Latineos - Latin America, Caribbean, arts, culture

Their founding statement was published on Boundary 2, an academic journal issued by Duke University Press, in 1993. The intention was to continue the project, started in the 1980s by the South Asian Subaltern Studies Group, of producing politically committed work, recognised by some as academic militancy, but mostly seen as a “new form of humanism” as suggested by Ileana Rodríguez, one of the founder members, based on their alignment with the struggles of the poor. They also recognised themselves as postmodern, perhaps as a result of their effort to break with grand-narratives, a tendency often associated with postmodernity, while doubting teleological models which see revolution as a progressive transformation.

The argument was that Representations of the subaltern assumed a ‘ventriloquized nature’ in nationalist projectsrepresentations of the subaltern assumed a ‘ventriloquized nature’ in nationalist projects, whether those representations were being manifested by the right or by the left, for the subaltern were rarely seen as active agents and makers of their own history.

Latin American and South Asian Subaltern Studies have some common traits, such as being involved with nationalist practices and being part of a dialogue which manifests itself in the Southern hemisphere. Yet, there has been some resistance against placing Latin America alongside other post-colonial countries, taking into account the 150 years difference between the political processes that brought independence to the majority of countries in Latin America, and to those in Africa and Asia.

Nevertheless, the Latin America Subaltern Studies Group did perceive Latin America as postcolonial, for, they would argue,  one cannot refer to the histories of those countries without addressing relations of colonialism, a fact that distinguishes the narratives of the small voices in places like Bolivia and India for example, from the ‘histories from below’ brought to the limelight by the historian E.P. Thompson in the context of eighteenth century England, and Carlo Ginzburg in relation to sixteenth century Italy.

There are also those who criticise the ‘importation’ of a model rooted in South Asia to Latin America, an accusation refuted by the group who defend the use of the South Asian model on the grounds that the Academia is forever importing models generated in Europe. About this point, one may raise the question: why is it acceptable to import western philosophical models, but not South Asian ones? I would tentatively argue that the former fits into the ‘unmarked category’, as used in anthropology, which refers to a taken for granted mode of classification. In other words, to import a category from a country which is considered ‘peripheral’ is seen as inappropriate, for those theories have to struggle to gain the status of mainstream knowledge, whereas the use of theories produced in the ‘developed’ metropolitan centres is often left unquestioned.

Ranajit Guha, the historian who wrote the founding statement for the South Asian Subaltern Studies, The study of the historical failure of the nation to come to its owndescribes the purpose of that group as “the study of the historical failure of the nation to come to its own”, as well as the failure of the bourgeoisie and the working class to win the battle against colonialism, a remark which could possibly be made with regard  to the crisis of the revolutionary left in Latin America. The target of this exercise in postcolonial critique is the dominant narrative, that of the coloniser, which may, in countries like Brazil and India, be echoed by the dominant native elite.

The origins of contesting the history told from the perspective of the elites can be traced back to the 1960s, and the area of Latin American Studies which encompassed political and cultural movements. In 1970s India, there was a general feeling that nationalism as a project had reached exhaustion, and Ranajit Guha suggests that historical and geographical determinants such as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Sandinistas’ defeat  in Nicaragua in 1992, triggered the coming into being of the Subaltern Studies Group.

Despite the largely distinct contexts found in South Asia and Latin America, there was a convergence of initiatives and tendencies reinforced by a common postmodern condition and belief that the central problem of postcoloniality is that the elite does not perform well the role of representing the people. Instead, the nation ought to be a place of pluralism and consensus. The Latin American group supposedly came to an end due to political and academic differences. Their pursuit could nevertheless be continued, while it may also be worthwhile to ponder over their proposal of seeing the nation as a conceptual space, ‘more geographical than institutional’, as suggested in their Founding Statement.