Gayan Prakash, "Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third-World..."

By accurately critiquing the "worlding" of the "third world" through historical accounts, Prakash, upholds a historical interpretation of India's history that centers on the subaltern. Primarily, by looking at the historical accounts given through an Orientalist (monolithic, essential, narrative) Prakash presents how India was presented as "object" through texts. Second, and in response to an Orientalist perspective Prakash outlines the Nationalist perspective of history. This line of thought, sought to destabilize any essential notion of India as an object in response to the West. Though responsive, the nationalist history pictured India still in unified oneness, of containing a single national, meaning geographic and unified through certain characteristics (possibly history). Third, Prakash spends time looking at India as refigured through Marxist notions of history. These lines of thought sought to further destabilize any monolithic notion of India, in history or in nationalism; rather it sought to assert a history as determined and guided through class and power systems. Prakash notes, however, that though these Marxist interpretations may be attempting to operate on a "subjectless" plane and with especial attention given to capitalism, this is accomplished in contrast, or in light of, or in opposition to capitalist notions of development, which are birthed within a Western context, society and use through colonialism.

In the end, Prakash, asserts a notion of history along with the Subaltern Studies:

This perspective, therefore, breaks the undivided entity of India into a multiplicity of changing positions that are then treated as the effects of power relations. THe displacement of foundation subjects and essences allowed by this also enables Guha to treat histories written from those perspectives as documents of counterinsurgency--those seeking to impose colonial, nationalist, or transitional (modernizing) agendas. Writing subaltern history, from this point of view, becomes an activity that is contestory because of its insurgent readings.

Further, Prakash falls in line with Spivak in a sort of strategic essentialism.

This feature, however, is not as straightforwards as it sounds: if the assertion of the subaltern's unified consciousness, on the one hand, unravels elite projects, the claim for the subaltern's autonomous agency is rendered impossible, on the other hand, by the very definition of subalternity as a position in relations to that of the elite.

Additionally, Prakash helps clarify her stance further.

Critical practice in the Third World, must posit the subaltern as a subject in order to dethrone Europe's Implantation as the universal subject of history by territorial imperialism, even as this strategy--falling prey to its own procedures--turns the autonomous agent (the subaltern) into a positionality consisting of effects.

My personal reflections upon the text are mixed. Her essay is good, and her points are well-stated, though at points a bit convoluted. Yet she does a complete job in going over the approaches toward a sort of historicizing India. Indeed, I enjoyed her account of how a "third worlds" write their own histories. At certain points, I noticed similarities between her questioning of the act of postfoundational histories and Hutcheon's Decentering the Excentric. It was nice to focus upon India specifically, and draw similarities between the Shadow Lines, as well as MC and Pterodactyl. More specifically, my reaction to the Subaltern's studies approach to history as regarded in relationships was positive. This seems to be the most logical approach in that it acknowledges both ideology and power systems. It seems analogous to a sort of strategic essentialism, toward destablizing both latent and active colonialism. At one point, Prakash seemed to accurately describe neo-colonialism's presence in India:

but outside the First World, in India itself, the power of Western discourses is concealed and operates through its authorization and deployment by the nation-state; deeply sedimented in the national body politic, the knowledge generated and bequeathed by colonialism nether manifests itself nor functions exclusively as the form of imperial power.

All in all, Prakash's account raises questions, for me, concerning the political action of a sort of subaltern history. I do not want to question validity nor usefulness, but rather to what ends, and the proponents of this approach to history. As Prakash noted, many of the Subaltern study members live and/or have received first world education. Spivak, is a good example. I wonder, through education, how much a sort of Subaltern Studies approach has been influenced ideologically, politically by first world historical approaches toward India.