-trievable form of consciousness only to dismiss i t , thus closing off what in Marx remain moments o f productive bafflement, can at once be the object o f Foucault's and Deleuze's rejection o f Marxism and the source o f the c r i t i -cal motivation o f the Subaltern Studies group. A l l three are united i n the assumption that there is a pure form of consciousness. On the French scene, there is a shuffling o f signifiers; "the unconscious" or "the subject-in-op-pression" clandestinely fills the space o f "the pure form of consciousness." I n orthodox "internationalist" intellectual Marxism, whether i n the First vVorld or the Th i rd , the pure form of consciousness remains an idealistic bedrock which , dismissed as a second-order problem, often earns i t the rep-utation of racism and sexism. I n the Subaltern Studies group i t needs devel-opment according to the unacknowledged terms o f its o w n articulation.

6 A P P E N D I X : C A N T H E S U B A L T E R N S P E A K ?

For such an articulation, a developed theory of ideology can again be most useful. I n a cri t ique such as Chaudhury's, the association of "consciousness" w i t h "knowledge" omits the crucial middle t e rm o f "ideological produc-t ion" : "Consciousness, according to Len in , is associated w i t h a knowledge of the interrelationships between different classes and groups; i.e., a knowl -edge o f the materials that constitute society. . . . These definitions acquire a meaning only w i t h i n the problematic w i t h i n a definite knowledge ob j ec t -to understand change i n history, or specifically, change from one mode to another, keeping the question of the specificity of a particular mode out of the

Pierre Macherey provides the fol lowing formula for the interpretation of ideology; "What is important in a work is what i t does not say. This is not the same as the careless notation 'what i t refuses to say,' although that wou ld i n itself be interesting: a method might be bui l t on i t , w i t h the task o f measuring silences, whether acknowledged or unacknowledged. But rather this, what the work cannot say is important, because there the elaboration of the utterance is carried out, i n a sort o f journey to silence."*^ Macherey's ideas can be developed In directions he would be unlikely to follow. Even as he writes, ostensibly, o f the literariness o f the literature o f European prov-enance, he articulates a method applicable to the social text o f imperial-ism, somewhat against the grain o f his o w n argument. Al though the notion "what i t refuses to say" might be careless for a l i terary work , something like a collective ideological refusal can be diagnosed for the codifying legal prac-tice o f imperial ism. This w o u l d open the field for a political-economic and mult idiscipl inary ideological reinscription o f the terrain. Because this is a " w o r l d i n g o f the w o r l d " on a second level o f abstraction, a concept o f refusal becomes plausible here. The archival, historiographic, disciplinary-critical, and, inevitably, interventionist work involved here is indeed a task o f "mea-suring silences." This can be a description o f "investigating, identif>'ing, and measur ing . . . the deviation" from an ideal that is i rreducibly differential.

W h e n we come to the concomitant question o f the consciousness o f the subaltern, the not ion of what the work cannot say becomes important . I n the semioses o f the social text, elaborations of insurgency stand in the place of "the utterance." The sender"the peasant"is marked only as a pointer to an irretrievable consciousness. As for the receiver, we must ask who is "the real receiver" o f an "insurgency"? The historian, transforming "insurgency into "text for knowledge," is only one "receiver" o f any collectively intended social act. W i t h no possibility o f nostalgia for that lost or igin , the historian must suspend (as far as possible) the clamor o f his or her o w n consciousne>> (or consciousness-effect, as operated by disciplinary training), so that th*-'

2 S 7 APPENDIX: CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK?

elaboration o f the insurgency, packaged w i t h an insurgent-consciousness, does not freeze into an "object o f investigation," or, worse yet. a model for imita t ion. "The subject" impl ied by the texts o f insurgency can only serve as a counterpossibility for the narrative sanctions granted to the colonial sub-ject in the dominant groups. The postcolonial intellectuals learn that their privilege is their loss. I n this they are a paradigm o f the intellectuals.

