Subaltern Studies

Allison, Graham, and Niall Ferguson. “Don't Know Much About History.” The Atlantic, Sept. 2016, pp. 28–29.

The pair collaborated to produce a comprehensive and pointed critique of Guldi and Armitage’s research, or lack thereof, as Cohen and Mandler argue, claiming that The History Manifesto had little research, and what it did have was grossly misconstrued. Cohen and Mandler specifically discussed the methodology that the manifesto placed on a pedestal, the longue-duree, and on the evidence that Guldi and Armitage used, little attention was paid to the function of digital technology in the pursuance of longue-duree. Indeed the lofty overtures continue with language promoting that historians were the only group capable of “saving” the world, due to their unique training, but only if the popular methodology switched from short-term to longue-duree. Cohen and Mandler adopted a contrasting view of this, stating that not only did the time scale of the study depend on the subject matter, but that the sheer diversity of the historical discipline was what made it indispensable to the educational and cultural landscape of

He also brings up the topic about orientalism and how things can exaggerate and distort the culture or the people where it isn’t how it seems. “Ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied” (Said 62). This is saying that culture cannot be “just” studied without understanding what it means. Also have to know the basics and what makes up that culture without the stereotyping. Edward Said’s Orientalism has used the term “orientalism” in reference to a patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian and North African societies. In result, a false dichotomy occurs when an argument presents two options and ignores, either purposefully or out of ignorance, other

Our lives are divided periodically into three segments of time: the past, present, and the future. These segments are ordered in this particular way because the events from the past lead humanity towards an unpredictable future. The first segment is proclaimed to be a subject of history. History by definition has occurred in the past, comprising individuals or an entire society. To obtain a better understanding of the relationship between these three interconnected periods, it is important to recognize that history is derived from the past. However, in our daily lives we learn new perspectives from our successors who are creating history. That being said, the people who have been known to have influence in history have significance or relevance

C. Looking into the past [Book] / auth. Michelle Friedman Christopher Saunders, Mzamo Jacobs, Yonah Seleti, Judith Gordon. - [s.l.] : Maskew Miller Longman, 2006.

The interactions between the two are seen in the author’s perspective with the ideas, cultures, and reflections of the various locations and how the author’s identity evolves as a result. This builds on the works of David Armitage, Linda Colley, Emma Rothschild, and Maya Jasanoff, who attempt to bridge the historiography of British Empire and nation, creating one field. As Rothschild and Jasanoff demonstrate, personal accounts reveal different perspectives of empire that of the contemporary people, of which I wish to contribute. Additionally my project builds upon historiography that endeavors to link the empire globally rather by metropole or periphery. Other historians link these concepts together through their analysis of the East India Company and its relationship to Britain. These approaches allow for my project to look at the lower classes through larger perspectives that make their mobility a global concept through a personal

Current events have a basis in historical fact and the practice of analyzing and acting upon past experiences is all considered thinking historically. Without history, human society would have no identity or base. Chapter Two begins by expressing what Doing History has already stated on the definition of history. However, Methods and Skills delves further into the nature of history by explain that a historian can shed light on an event in history, but nobody can actually show exactly how things took place during that event. All of history is naturally subject to the historian’s point of view and interpretations, therefore, the absolute fullest and truest version of history is essentially unattainable. However, this fact does not negate the importance of studying and understanding history, because historical fact is grounded in reliable, factual evidence from the event. Consequently, historians must always be asking questions and looking for the best possible answers for the ever-evolving dialogue of

As a cultural apparatus, Orientalism is all aggression, activity, judgment, will-to-truth, and knowledge.” In other words, this incredibly convincing argument put forward by Said entails that in the past, the West defined the ‘Orient’ as the ‘other’ by comparing it to the West, particularly in terms of the West’s power against the perceived weakness of the East. For example, in a speech to the House of Commons in June 1910, the British politician Arthur Balfour that because of Britain’s supreme knowledge over Egypt, they had been “put in a position of supremecy.” Combined with this notion of agency over the ‘Orient’, Balfour used the rhetoric of ‘us’ (Britain), and ‘them’ (Egypt), throughout his speech. This gives a clear suggestion that Britain was using the notion of the Eastern ‘other’ to define who they themselves were as a community, that being the ‘dominators’ of the Eastern world. Therefore, it is true to say that communities in history have sought to define themselves as superior by looking at who they are not.

