Subalternity Reloaded: Singularity, Collectivity and the Politics of Abstraction

Abstract

This contribution aims at outlining two different trajectories that can be traced throughout Spivak’s works, both of which take the concept of subalternity as their point of departure: the first analyses subalternity as a path to singularity and problematizes its consequences and impasses, while the second focuses on subaltern politics as a process of generalizability to be accomplished through self-synecdoche, namely through a metonymic process of de-singularization that only allows the subaltern to understand itself as a part of a collective whole (i.e. citizenship). The essay attempts to show the mutual complementarity of these two (seemingly) opposite moves in the direction of a possible strategy of desubalternization.