I t is we l l known that the notion of the feminine (rather than the subal-te rn o f imperialism) has been used i n a similar way w i t h i n deconstructive cr i t ic ism and w i t h i n certain varieties o f feminist criticism.*^ I n the former case, a figure o f "woman" is at issue, one whose min imal predication as i n -determinate is already available to the phallocentric tradit ion. Subaltern historiography raises questions o f method that w o u l d prevent i t from using such a ruse. For the "figure" o f woman, the relationship between woman and silence can be plot ted by women themselves; race and class differences are subsumed under that charge. Subaltern historiography must confront the impossibility o f such gestures. The narrow epistemic violence o f impe-rialism gives us an imperfect allegory o f the general violence that is the pos-sibil i ty o f an episteme.*'

W i t h i n the effaced i t inerary o f the subaltern subject, the track o f sexu-al difference is doubly effaced. The question is not o f female part icipation i n insurgency, or the ground rules o f the sexual division o f labor, for both

i o f w h i c h there is "evidence." I t is, rather, that, both as object o f colonialist ' historiography and as subject o f insurgency, the ideological construction o f

gender keeps the male dominant. If, i n the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is

^ even more deeply i n shadow.

I The contemporary international division o f labor is a displacement o f the divided field o f nineteenth-century ter r i tor ia l imperialism. Put simply,

I group o f countries, generally first-world, are i n the posi t ion o f investing capital; another group, generally th i rd-wor ld , provide the field for invest-ment, bo th through the comprador indigenous capitalists and through their

iU-protected and shifting labor force. I n the interest o f maintaining the cir-culation and g rowth o f industrial capital (and o f the concomitant task o f ad-ministrat ion w i t h i n nineteenth-century ter r i tor ia l imperialism), transpor-tation, law, and standardized education systems were developedeven as

IfOcal industries were destroyed, land dis t r ibut ion was rearranged, and raw PHaterial was transferred to the colonizing country. W i t h so-called decolo-ptzat ion, the growth o f multinational capital, and the relief o f the adminis-p a t i v e charge, "development" does not now involve wholesale legislation

establishing educational systems i n a comparable way. This impedes the

growth o f consumerism i n the comprador countries. W i t h modern telecom-

munications and the emergence o f advanced capitalist economies at the two

edges o f Asia, maintaining the international division o f labor serves to keep

the supply o f cheap labor i n the comprador countries.

Human labor is not, o f course, intr insically "cheap" or "expensive." A n absence o f labor laws (or a discriminatory enforcement o f them), a to ta l i -tarian state (often entailed by development and modernization i n the pe-r iphery) , and min imal subsistence requirements on the part o f the worker w i l l ensure i t . To keep this crucial i t em intact, the urban proletariat i n com-prador countries must not be systematically trained i n the ideology o f con-sumerism (parading as the philosophy of a classless society) that, against all odds, prepares the ground for resistance through the coalit ion politics Fou-cault mentions (FD, 216). This separation from the ideo\og^' o f consumerism is increasingly exacerbated by the proliferating phenomena o f international subcontracting. "Under this strategy, manufacturers based i n developed countries subcontract the most labor intensive stages o f production, for ex-ample, sewing or assembly, to the T h i r d W o r l d nations where labor is cheap. Once assembled, the mult inat ional re-imports the goods under generous tar i f f exemptionsto the developed country instead of selling them to the local market." Here the l ink to t ra ining i n consumerism is almost snapped. "Whi le global recession has markedly slowed trade and investment wor ld -wide since 1979, international subcontracting has boomed I n these cases,

multinationals are freer to resist mi l i tan t workers, revolutionary upheavals,

and even economic downturns."^'-'

Class mobi l i ty is increasingly lethargic i n the comprador theaters. Not

surprisingly, some members o f indigenous dominant groups i n comprador

countries, members o f the local bourgeoisie, f ind the language o f alliance

politics attractive. Identifying w i t h forms o f resistance plausible in ad-

vanced capitalist countries is often o f a piece w i t h that elitist bent o f bour-

geois historiography described by Ranajit Guha.

Belief i n the plausibility' o f global alliance politics is prevalent among women o f dominant social groups interested i n "international feminism" in , the comprador countries. A t the other end o f the scale, those most separated from any possibility o f an alliance among "women, prisoners, conscripti-'d soldiers, hospital patients, and homosexuals" ( F A 216) are the females o f the urban subproletariat. I n their case, the denial and wi thho ld ing o f con-sumerism and the structure o f exploitat ion is compounded by pa t r ia r^ i social relations. On the other side o f the international division o f labor, subject o f exploitat ion cannot know and speak the text o f female cxp'o"^ t ion , even i f the absurdity o f the no n rep resenting intellectual making >r '^ for her to speak is achieved. The woman is doubly i n shadow. ^

2 5 9 APPENDIX: CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK?