History has always been a subject that has fascinated me – the quote “Those who do not know history are bound to repeat it” seems inevitably true. I have always been curious about understanding the stories of those who came before me because those stories spill into my story, which eventually will spill into another’s story and the cycle will repeat itself until the end of time.

In other words, not only construction but deconstruction of the dubious entity “Orient” require the West (the Orient’s agent) to speak for the Orient. Another problem is what Said calls “a triumph of Orientalism” (323) today, the major source of which is no longer Britain or France, but the United States, the democratically totalizing economy power. It means cultural domination on the one hand (“Orientals” educated in the United States repeat the Orientalist cliché), and economic absorption of poor nations on the other (consumerism in the Orient). A simple example Said takes up is “the paradox of an Arab regarding himself as an ‘Arab’ of the sort put out by Hollywood” (325). The Orient, in short, playacts its image as imagined by the West. This is far more problematic than the former form of Orientalism because the subject position of an “Oriental” is now realized only as the subject that (re-)presents itself as the Other before the Western eyes, as imagined by the West: and this Western gaze is what the Oriental subject identifies her/himself. It is disappointing in a sense that Said does not develop his arguments more than the idea that this phenomenon of cultural domination is only the Orient’s

Identity in postmodernist tradition is seen as a construct shaped in a discursive context. The concept of identity politics is under the light of anti-essentialism that later widely acknowledged among the “subalterns”. The postcolonial studies used this term to “those social groups—migrants, shantytown dwellers, displaced tribes, refuges, untouchable castes, the homeless—that either do not posses, or are prevented from possessing class consciousness…”(Glossary of Postcolonial Reader: 509). Similar explanation proposed by Young that subaltern is a name for subordinate individuals and groups who do not possess a general ‘class consciousness’. Moreover, Chatterjee highlights that they are both subordinate by ‘accepting’ the immediate reality of power relations, which dominate and exploit them; but on the contrary has the will to assert their autonomy (Slemon, Postcolonial Reader: An Anthology: 110)

The main interest in postcolonial theory is what happens to people during and after colonialism. Splitting in straight lines self from other by purifying the self, is one discussion in postcolonial theory. Naturally, people view each other globally within the concept of ‘Them and Us’. One’s identity is often defined through encounters with differing cultures. Edward Said is considered the founder of postcolonial theory. In 1978 Said wrote a controversial book called Orientalism. He attempts to explain the geographical division between the West, the Occident and

Perspectives can be evolved and altered as the time is progressing. As a Chinese old saying states, “the spectators see the chess game better than the players”, many who live in the moment are unable to objectively justify the contemporary events happened around them. Only the descendants, analyzing from new perspective, can draw a conclusion more comprehensively while learning the history. Historians from different eras hold diverse perspectives, leading to various interpretations of a certain topic: “To what extent did Hitler’s foreign

The study of history is a challenging and often ambiguous pursuit of reconstruction. Historians are forced to remove themselves from the confines of modernity while desperately trying to grasp the fleeting remnants of an ever fading past. It is impossible, however, for a historian to fully accomplish either one of these necessities of research. The present remains an integral part of his perspective causing a distinctive slant in the analysis; evidence of the past can remain hidden or be entirely lost in the strides of time. These limitations of individual historians’ conceptions of the past necessitate the study of history to be an accumulation of different theories throughout the ages by conflicting researchers. A

From the late eighteenth to the mid twentieth century, European countries - predominantly England and France - oversaw the expansion and collapse of their empires, during which time they had come to understand their Eastern colonies through the lens of ‘Orientalism.’ A term coined by the literary critic Edward Said in 1978, Orientalism refers to the project through which Western artists and intellectuals fabricated an image of ‘the Orient’ - an area stretching between ‘India and the Bible Lands’ - in order to legitimise their control over it. This project characterised the East as an inferior, post-civilised realm, where order had been displaced by - as Said writes - an ‘Oriental backwardness.’ However, by the end of the nineteenth