A Comprehensive View of Subaltern ‘Consciousness’

In the academic and scholarly realm, the word ‘Subaltern Studies’ has attracted widespread interest for discourses on South Asian and the post-colonial world few decades ago. The major motif of subaltern studies has been to challenge the conventional metanarratives in history by hegemonic communities and goes hand in glove with post-colonial discussions of the empire writing ack to the imperial power centers. One comes across the dominance of the subaltern in the master- slave relationships of Hegel, the blacks’ rebellion in Frantz Fanon, the east-west polarities in Edward Said, and the duality of ‘otherness’ of Homi Bhabha, and the voiceless subaltern in Spivak. In this process, the rise of ‘new’ subaltern comes into play and means one who resists or revolts.