Subalternity and Representation

Arguments in Cultural Theory

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by John Beverley

Duke University Press

Due/Published December 1999, 224 pages, paper

ISBN 0822324164

Beverley examines the relationship between subalternity and representation by analyzing the ways in which that relationship has been played out in the domain of Latin American studies. In assessing subaltern studies' purposes and methods, the potential dangers it presents, and its interactions with deconstruction, poststructuralism, cultural studies, Marxism, and political theory, Beverley builds his discussion around a single, provocative question: How can academic knowledge seek to represent the subaltern when that knowledge is itself implicated in the practices that construct the subaltern as such? In his search for answers, he grapples with a number of issues, notably the 1998 debate between David Stoll and Rigoberta Menchu over her award-winning testimonial narrative, I, Rigoberta Menchú. Other topics explored include the concept of civil society, Florencia Mallon's influential Peasant and Nation, the relationship between the Latin American "lettered city" and the Tuacute;pac Amaru rebellion of 1780-1783, the ideas of transculturation and hybridity in postcolonial studies and Latin American cultural studies, multiculturalism, and the relationship between populism, popular culture, and the "national-popular" in conditions of globalization.

Post-Contemporary Interventions

"A brilliant discussion of current debates in cultural studies and subaltern studies. Beverley's style is vibrant, irreverent, subversive, and a pleasure to read. This is clearly one of the most interesting contributions to subaltern studies since Ranajit Guha's definition of the field in the early 1980s."--José Rabasa

Table of Contents


1. Introduction
2. Writing in Reverse: The Subaltern and the Limits of Academic Knowledge
3. Transculuration and Subalternity: The "Lettered City" and the Tupac Amaru Rebellion
4. Our Rigoberta? I, Rigoberta Menchú, Cultural Authority, and the problem of Subaltern Agency
5. Hybrid or Binary? On the Category of "the People" in Subaltern and Cultural Studies
6. Civil Society, Hybridity, and the "'Political' Aspect of Cultural Studies" (on Canclini)
7. Territoritality, Multiculturalism, and Hegemony: The Question of the Nation