The cultures and stories of peripheral populations and conquered peoples, which have largely been drowned out by the accepted discourse of the nation states that colonised them, have begun to be recouped and re-told.The subaltern school of post-colonial theory provides the writer of fiction with a range of theories from which to devise the means of voicing the unvoiced. Among these, Ranajit Guha’s work on the prose of counter-insurgency provides the author with the key to finding lost voices, in particular those of the vanquished peasant rebel. “A Christmas Game” is a fictional account of the 1549 Prayer Book Rebellion, in which the commons of Cornwall and Devon rebelled against the abolition of the mass and the introduction of the English language prayer book. By analysing the language and detail contained in the substantial historical record, identifying that which is missing, and examining sources that detail the religious, cultural and “folk” elements of daily life, it is possible to see this event and re-tell it through the eyes of those characters whose stories have never been told and thereby create a new place from which to further debate and research.

This thesis highlights and interrogates the mutually constitutive relationship between marginality, state power and borders. In doing so, it focuses specifically on the U.S.-Mexican border, and the role of the citizen/ subaltern binary. I use a Postcolonial approach to state power which reads Foucault’s work on power alongside Gramsci’s work on the state to see state power as decentralised and dispersed in society; to see power as acting productively through civil society, and power and resistance as inseparable. Subsequently, I introduce the concept of marginality through the work of Agamben and the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, focusing on the mutual constitution of the citizen and subaltern whereby state power is reaffirmed through its ability to distinguish between lives and their value. This, I argue, becomes a logic of everyday life in the borderlands that makes sense to ordinary people. The empirical chapters of the thesis apply this theory to the Undocumented and subaltern women at the U.S.-Mexican border; illustrating the binary nature of state power and how the subaltern both at once sustains and disturbs this binary structure. I argue that citizen-led movements to ‘help’ the subaltern, although well intentioned, tend to act in solidarity with state power, reinforcing subalternity through the binary structure of power. By taking the naked life of the subaltern as their referent point, they too become implicated in the project of statecraft and the (re)production of the border. The thesis concludes by revisiting possibilities for resistance via disturbing the citizen/ subaltern binary in the context of representation. Drawing from Agamben, Spivak and Beverley I tackle the thin line between resistance and recolonisation within representation. Certainly there is an injustice of talking about without talking to. Indeed, I argue that to avoid using subalterns as tokens we must address and acknowledge this.

Essa pesquisa apresenta como objeto central os Subaltern Studies. Trata-se de um grupo de intelectuais que se destacou no estudo da história social e política indiana no final dos anos 1970. O que ligou estruturalmente os intelectuais próximos aos Subaltern Studies, em sua fase inicial, foi a tentativa de reescrever criticamente a história colonial da Índia. Nesse sentido, o esforço do grupo correspondeu a uma busca por tentar resgatar a voz nativa silenciada e extrair novas perspectivas historiográficas e políticas não só do passado, mas da própria fraqueza da sociedade nativa. Protagonizados por autores como Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Partha Chatterjee e Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, se organizou uma série de coletâneas de artigos sobre a história social e política indiana que totalizaram onze volumes compreendidos entre os anos de 1982 e 2000. Amplamente discutidos, os Subaltern Studies passaram a nomear um campo de estudos abrangente, de caráter internacional. Em meio às diversas fontes que confluíram nos subalternistas (marxismo, pós-estruturalismo, pós-colonialismo), se busca aprofundar o estudo sobre as apropriações conceituais feitas pelos indianos. Se enfatizará seu percurso de mudanças e tensões intelectuais e se analisará os limites de sua realização teórica com destaque para a tradução e extensão à experiência latino-americana com os Latin American Subaltern Studies, fundados em 1993. / This research has as its subject matter Subaltern Studies. This is a group of intellectuals, who stand out in the social and political Indian history of the late 1970s. Intellectuals close to the Subaltern Studies, in its initial phase, critically tried to rewrite the history of colonial India. In this sense, the group sought to rescue the silenced native voice and extract new historical and political perspectives not only from the past, but also from the weakness of the native society. Performed by authors such as Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Partha Chatterjee and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a series of collections of papers were organized on the Indian social and political history that totaled eleven volumes, published between 1982 and 2000. Widely discussed, Subaltern Studies came to suggest a field of extensive studies, of an international character. Among the various sources that converged in subaltern studies (Western Marxism, post structuralism, post colonialism), this research seeks to study the conceptual appropriations made by the Indians. This research will emphasize its changes and intellectual tensions and will examine the limits of his theoretical achievement especially in relation to the translation and extension to the Latin American experience with the Latin American Subaltern Studies, founded in 1993.

