damental transformations of mentality.” She also noted that
Subaltern Studies must trace the origins of such transforma-
tions in their relationship to the state or to organized reli-
gions, without slipping into a rigid teleology or a denial of
historical specificity (O’Hanlon, 2000, pp. 92–93).
CULTURAL STUDIES, POSTMODERNISM, AND THE POST-
COLONIAL PROJECT. This concern grew even stronger as
Subaltern Studies became deeply inflected with postmodern
cultural studies, especially in the United States. Many assess-
ments of this trend trace its beginnings to the publication of
Edward Said’s Orientalism, a hugely influential work con-
cerned with Western intellectual tradition’s representation of
its colonial subjects, particularly those in the Middle East.
Said’s post-Orientalist perspectives then combined with con-
temporary postmodern concerns with textual and discourse
analysis; through this confluence postcolonial studies became
the reigning episteme through which much of the Subaltern
was then studied. Leading writers in the field of postcolonial
studies, such as Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Gyan
Prakash, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and many others, are con-
cerned with philosophical issues of cultural representation.
From this postcolonial perspective, they have argued force-
fully for several basic changes in the study of Third World
histories: (1) explorations of cultural difference (inspired in
part by Jacques Derrida’s (1930–2004) idea of differance);
(2) nonessentialized cultural categories; and (3) the writing
of a postfoundationalist as well as a postnationalist historiog-
raphy (Chakrabarty, 1992, pp. 1–26; Chakrabarty, 2000;
Spivak, 1985, pp. 120–130 and 330–363; Bhabha, 1994;
Prakash, 1992, 1994, 1996). Among many other priorities,
these writers state the need for writing a history which is in-
fluenced neither philosophically by an idea of a single cultur-
al mind which applies to all members of a society, nor anach-
ronistically by a false idea of a unifying nation or set of
origins set somewhere in a hoary past.
Given these views, many subaltern writers are overtly
suspicious of disciplines and fields such as religious studies
in the Western academy. Such a field is, in their view, prone
to hegemonic and essentializing constructions of the other
under a dominant institutionalized gaze. However, subaltern
theorists are also concerned amongst themselves about the
reification of religion in their own writings. Some later post-
modern writers, such as Dipankar Gupta, have criticized the
tendency in subaltern writers to attribute primordiality to
the masses, or to assume a traditional consciousness, or even
primordial loyalties of religion, community, kinship, and
language (Gupta, 1985). Many subaltern writers have won-
dered aloud whether subaltern ideas of a moral community,
albeit in the guise of folk religious values of peasant commu-
nity, are nonetheless well on their way to yet another essen-
tializing category. If peasant or worker consciousness can be
reified and severed from history in this way, why not caste,
nation, or religious community? Thus, the problem remains.
As one Subaltern Studies critic put it, although many subal-
tern writers accept the autonomy of peasants, their accounts
are ultimately not that different from the processes of San-
skritization, Islamicization, or popularization—ideas which
have all come under fire for essentializing and reifying histor-
ical processes of change (Bayly, 2000, p. 122). How can sub-
altern writing avoid the problem of making the community
an “it” with firm boundaries and, as Marxist secularists in-
creasingly suspect, expressing a sympathy for the religious as
a way of defining that community (Spivak, 2000, p. 326)?
SUBALTERN STUDIES WITHIN THE STUDY OF RELIGION. The
reaction of the religious studies scholarly community to Sub-
altern Studies has been markedly different from the reaction
of Subaltern Studies to it; one might even go so far as to say
that they are “mirror images” of each other. Although the
Subaltern school, even in its more marked “cultural studies”
form of later years, is mostly ambivalent, if not downright
hostile, to the idea of religion as a category of analysis, reli-
gious studies students have welcomed the category of the
subaltern wholeheartedly. Indeed, they have embraced much
of the Gramscian tradition with fairly enthusiastic vigor in
two significant ways: (1) Subalternist writing can further de-
fine and criticize religious studies’ own Orientalist perspec-
tives, both colonial and postcolonial; and (2) more post-
colonial writing in Subaltern Studies can help religious
studies scholars to nuance their descriptions of the cultural
identity of the religious groups with whom they concern
themselves.Marxist scholars of religion such as Bruce Lincoln, Tim-
othy Fitzgerald, and Russell T. McCutcheon, would certain-
ly embrace Subaltern Studies as part of a larger, generally
Marxist perspective with which to criticize religious practices
as one among many forms of cultural hegemony (Lincoln,
1994; Fitzgerald, 2000; McCutcheon, 2001, 2003). Al-
though differing in outlook, these thinkers see this kind of
critique as the primary obligation of the scholar. Others are
concerned with Subaltern Studies’ later, more postmodern
incarnations: Richard King’s work, Orientalism and Religion:
Post-Colonial Theory, India and the Mystic East (1999), mas-
terfully outlines some of the issues in the relationship be-
tween religious and postcolonial studies.
Many scholars of religion, such as those mentioned
above, as well as their numerous area–studies counterparts,
would not fundamentally disagree with the premises of later
Subaltern School works on religion, such as those essays
found in the 1992 volume of Subaltern Studies: Partha Chat-
terjee’s study of the Ramakrishna movement as a religion of
urban domesticity; Terence Ranger’s study of the Matobo in
South Africa; and Saurabh Dube’s study of the construction
of mythic communities in Chhattisgarh (Chatterjee, 1992;
Ranger, 1992; Dube, 1992). Each of these essays attempts
to combine class, caste, and religious consciousness in such
a way that, even if class concerns win out, the dynamics of
particularly religious world views have been thoroughly ana-
lyzed. Relatedly, many scholars of religion have used Subal-
tern Studies as a way to analyze the colonial strategies of mis-
sionary movements, such as Malagasy Christianity (Larson),
Latin American and other Spanish Colonial CatholicismsSUBALTERN STUDIES 8801