Subaltern

Subaltern is a concept in the social sciences denoting social groups excluded from dominant power structures, subjected to domination, and marginalized. The term was first introduced into political literature by Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci in his prison writings. To circumvent fascist censorship, Gramsci replaced the term "proletariat" with "subaltern" and expanded the concept to describe classes largely deprived of political representation.^【1】

In the 1980s, the concept was retheorized by the Subaltern Studies collective led by Ranajit Guha and transformed into a global analytical tool.^【2】 In this early approach, the subaltern was not merely a passive victim but recognized as an active agent capable of producing resistance against colonial and postcolonial states, and as the subject of its own history independent of elite actions.^【3】

The theoretical limits and optimistic narrative of resistance inherent in the concept underwent fundamental transformation through the deconstructive and feminist critiques of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. In her text Can the Subaltern Speak?, Spivak argues that the subaltern, particularly the subaltern woman, lacks the epistemic space to speak from her own conditions and in her own voice. According to Spivak, the fundamental problem of subalternity is the absence of the right to self-representation; women have been entirely silenced by patriarchal hegemony and colonial power, deprived of any platform from which to make their voices heard.^【4】 In this cycle of "epistemic violence," the subaltern's voice can only be represented—often distorted—by others: colonizers, local elites, or Western radical intellectuals.^【5】

In later years, the question arose whether subalternity constitutes a fixed and absolute identity. Fernando Coronil asserts that subalternity is not a given or static condition but a "relational" and "contextual" state of subordination determined within networks of power relations. Thus, an actor may occupy a subaltern position in one context while holding a dominant position relative to another actor in a different context.^【6】 Similarly, Gail Hershatter emphasizes that subalternity is not a uniform form of oppression; identities such as race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and gender intersect and overlap (stacked, doubled, intertwined), generating diverse experiences of subalternity.^【7】