Subalternity and Representation. Arguments in Cultural Theory (review)

312 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies a cleat echo of Cameros previous poetry and his iesponse to confessionalism. JiURobbins University of California-Irvine Subalternity and Representation. Arguments in Cultural Theory Duke University Press, 1999 By John Beverley We cannot seem to get over Gramsci, and in a world in which history, supposedly, has come to an end, we should not. Subalternity—the national -populai—was the simultaneously political and cultuf al response that he and his heirs gave to a Leninist proletariat that Stalin transformed into a fetish. Post-contempoiary academics have adopted die term and its terms, and in die historically determinate void left by the destiuction, including the self-destiuction, of actually existing socialism, have endeavored to infuse the culture with a politics and vice versa. John Beverley comes to this culture and politics honestly, having faced its tensions both within and without the academy , and has made of them more and better than any of us have the right to demand. The most recent consequence is this very excellent book. Beverley begins in the "Introduction" with a question of power Who has it and who does not, and in consequence, who is empowered to speak and cause others eithei to fall silent oi reproduce the discourse of theii own domination? Alternately , undei what set of conditions can subalterns attain die condition of historical subjects and speak and act in their own inteiests? And, other than in the formation of intellectual elites, what role, if any, can literature play in this piocess? Finally , what set of deteiminations do institutionsuniveisities in North America and elsewhere, and particular disciplines such as literary history and the moie diffuse and complex Latin American studies exert on knowledge and acting on what we know? Beveiley pioperiy takes the last of these questions first, foi in it are located both the condition of possibility of his voice as an academic, and the limitations the institution and its multiple servitudes place upon that voice. Thus, in Chapter 1, "Writing in Reverse: The Subaltern and the Limits of Academic Knowledge," he suggests, quoting Gayatii Spivak, that we must "unlearn privilege ," by, in Beverley's words: contesting the authority ofthe academy and knowledge centeis at the same time that we continue to participate in them and to deploy that authority as teachers, researchers, administrators and theorists. (31) Here Beverley attempts to woik rhrough die tangle of institutional powet and ways of knowing and doing diat characterize academic work, and to pose a key question: If highei education—die academy— itself pioduces and reproduces the subaltem/dominant relation... how can it be a place where the subaltern can emerge into hegemony? (34) His response is characteristically honest: the academic project of representing subalternity and the subalterns' project of self-representation ate antagonic. "The subaltern is something that is on the other side" (38) ofthe academic's position in the process of knowledge production. All this is to: recognize the fundamental inadequacy ofthat knowledge and ofthe institutions that contain it, and therefore the need fof a radical change in the direction of a more democratic and non-hierarchical social order. (40) The achievements and self-recognized limitations of subaltern studies are displayed in succeeding chapters on The Tupac Amaru rebellion; Rigoberta Menchú and the polemics of hei reception in North America; the category of "die people" in Subaltern and Cultural Studies; and Néstor Garcia Canclini, and the question of die Nation. I Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 313 shall comment briefly on two of them: Chaptei 3, "Our Rigoberta? /, Rigoberta Menchú, Cultural Authority, and the Problem of Subaltern Agency," and Chaptei 6, "Teiritofiality, Multiculturalism and Hegemony: The Question ofthe Nation." In Chapter 3, Beverley faces the almost impossibly difficult question of who speaks, who speaks for and about, all of this in the context of the politics of metropolitan academic discourse and its points of encounter with subaltemity. In the case of Rigoberta Menchú there are the inevitable questions of authority and authorship. What is the extent of her authorship and, therefore, her authority to speak? Does Menchú speak by and for herself or is she a representation of hei high-culture Venezuelan editor, Elisabeth Burgos...