Yet even this does not encompass the heterogeneous Other. Outside (though not completely so) the circuit o f the international division o f labor, there are people whose consciousness we cannot grasp i f we close off our benevolence by constructing a homogeneous Other referring only to our o w n place i n the seat o f the Same or the Self. Here are subsistence farmers, unorganized peasant labor, the tribals, and the communities o f zero work-ers on the street or in the countryside. To confront them is not to represent (vertreten) them but to learn to represent (darstellen) ourselves. This argu-ment would take us into a critique o f a disciplinary anthropology and the relationship between elementary pedagogy and disciplinary formation. I t would also question the impl ic i t demand, made by intellectuals who choose a "naturally articulate" subject o f oppression, that such a subject come through history as a foreshortened mode-of-production narrative.

That Deleuze and Foucault ignore both the epistemic violence o f impe-rialism and the international division o f labor would matter less i f they did not, in closing, touch on th i rd -wor ld issues. But i n France it is impossible to ignore the problem of the tiers monde, the inhabitants o f the erstwhile French African colonies. Deleuze l imits his consideration o f the T h i r d Wor ld to these old local and regional indigenous elite who are, ideally, sub-altern. I n this context, references to the maintenance of the surplus army of labor fall into reverse-ethnic sentimentality. Since he is speaking of the her-itage of nineteenth-century terr i tor ia l imperialism, his reference is to the nation-state rather than the globalizing center: "French capitalism needs greatly a floating signifier o f unemployment. I n this perspective, we begin to see the uni ty of the forms of repression: restrictions on immigrat ion, once it is acknowledged that the most difficult and thankless jobs go to i m m i -grant workers; repression i n the factories, because the French must reac-quire the 'taste' for increasingly harder work; the struggle against youth and the repression of the educational system" (FD, 211-12). This is an acceptable analysis. Yet i t shows again that the T h i r d Wor ld can enter the resistance program of an alliance politics directed against a "unified repression" only when it is confined to the th i rd -wor ld groups that are directly accessible to the First W o r l d . " This benevolent f irst-world appropriation and reinscrip-tion o f the T h i r d Wor ld as an Other is the founding characteristic of much thi rd-worldism in the U.S. human sciences today.

Foucault continues the critique o f Marxism by invoking geographical discontinuity. The real mark of "geographical (geopolitical) discontinuity"

the international division o f labor. But Foucault uses the term to dis t in-guish between exploitation (extraction and appropriation o f surplus value; *'ead, the field o f Marxist analysis) and domination ("power" studies) and to t^Kgest the latter's greater potential for resistance based on alliance pol l -

2 . 0 A P P E N D I X : C A N T H E S U B A U T E P N 5 P E A K 7

tics. He cannot acknowledge that such a monist and unified access to a con-

ception o f "power" (methodologically presupposing a Subject-of-power) is

made possible by a certain stage in exploitation, for his vision o f geographi-

cal discontinuity is geopolitically specific to the First W o r l d :

This geographical discontinuity o f which you speak might mean perhaps

the following: as soon as we s t ru^ l e against exploitation, the proletariat not only leads the struggle but also defines its targets, its methods, its plac-

es and its instruments; and to ally oneself w i t h the proletariat is to con-

solidate wi th its positions, its ideology, it is to take up again the motives

for their combat. This means total immersion [ in the Marxist project]. But

i f i t is against power that one struggles, then all those who acknowledge i t

as intolerable can begin the struggle wherever they find themselves and

in terms of their own activity (or passivity'). In engaging in this struggle

that is their own, whose objectives they clearly understand and whose methods they can determine, they enter into the revolutionary process.

