TY - JOUR
AU - Chakrabarty, Dipesh
AB -  DIPESH CHAKRABARTY Postcoloniality and the Artifice History: of Who Speaks for "Indian" Pasts? Pushthoughtextremes. to -Louis Althusser IT HAS RECENTLY time since colonizathat it demonstrates, Subaltern Studies "perhaps for the first tion,"that "Indians are showingsustained signs of reappropriatingthe capacity As the disciplineof history]."' a historianwho is to representthemselves[within I findthe congratulationcontained Studies a member of the Subaltern collective, in this remark gratifying premature.The purpose of thisarticleis to probbut Let us put lematize the idea of "Indians" "representingthemselvesin history." inherentin a transnational aside forthe momentthe messyproblemsof identity blur the where passportsand commitments Studies, enterprisesuch as Subaltern in of distinctions ethnicity a manner thatsome would regard as characteristically postmodern.I have a more perversepropositionto argue. It is thatinsofaras the as academic discourse of history-that is, "history" a discourse produced at the site institutional of theuniversity-isconcerned,"Europe" remainsthesovereign, theoreticalsubjectof all histories, includingthe ones we call "Indian," "Chinese," "Kenyan,"and so on. There is a peculiar way in which all these other histories tend to become variationson a masternarrativethatcould be called "the history itselfis in a positionof subalternity; of Europe." In this sense, "Indian" history one can onlyarticulatesubalternsubjectpositionsin the name of thishistory. While the restof thisarticlewillelaborate on thisproposition,let me enter a fewqualifications."Europe" and "India" are 
TI - Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for "Indian" Pasts?
JF - Representations
DO - 10.2307/2928652
DA - 1992-01-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/university-of-california-press/postcoloniality-and-the-artifice-of-history-who-speaks-for-indian-aMkxov3EMH
SP - 1
VL - 
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -