Subaltern Studies and History from Below: Approximations and Departures within the Indian Historiographical Debate
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/1984-9222.2026.e106699Keywords:
Subaltern Studies, History from below, PostcolonialismAbstract
This article presents the Indian historiographical debate of the 1990s and 2000s on the relationship between Subaltern Studies and history from below as practised by British Marxist social historians in the preceding decades. Three positions dominated the discussion, shaped by different institutional contexts, theoretical-methodological alignments and political expectations. The first saw subalternist historiography as a successful Indian version of history from below that, from a certain point onwards, broke with its initial assumptions, embracing the “linguistic turn”. The second argued that Subaltern Studies had never produced a history from below consistent with the parameters of British Marxist social history. Finally, the third current understood the production of the Indian collective as an innovative undertaking of postcolonial historiography, which, although initially influenced by history from below, always operated in terrains uncharted by British Marxist social history.
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