Subalternity and Agency

2. Key Terms: hegemony, subaltern, revisionist history, traditional vs modern model of subjectivity, representation

Preliminary Concepts Needed to Understand Spivak:

1. Hegemony: the political, institutional, ideological root of power
(Status Quo)

2. Subaltern: (for Spivak) relates to limited or inaccessibility to hegemonic power.

3. Subject/Subjectivity:
a. Traditional Model: Subject is “undivided” i.e., desire and
interests are untied [general description].

i. Desire may be a facet of the unconscious and thus the
subject is said to arise from “parasubjective culture”

b. Marxist Subjectivity: Subject is profoundly divided, and this division is the condition for subjectivity.

c. Class Consciousness → Subjectivity (For Marx)
d. Class Consciousness:
i. Political Identity 
ii. Not a consequence of familial collectivity

4. Two forms of Representation:

a. Representation: as Vertreten: as in political representation,  e.g., representational democracy.

b. Representation: as Darstellen: as in re-presentation is  economic value.

i. The role of aesthetics / philosophy

ii. E.g., Aristotle’s form/function and the table/sled example. [Re-presentation]. 

iii. Re-presentation is thus technically functional transformation.