Chapter 8 - From Hegemony to Counter Hegemony: Border Crossing in Philosophical Discourse

Summary

Subaltern: A Site of Border Invasion

In line with the Post-Marxian tradition, in a revolutionary approach to the same at the hands of Antonio Gramsci has a theme of a possible border crossing. The Subaltern, a social class is seen as a locus of border invasion in this section of the chapter. The invasion here is in a psychological sense where the mental makeup of the members is tried to be influenced through their own ‘objects of interest’. I shall return to these means or objects, later in the chapter. The notion of the subaltern was first used by the Italian political activist, Antonio Gramsci in his article ‘Notes on Italian History’ which appeared posthumously in his most widely known book, Prison Notebooks written between 1929 and 1935. Gramsci's standpoint is that the section of society who are termed as oppressed are not actually are given the right to determine their own history or even to participate in legislations of what is to determine their future. The understanding of the origin of the notion of the subaltern is not also theoretical rather needs some experiential wisdom from having lived in the midst of such groups. They tend to detach themselves from the mechanistic and economistic aspects of societal life as psychologically there is a large amount of discrimination that they have been subjected to.

The term ‘subaltern class’ is used to refer to any low-rank person or group of people in a particular society who are under the control or direction of another dominant group.They are suffering under the hegemonic domination of a ruling elite class that denies them the basic right to participate in the making of local history and culture. They in actuality are active individuals of the same nation. Gramsci's intentions when he first used the concept of the subaltern are clear enough to be given any other far-fetched interpretations. The only groups Gramsci had in mind at that time were the workers and peasants who were oppressed and discriminated against by the leader of the National Fascist Party of Benito Mussolini. Gramsci took an interest in the study of the consciousness of the subaltern class as one possible way to make their voice heard instead of relying on the historical narrative of the state.