As allies of the proletariat, to be sure, because power is exercised the way

i t is i n order to maintain capitalist exploitation. They genuinely serve

the cause of the proletariat by fighting in those places where they find

themselves oppressed. Women, prisoners, conscripted soldiers, hospital

patients, and homosexuals have now begun a specific struggle against the

particular form o f power, the constraints and controls, that are exercised

over them. (FD, 216) This is an admirable program o f localized resistance. Where possible, this

model o f resistance is not an alternative to, but can complement, macrologi-

cal struggles along "Marxis t" lines. Yet i f its situation is universalized, it ac-

commodates unacknowledged privi leging o f the subject. W i t h o u t a theory

of ideology, i t can lead to a dangerous utopianism. Foucault is a br i l l i an t thinker o f power-in-spacing, but the awareness of

the topographical reinscription o f imperial ism does not inform his presup-positions. He is taken i n by the restricted version of the West produced by that reinscription and thus helps to consolidate its effects. Notice the omis-sion o f the fact, in the fol lowing passage, that the new mechanism of power i n the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (the extraction o f surplus valu'-' w i thou t extraeconomic coercion is its Marxis t description) is secured by means of terr i torial imperialismthe Earth and its products"elsewhere. The representation o f sovereignty is crucial i n those theaters: " I n the sev-enteenth and eighteenth centuries, we have the production o f an Important phenomenon, the emergence, or rather the invention, of a new mechanism o f power possessed of highly specific procedural techniques . . . wh ich

2 6 , APPBND,X: CAN rHB SUBALTBRN SPBAK?

also, I believe, absolutely incompatible w i t h the relations o f sovereignty. This new mechanism o f power is more dependent upon bodies and what they do than the Earth and its products" (PK, 104).

Because of a b l ind spot regarding the first wave of "geographical disconti-nuity," Foucault can remain impervious to its second wave i n the middle de-cades o f our o w n century, identifying i t simply " w i t h the collapse of Fascism and the decline o f Stalinism" (PK, 87). Here is M i k e Davis's alternative view: " I t was rather the global logic o f counter-revolutionary violence w h i c h cre-ated conditions for the peaceful economic interdependence o f a chastened

Atlantic imperialism under American leadership I t was mult i -nat ional mi l i ta ry integration under the slogan o f collective security against the USSR w h i c h preceded and quickened the interpenetration o f the major capital-ist economies, making possible the new era o f commercial liberalism w h i c h flowered between 1958 and 1973.""

I t is w i t h i n the emergence o f this "new mechanism of power" that we must read the fixation on national scenes, the resistance to economics, and the emphasis on concepts like power and desire that privilege micrology. Davis continues: "This quasi-absolutist centralization o f strategic mi l i t a ry power by the United States was to al low an enlightened and flexible sub-ordinancy for its pr incipal satraps. I n particular, i t proved highly accom-modat ing to the residual imperialist pretensions o f the French and Br i t i sh . . . w i t h each keeping up a strident ideological mobil izat ion against commu-nism all the while." Whi le taking precautions against such uni tary notions as "France," i t must be said that such uni tary notions as "the workers ' strug-

I gle," or such unitary pronouncements as "like power, resistance is mul t ip le [ and can be integrated i n global strategies" (PK, 142), seem interpretable by V way of Davis's narrative. I am not suggesting, as does Paul Bove, that "for a Idisplaced and homeless people [the Palestinians] assaulted mi l i t a r i ly and culturally . . . a question [such as Foucault's 'to engage in politics . . . is to t ry I to know w i t h the greatest possible honesty whether the revolut ion is desir-|able'] is a foolish luxury o f Western wealth."^'' I am suggesting, rather, that j to buy a self-contained version o f the West is to ignore its production by the Imperialist project.

Sometimes i t seems as I f the very brilliance o f Foucault's analysis o f the \s o f European imperialism produces a miniature version o f that het-i crogeneous phenomenon: management o f spacebut by doctors; develop-tment o f administrationsbut i n asylums; considerations o f the periphery ^ t i n terms of the insane, prisoners, and children. The clinic, the asylum, the prison, the universityall seem to be screen-allegories that foreclose a read-

of the broader narratives o f imperialism. (One could open a similar dis-

t a r i ) "One can perfectly wel l not talk abou ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^

