서발턴의 역사(Subaltern History)'와 제3세계의 역사주체로서의 서발턴 = Subaltern History' and the Subaltern as a Subject of the History of the Third World

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The Subaltern Studies Group(SSG), formed in the early 1980s, criticizes the current writings on Indian history by arguing that the nationalist and Marxist historians of India wrote from an elitist point of view, conspring with the modern colonialism of Europe. Those historical writings appropriated the people of India for their political purposes, and therefore the consciousness proper to Indian people or "the politics of the people" has been excluded or marginalized. SSG accordingly concludes that the history of Indian people could not be correctly reconstructed as long as historians assume "the essential subject" of Indian history to be "(Indian) nation" or "class(es)". These subject categories consider other categories such as gender, caste or religion, which have been operating in Indian history, as deriving from an essential category, then explain them by reducing them to that category, and thereby exclude and dominate them. In this sense, the types of essential subject like nation or class function in collusion with the ruling strategies of colonialism which, by "institutionalizing the enduring hierarchies of subjects and knowledges", reduce the complex differences and their interactions in the Third World"s colonial relations to the dualism of colonial power. Based on these observations, SSG presents the subaltern as a new subject of Indian history and the history of the Third World.
There exists, however, different positions within SSG: R. Guha and G. C. Spivak. They have different views of the autonomy of the Subaltern.
Despite these differences SSG views the subaltern as possessing "a radical heterogeneity with, though not autonomy from, the dominant." SSG also attempts to discover in the subaltern, who are subject to the dominant discourse/power but still different from the ruling elite, the heterogeneity appearing in the crevice of the dominant discourse/power when the latter was pressed. To recognize this heterogeneity means to pay attention to "the difference" that makes "subaltern history" conceivable. Nationalist history, of course, acknowledges the difference when it stresses India"s own culture or mentalities distinct from those of Europe. The difference in nationalist history, however, is constructed within the discursive structure of colonialism resulting from European modern Orientalism, and thus contributes to reproduce and strengthen the dominant discourse of colonialism. Unlike national history, Marxist history challenges "the rule of difference" of Europe by stressing the universality of Indian history. Yet the identity of Indian history could not be established by asserting that Indian history underwent a process identical to that constituted by modern historical discourse of Europe. Such an assertion once again illustrates Eurocentrism. The difference that "subaltern history" stresses is not a difference subject to the discourse of colonialistic modernity produced by Europe but one resistant to it: "a recalcitrant difference." In other words, resisting the dominant discourse/power which identifies or normalizes Indian people as possessing a single identity or essence, the subaltern as a subject of the history of the Third World exists in a space of difference where it neutralizes the dominat discourse/power"s operation and function, reverses and reappropriates the dominant value-codes.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 1. 머리말
• 2. 민족 혹은 계급 : 본질주의적 주체형태
• 3. 서발턴의 개념에 관한 두 시각
• 4. '차이'와 서발턴의 역사
• 5. 맺음말
• Abstract