Essa pesquisa apresenta como objeto central os Subaltern Studies. Trata-se de um grupo de intelectuais que se destacou no estudo da história social e política indiana no final dos anos 1970. O que ligou estruturalmente os intelectuais próximos aos Subaltern Studies, em sua fase inicial, foi a tentativa de reescrever criticamente a história colonial da Índia. Nesse sentido, o esforço do grupo correspondeu a uma busca por tentar resgatar a voz nativa silenciada e extrair novas perspectivas historiográficas e políticas não só do passado, mas da própria fraqueza da sociedade nativa. Protagonizados por autores como Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Partha Chatterjee e Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, se organizou uma série de coletâneas de artigos sobre a história social e política indiana que totalizaram onze volumes compreendidos entre os anos de 1982 e 2000. Amplamente discutidos, os Subaltern Studies passaram a nomear um campo de estudos abrangente, de caráter internacional. Em meio às diversas fontes que confluíram nos subalternistas (marxismo, pós-estruturalismo, pós-colonialismo), se busca aprofundar o estudo sobre as apropriações conceituais feitas pelos indianos. Se enfatizará seu percurso de mudanças e tensões intelectuais e se analisará os limites de sua realização teórica com destaque para a tradução e extensão à experiência latino-americana com os Latin American Subaltern Studies, fundados em 1993. / This research has as its subject matter Subaltern Studies. This is a group of intellectuals, who stand out in the social and political Indian history of the late 1970s. Intellectuals close to the Subaltern Studies, in its initial phase, critically tried to rewrite the history of colonial India. In this sense, the group sought to rescue the silenced native voice and extract new historical and political perspectives not only from the past, but also from the weakness of the native society. Performed by authors such as Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Partha Chatterjee and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a series of collections of papers were organized on the Indian social and political history that totaled eleven volumes, published between 1982 and 2000. Widely discussed, Subaltern Studies came to suggest a field of extensive studies, of an international character. Among the various sources that converged in subaltern studies (Western Marxism, post structuralism, post colonialism), this research seeks to study the conceptual appropriations made by the Indians. This research will emphasize its changes and intellectual tensions and will examine the limits of his theoretical achievement especially in relation to the translation and extension to the Latin American experience with the Latin American Subaltern Studies, founded in 1993.

This thesis is an assessment of interreligious dialogue in India developed as an approach to other religions in the context of exclusivist attitudes. While dialogue is important in such a context, nevertheless, in terms of its wider objectives of creating better relationships in society, it has some limitations which need to be addressed for it to be more effective in society. Studying the past 60 years of dialogue in India and undertaking field-research in south India, this thesis discusses three such limitations. Firstly, critiquing the notion of world-religion categories which is fundamental to dialogue, it argues that such categories are products of the western Enlightenment and colonialism leading to framing colonised people’s identities largely in terms of religion. Dialogue, emphasising the plurality of religions, has appropriated these notions although people live with multiple identities. Secondly the idea of religious conflicts serves as the basic context for dialogue in which dialogue should take necessary actions to contain them. While the concern to do away with conflicts through dialogue needs to be furthered, this thesis considers the multiple factors involved in such conflicts and works for solutions accordingly. Analysing through a case study a clash in 1982 in Kanyakumari district which continues to be termed as Hindu-Christian conflict, this thesis shows that there are multiple factors associated with each communal conflict, and dialogue needs to understand them if it is to work effectively. Thirdly it critiques the elite nature and methods in dialogue which ignore grass root realities and call for ‘taking dialogue to grassroots.’ The argument is that grassroot experiences of relating with each other in everyday living should be incorporated in dialogue for better results. What is proposed at the end is a necessity of re-visioning dialogue which can lead to fostering ‘inter-community relations based on multiple identities and everyday living experiences of ordinary people’ that invites one to enlarge the horizons to comprehend the plurality of relations and identities, not just plurality of religions, understand and address real-life conflicts and question naming conflicts as religious, and incorporate grassroot experiences of everyday living in continuing to work for a more peaceful society.

