Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- List of Tables and Charts
- List of Abbreviations
- Section I Introduction
- Section II Engaging with Subaltern Studies in India
- 2 Revisiting Subaltern Studies in India
- 3 On Altering the Ego in Peasant History: Paradoxes of the Culturological Option
- 4 Human Rights, Dalit Questions and Subaltern Studies in India
- Section III Subaltern Reproduction through Idea, Knowledge and Power
- Section IV Routes of Subjugation and Emancipation: Identity and Assertion, Mobilization and Power, Knowledge and Production
- Section V Aspects of Social and Cultural Changes
- Contributors
3 - On Altering the Ego in Peasant History: Paradoxes of the Culturological Option
from Section II - Engaging with Subaltern Studies in India
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- List of Tables and Charts
- List of Abbreviations
- Section I Introduction
- Section II Engaging with Subaltern Studies in India
- 2 Revisiting Subaltern Studies in India
- 3 On Altering the Ego in Peasant History: Paradoxes of the Culturological Option
- 4 Human Rights, Dalit Questions and Subaltern Studies in India
- Section III Subaltern Reproduction through Idea, Knowledge and Power
- Section IV Routes of Subjugation and Emancipation: Identity and Assertion, Mobilization and Power, Knowledge and Production
- Section V Aspects of Social and Cultural Changes
- Contributors
Summary
Only recently have historians begun to draw upon anthropology in a non-discursive way – in terms of utilizing anthropological conclusions for processing and grappling with historical material with the skill and insights recommended for anthropologists. The ostensible purpose of this new mien of historical writing, according to its proponents, is to correct the elitist bias in received historical literature. Undoubtedly, they have a point there, for written history has a natural tendency of placing the literati in the centre, drawing in the multitude, in various stages of recalcitrance, into the historical process. What this new brand of anthropology-inspired history hopes to do is to alter the ego in history by bringing the people back in. We are faced then, perhaps for the first time, with the prospect of a written history, which is the history of class struggles, and not, as hitherto, of struggles within a class.
This new style of writing ‘history from below’ has already produced an impressive volume of academically certifiable literature and has successfully established a new genre (Guha, ed. 1982, 1983, 1984; and Guha, 1983). The History Workshop group in Britain is perhaps the most systematic campaigner of this genre. From 1982 onwards, further impetus to this movement has come from Ranajit Guha who has fathered the campaign for its integration into the writing of Indian history.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Subalternity, Exclusion and Social Change in India , pp. 56 - 76Publisher: Foundation BooksPrint publication year: 2014