I I I

On the general level on wh ich U.S. academics and students take "influence" from France, one encounters the fo l lowing understanding: Foucault deals w i t h real history, real politics, and real social problems; Derrida is inacces-sible, esoteric, and textualistlc. The reader is probably we l l acquainted w i t h this received idea. "That [Derrida's] o w n work," Terry Eagleton writes, "has been grossly unhistorical, pol i t ical ly evasive and i n practice oblivious to lan-guage as 'discourse' Oanguage i n function] is not to be denied."^* Eagleton goes on to recommend Foucault's study o f "discursive practices." Perrj- A n -derson constructs a related history: " W i t h Derrida, the self-cancellation of structuralism latent i n the recourse to music or madness i n Levi-Strauss or Foucault is consummated. W i t h no commitment to exploration o f social re-alities at al l , Derrida had l i t t le compunction i n undoing the constructions of these two, convict ing them both o f a 'nostalgia o f origins'Rousseauesque or pre-Socratic, respectivelyand asking what right either had to assume, on their o w n premises, the validity o f the i r discourses."*'

This paper is committed to the notion that, whether i n defense o f Der-j rida or not, a nostalgia for lost origins can be detrimental to the exploration o f social realities w i t h i n the critique o f imperial ism. Indeed, the brilliance of Anderson's misreading does not prevent h i m from seeing precisely the problem I emphasize in Foucault: "Foucault struck the characteristically prophetic note when he declared i n 1966: 'Man is i n the process of perish-i n g as the being o f language continues to shine ever more bright ly upon our horizon. ' But who is the 'we' to perceive or possess such a horizon? Anderson does not see the encroachment o f the unacknowledged Subject of the West i n the later Foucault, a Subject that presides by disavowiil^ sees Foucault's attitude i n the usual way, as the disappearance o f the K ing Subject as such; and he further sees i n Derrida the final dc^'*-'''^^'^^ of that tendency; " I n the ho l low of the pronoun [we] lies the apoi'i-' " programme."^^ Consider, finally, Said's plangent aphorism, wh ich ^ a profound misapprehension of the not ion o f "textuality": "Derrida* cism moves us into the text, Foucault's in and o u t . " " ^,

I have tr ied to argue that the substantive concern for the P ' ^ " "^ , . oppressed w h i c h often accounts for Foucault's appeal can hide a

a .

iti-

o f the intellectual and o f the "concrete" subject o f oppression that, i n fact, compounds the appeal. Conversely, though i t is not my intent ion here to counter the specific v iew o f Derrida promoted by these influential writers, I w i l l discuss a few aspects o f Derrida's work that retain a long-term useful-ness for people outside the First Wor ld . This is not an apology. Derr ida is hard to read; his real object o f investigation is classical philosophy. Yet he is less dangerous when understood than the first-world intellectual mas-querading as the absent nonrepresenter w h o lets the oppressed speak for themselves.

I w i l l consider a chapter that Derrida composed twenty years ago: "Of Grammatology As a Positive Science" (OG, 74-93). I n this chapter Derr ida confronts the issue o f whether "deconstruction" can lead to an adequate practice, whether cr i t ical or poli t ical . The question is how to keep the eth-nocentric Subject from establishing i tself by selectively defining an Other. This is not a program for the Subject as such; rather, i t is a program for the benevolent Western Intellectual. For those o f us who feel that the "subject" has a history and that the task o f the first-world subject o f knowledge In our historical moment is to resist and cri t ique "recognition" o f the T h i r d W o r l d through "assimilation," this specificity is crucial. I n order to advance a fac-tual rather than a pathetic critique o f the European intellectual's ethnocen-tric impulse, Derrida admits that he cannot ask the "first" questions that must be answered to establish the grounds o f his argument. He does not declare that grammatology can "rise above" (Frank Lentricchia's phrase) mere empiricism; for, l ike empiricism, i t cannot ask first questions. Derrida thus aligns "grammatological" knowledge with the same problems as empi r i -

jcal investigation. "Deconstruction" is not, therefore, a new w o r d for "ideo-logica l demystification." Like "empirical investigation . . . tak[ing] shelter in he field o f grammatological knowledge" obliges "operat[ing] through 'ex-Ipnples'" (OG, 75).

