Denotations
In Post-colonial theory, the term Subaltern describes the lower classes and the social groups who are at the margins of a society — a subaltern is a person rendered without human agency, by his or her social status. Nonetheless, the philosopher and theoretician Gayatri Spivak advised against a too-broad application of the term, because:
. . . subaltern is not just a classy word for “oppressed”, for Other, for somebody who’s not getting a piece of the pie. . . . In post-colonial terms, everything that has limited or no access to the cultural imperialism is subaltern — a space of difference. Now, who would say that’s just the oppressed? The working class is oppressed. It’s not subaltern. . . . Many people want to claim subalternity. They are the least interesting and the most dangerous. I mean, just by being a discriminated-against minority on the university campus; they don't need the word ‘subaltern’ . . . They should see what the mechanics of the discrimination are. They’re within the hegemonic discourse, wanting a piece of the pie, and not being allowed, so let them speak, use the hegemonic discourse. They should not call themselves subaltern.
— Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: New Nation Writers Conference in South Africa (1992)
In Marxist theory, the civil sense of the term Subaltern was first used by the Italian Communist intellectual Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), possibly as a synonym for the proletariat; a code-word to deceive the prison censor to allow his manuscripts out the prison. In several essays, the Post-colonial critic Homi K. Bhabha, emphasized the importance of social power relations in defining subaltern social groups as oppressed, racial minorities whose social presence was crucial to the self-definition of the majority group; as such, subaltern social groups, nonetheless, also are in a position to subvert the authority of the social group(s) who hold hegemonic power.
In Toward a New Legal Common Sense (2002), the sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos applies the term subaltern cosmopolitanism to describe the counter-hegemonic practice, social movement, resistance, and struggle against neo-liberal globalization, especially the struggle against social exclusion. Moreover, Prof. de Sousa Santos applies subaltern cosmopolitanism as interchangeable with the term cosmopolitan legality, to describe the diverse normative framework for an equality of differences, in which the term subaltern specifically denotes the oppressed peoples at the margins of a society who are struggling against hegemonic globalization. Yet, context, time, and place determine who, among the peoples at the margins of a society, is a Subaltern; in India women, dalits, rural, tribal, immigrant laborers are part of subaltern; within India, in the Punjab, the most oppressed people are the rural folk, the dalit, and illiterate women.
Read more about this topic: Subaltern (postcolonialism)