Sobre Guha Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency

So this one goes in english by request of a friend. In this book Guha make a point he would latter repeat on "The prose" which is to make a historiography focusing on the role of the subaltern form the point of view the subaltern, and critiquing other approaches as reproducing forms of domination over the subaltern. Now it is getting clearer for me the implications of this apparently simple statement and particularly in relation to the insurgent movements among peasants in India. The point of thinking form the point of view of the subaltern is to recognize its (relative) autonomy form the colonial society.

In this work the author is simultaneously looking to different particular events and searching for the common forms or general ideas “to concentrate in “the first elements” which make it possible for the general ideas to combine in complex formations and constitute what Gramsci has described as “ the pillars of politics and of any collective action whatsoever”” (12). This argues against the propositions of peasant arousal as a type of pre-political (non programmatic, non ideological, without leadership and without objectives) type of social mobilisation.

In these movements a subaltern consciousness is manifested one that, as we previously said, is defined negatively in relation to its “oppressors” (in India the blurrily distinguishable triad money lender - landowner - administrators). Thus the negative definition of consciousness is given in the lacking of the powers and qualities of the dominant classes, that are framed in a hierarchical system that defines simultaneously as social position, economic and symbolic capital. This is a type of consciousness that is part and results of its condition: it was imposed by dominant classes as a way of defining its position above and distant to the subaltern. This distance and difference is defined in the lacking of wealth, authority and symbolic display of symbols of power.

The subaltern is not just spontaneously reacting to domination through a mechanical response towards forms of oppression, but is engaging in a creative political movement of “turning things upside down”. The inversion of the world is then directly linked to the negative definition of consciousness in that it implies inverting the semiotic order of dominance and subordination. The author shows ho insurgency was not about just economic relation but about attacking symbols of power, transgressing the codes of conduct and language to acknowledge prestige of upper classes and appropriating of symbols for themselves as a claim of upper position.

A form of inversion is then what is labelled as crime by dominant classes, a type of action that is ambiguous in allowing alternative readings: that of what is conducted following individual interests and something that points to social inequalities and types of class solidarity. In this ambiguity it opens up the possibility of a dual and opposed interpretations one that classifies the insurgencies as a right of the oppressed and those that consider it an individualistic transgression to law. On this point the author positions himself clearly in stating that insurgency may be distinguished form crime in its collective and public character, is clearly recognized as threat to social hierarchical order by groups in power, is based on communal actions and communal appropriation of economic valuables generated in the mobilization. Therefore Guha considers the type of violence of the insurgent as a “total” type of violence (157) , this means that its elements cannot be separated by have to be understood in the attack to the objects that represent the power of a class as such.

So I still find it difficult to understand the way the author defines the limits of what is the subaltern, and what are the dominant classes. I also find it difficult to understand the “internal” dynamics within subalternity as difference is a constituent element, but is not so clear how it can be analyzed in this line.



Foto: una de Nahuel que encotre en indymedia.

Algo que quedo afuera: Solidarity as simultaneously ethnic, tribal, kinship but also class solidarity.