A Subaltern Studies Reader, 1986-1995

The Subaltern Studies Collective, founded in 1982, was begun with the goal of developing a new critique of both colonialist and nationalist perspectives in the historiography of colonized countries. Its most famous members - Gayatri Spivak, Partha Chatterjee, and others - were instrumental in establishing the discipline best known as postcolonial studies. A selection of the definitive and most influential work from the collective's eponymous journal, these essays chart the course of subaltern history from an early concentration on peasant revolts and popular insurgency to an engagement with the more complex processes of domination and subordination in a variety of the changing institutions and practices of evolving modernity.