The examples Derr ida lays outto show the l imits o f grammatology as a positive sciencecome from the appropriate ideological self-justification

^'1 imperialist project. I n the European seventeenth century, he writes, er^' were three kinds o f "prejudices" operating i n histories of w r i t i n g

^ ^ i c h constituted a "symptom o f the crisis o f European consciousness" ''5); the "theological prejudice," the "Chinese prejudice," and the " h l -

or ^P"'^t prejudice." The first can be indexed as; God wrote a pr imi t ive ^ | | a t u r a l script: Hebrew or Greek. The second; Chinese is a perfect blue-Wrp-! ^'^^ philosophical wr i t ing , but i t is only a blueprint . True philosophical ^hi ^ *^ "'ndependen[t] w i t h regard to history" (OG, 79) and w i l l sublate

into an easy-to-learn script that w i l l supersede actual Chinese. The

2 , 4 A P P E N D I X : C A N T H E S U B A L T E R N S P E A K 7

th i rd : that Egyptian script is too sublime to be deciphered. The first preju-

dice preser\'es the "actuality" o f Hebrew or Greek; the last two ("rational"

and "mystical," respectively) collude to support the first, where the center

o f the logos is seen as the Judaeo-Christian God (the appropriat ion o f the

Hellenic Other through assimilation is an earlier story)a "prejudice" still

sustained i n efforts to give the cartography o f the Judaeo-Christian myth

the status o f geopolitical history:

The concept of Chinese wr i t ing thus functioned as a sort of European hal-lucination This functioning obeyed a rigorous necessit}'.... I t was not disturbed by the knowledge of Chinese script . . . which was then avail-able. . . . A "hieroglyphist prejudice" had produced the same effect o f in-terested blindness. Far from proceeding. . . from ethnocentric scorn, the occultation takes the form of an hyperbolical admiration. We have not fin-ished demonstrating the necessity of this pattern. Our century is not free from i t ; each time that ethnocentrism is precipitately and ostentatiously reversed, some effort silently hides behind all the spectacular effects to consolidate an inside and to draw from it some domestic benefit. (OG, 80; Derrida italicizes only "hieroglyphist prejudice")

Derr ida proceeds to offer two characteristic possibilities for solutions to the problem o f the European Subject, w h i c h seeks to produce an Other that wou ld consolidate an inside, its o w n subject status. Wha t follows is an ac-count o f the complici ty between w r i t i n g , the opening o f domestic and civil society, and the structures o f desire, power, and capitalization. Derrida then discloses the vulnerabil i ty o f his o w n desire to conserve something that is, paradoxically, both ineffable and nontranscendental. I n cr i t iquing the pro-duct ion of the colonial subject, this ineffable, nontranscendental ("histori-cal") place is cathected by the subaltern subject. \

Derrida closes the chapter by showing again that the project o f gram-matology is obliged to develop within the discourse of presence. I t is not ju'^t a cri t ique o f presence but an awareness of the i t inerary o f the discourse i>f presence i n one's own critique, a vigilance precisely against too great a ckum for transparency. The word " w r i t i n g " as the name of the object and model o f grammatology is a practice "only w i t h i n the historical closure, that i ^ to say w i t h i n the l imits of science and philosophy" (OG, 93).

Derrida here makes Nietzschean, philosophical, and psychoanab rather than specifically poli t ical , choices to suggest a crit ique o f Europ^^'^ ethnocentrism i n the constitution o f the Other. As a postcolonial im-- ^ al, I am not troubled that he does not lead me (as Europeans inevitable -^^^^ to do) to the specific path that such a critique makes necessary. I t i> '

" 5 APPBNOiy.- CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK?

important to me that, as a European philosopher, he articulates the Europe-an Subject's tendency to constitute the Other as marginal to ethnocentrism and locates that as the problem w i t h all logocentric and therefore also all grammatological endeavors (since the main thesis o f the chapter is the com-pl ic i ty between the two) . Not a general problem, but a European problem.

* I t is w i t h i n the context o f this ethnocentricism that he tries so desperately to demote the Subject o f th ink ing or knowledge as to say that "thought is . . . the blank part o f the text" (OG, 93); that wh ich is thought is, i f blank, s t i l l i n the text and must be consigned to the Other o f history. That inacces-sible blankness circumscribed by an interpretable text is wha t a postcolo-nial cr i t ic o f imperialism wou ld like to see developed w i t h i n the European enclosure as the place o f the production o f theory. The postcolonial critics and intellectuals can attempt to displace their o w n product ion only by pre-supposing that text-inscribed blankness. To render thought or the th ink ing subject transparent or invisible seems, by contrast, to hide the relentless recognition o f the Other by assimilation. I t Is i n the interest o f such cau-tions that Derrida does not invoke "let t ing the other(s) speak for himself" bu t rather invokes an "appeal" to or "cal l" to the "quite-other" (tout-autre as opposed to a self-consolidating other), o f "rendering delirious that interior voice that is the voice o f the other in us."^^