The following study explores the, as-yet largely unexplored question within film studies of a ‘folk cinema’ through research and two practical film projects: the finished dramatic feature Blackbird (2013), and the 4th draft of a script for a dramatic feature in development, False Faces (2016). Drawing from aspects of Scottish folk culture, both films explore different forms of what a rooted, Scotland-based ‘folk cinema’ could be. In addition, the creation of an annual film festival – the Folk Film Gathering – has created a forum in which some of the issues of an emergent folk cinema could be explored with audiences in Scotland. The question of a folk cinema grows increasingly pertinent both globally and locally, particularly within an European cultural landscape where the traditional arts are increasingly resurgent, and upon a global stage where the indigenous peoples movement has led to reevaluations of concepts of tradition, indigeneity and autochthony. My PhD by practice attempts to explore, both theoretically and practically, some of the possible implications of a folk cinema, interlinking local and global contexts. In doing so I have made particular use of aspects of cultural studies and anthropological theory, such as the writing of James Clifford, Faye Ginsburg and Jay Ruby, which I believe to be a relatively untapped critical resource for wider film studies. Whilst opening discussion attempts to consider the question of folk cinema globally, as an issue that may be pertinent for diverse filmmaking traditions in world cinema, my practical filmmaking work is firmly rooted within a contigent and highly-localised attempt to explore such questions within Scotland. In particular, I explore the practical implications of a cinematic pursuit of ‘ethnographic verisimilitude’, and the translation of oral forms into a filmic narrative, whilst questioning the validity of ‘folk cinema’ that arises from ‘etic’ viewpoints, outside a depicted community. Ultimately, consideration of my practical work explores how the theoretical ideals of an emergent folk cinema are negotiated in the more unruly, worldy domain of filmmaking practice and whether, ultimately, an autochthonous Scottish ‘folk cinema’ is possible.

No description available.

Drawing upon Homi. K. Bhabha's essay A Personal Response and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Can The Subaltern Speak? I initiated my research project When the Silenced Voices Meet Homi. K. Bhabha's "Megaohone". The focal point of this paper aims at identifying and questioning the limitatpons of Bhabha's theories while highlighting Spivak's insightful perspectives. In conducting this project, the motif of my paper is derived, which is to question male scholars’ gender-blindness under the feminist lens in the field of post-colonial studies. Issues, such as identity, hybridity and representation are under discussion; meanwhile by citing the example of and debate on sati, the gender issue and the special contributions of postcolonial feminism are developed.

No description available.

Subaltern studies has overwhelmingly privileged subaltern resistance as a means for the subaltern to attain autonomy. While the group's project has made breakthroughs in rewriting Indian subaltern history, their emphasis on resistance to oppression has also essentialized what it means to create autonomy. A 1999 novel, Lydia Minatoya's The Strangeness of Beauty, challenges this essentialist view by portraying alternative behaviors that indicate autonomy. The novel is set in 1920s Japan when transnational excitement and anxiety provided opportunities for one subaltern group, Japanese women, to gain autonomy. While some feminist movements in Japan substantiate the notion that autonomy must be gained through rebellion, The Strangeness of Beauty suggests that this is merely one possible method for gaining autonomy—and an undesirable method at that. The relationships among three women—a mother, daughter, and granddaughter—emphasize that both the elite and subaltern can do more than just oppress or rebel to express autonomy. Rather than responding to the other antagonistically, the characters in The Strangeness of Beauty indicate that autonomy can best be reached through beneficent acts toward the other. I hope to demonstrate that these beneficent acts also foster autonomy. Because resistance and beneficence widen the spectrum of behaviors that foster autonomy, subaltern studies must identify new spheres of autonomy and enact a non-essentializing beneficence in their methodology.