Derr ida calls the ethnocentrism o f the European science o f w r i t i n g B i n the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries a symptom of the g e n e r a l crisis o f European consciousness. I t is, o f course, part o f a greater Mfymptom, or perhaps the crisis itself, the slow turn from feudalism to capi-n a l i s m via the first waves o f capitalist imperialism. The i t inerary o f recogni-Vtion through assimilation o f the Other can be more interestingly traced, i t eems to me, in the imperialist constitution o f the colonial subject than i n Wpeated incursions into psychoanalysis or the "figure" o f woman, though wnie importance o f these two interventions within deconstruction should Wfiot be minimized. Derrida has not moved (or perhaps cannot move) into p a t arena.

V Whatever the reasons for this specific absence, wha t I find useful is the Btistained and developing work on the mechanics o f the constitution o f the B^her; we can use i t to much greater analytic and interventionist advantage 811 invocations o f the authenticity o f the Other. On this level, what remains P * f t i l in Foucault is the mechanics o f disciplinarization and insti tut ional-^ f t i o n , the constitution, as it were, o f the colonizer. Foucault does not re-

It to any version, early or late, proto- or post-, o f imperialism. They are WB'"eat usefulness to intellectuals concerned w i t h the decay o f the West. ^ * * r seduction for them, and fearfialness for us, is that they might a l low

2 6 S A P P E N D I X : C A N T H E S U B A L T E R N S P E A K ?

the complici ty o f the investigating subject (male o r female professional) to

disguise kseU i n transparency.

IV

Can the subaltern speak? W h a t must the elite do to watch out for the con-t inu ing construction o f the subaltern? The question o f "woman" seems most problematic i n this context. Clearly, i f you are poor, black, and female you get i t i n three ways. I f . however, this formulat ion is moved from the first-world context into the postcolonial ( w h i c h is not identical with the th i rd -wor ld) context, the description "black" or " o f color" loses persuasive significance. The necessary' stratification o f colonial subject-constitution i n the first phase o f capitalist imperial ism makes "color" useless as an eman-cipatory signifier. Confronted by the ferocious standardizing benevolence of most U.S. and Western European human-scientific radicalism (recogni-t ion b y assimilation), the progressive though heterogeneous wi thdrawal o f consumerism i n the comprador periphery, and the exclusion o f the margins o f even the center-periphery art iculat ion (the "true and differential subal-tern"), the analogue o f class-consciousness rather than race-consciousness i n this area seems historically, disciplinari ly, and practically forbidden by Right and Left alike. I t is not jus t a question o f a double displacement, as i t is not s imply the problem of finding a psychoanalytic aWegory that can accom-modate the th i rd -wor ld woman with the first.

The cautions I have just expressed are val id only i f we are speaking o f the subaltern woman's consciousnessor, more acceptably, subject. Reporting on, or better s t i l l , part icipating i n , antisexist work among women o f color or women i n class oppression in the First World or the T h i r d World is undeni-ably on the agenda. We should also welcome all the information retrieval in these silenced areas that is taking place i n anthropology, poli t ical science, history, and sociology. Yet the assumption and construction o f a conscious-ness or subject sustains such work and will, i n the long run. cohere with the work o f imperialist subject-constitution, mingl ing epistemic violence w i t h the advancement o f learning and c iv i l iza t ion . A n d the subaltern woman w i l l

be as mute as even^'^ I n so fraught a field, i t is not easy t o ask the question o f the consciousness

o f the subaltern woman; i t is thus a l l the more necessary to remind prag-matic radicals that such a question is not an idealist red herr ing. Though all feminist or antisexist projects cannot be reduced to this one. to ignore i t is an unacknowledged poli t ical gesture that has a long history and collabo-rates with a masculine radicalism tha t renders the place o f the investigator

2 6 7 APPENDIX: CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK?

transparent. In seeking to learn to speak to (rather than listen to or speak for) the historically muted subject o f the subaltern woman, the postcolonial intellectual systematically "unlearns" female privilege. This systematic un-learning involves learning to critique postcolonial discourse w i t h the best tools it can provide and not simply substituting the lost figure o f the colo-nized. Thus, to question the unque