(Rabasa, 2000; Rafael, 1998), and the interactions of Chris-
tianity with indigenous traditions in India (Dube, 1998;
Clarke, 1998).
In addition, Subaltern Studies provides a remarkably
suitable framework to study the resistant practices of particu-
lar religious groups in the category of contemporary subal-
tern, such as South Asian Muslims in America (Moham-
mad–Arif, 2002), Dalit traditions in India, Native American
(Arnold, 2001; Bays and Wacker, 2003) or Santeria tradi-
tions in North America (Hackett, 1999; Harding, 2000;
Campbell, 1987;), or minorities in China (Dirlik, 1996;
Gladney, 2003). This intellectual move has also gained insti-
tutional support, for instance with the American Academy
of Religion’s 2004 initiative, “Contesting Religion and Reli-
gions Contested: The Study of Religion in a Global Con-
text.” In addition to the already established Indigenous Reli-
gious Traditions group, the project’s major concerns include
the funding of studies from below, the representation and in-
clusion of Third World scholars, and the examination of the
effect of the study of religion on the communities it has en-
gaged, particularly communities from traditionally disem-
powered populations. Another move toward institutional
support was Claremont-McKenna’s initiative, “Theorizing
Scriptures,” inaugurated by Vincent Wimbush in 2004. In
this conference, scriptural interpretation “from below” is ac-
knowledged and engaged as a serious intellectual endeavor.
Here, the view of scriptural hermeneutics held by Native-
American, African American, Australian, Latino, Dalit, Chi-
nese, Muslim, and many other less mainstream religions is
given voice and careful analysis. This initiative also highlights
women’s voices of scriptural interpretation, thus joining cri-
tiques of Subaltern Studies that call for a more explicit focus
on gender than has been the case in the past three decades
(Spivak, 1991, 2002).
Whatever the nascent institutional support for the study
of these forms of agency, for many scholars religion plays a
central role in certain kinds of resistance—one that cannot
be ignored. Indeed, one scholar, Sathianathan Clarke, has
gone so far as to coin the term Subaltern theology to describe
the particular political and religious practices of Dalit Chris-
tians against both Hindu and state hegemony. Oddly
enough, this explicitly religious usage is somewhat consonant
with Gayatri Spivak’s rather remarkable statement that “sub-
altern theology” (religious thought as a form of political resis-
tance) cannot be ignored, for if it is, then Subaltern Studies
becomes a matter of law enforcement rather than “agency in
the active voice” (Spivak, 1999). This historical moment rep-
resents a rather tense and at the same time fruitful crossroads
between the two fields, where both Marxist and religious
studies scholars struggle to understand religion when it
emerges as a form of resistant and political agency in its own
right.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
What follows is a basic overview of major works and authors in
the field, whose bibliography is now voluminous. For a basic
introduction to the major authors in Subaltern Studies,see
Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London, 1998);
David Ludden’s Reading Subaltern Studies (Delhi, India,
2001); and Ranajit Guha, ed. A Subaltern Studies Reader
(1986–1995) (Minneapolis, Minn., 1997). Key Concepts in
Post Colonial Studies, by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and
Helen Tiffin (London, 1998), is also helpful for basic termi-
nology, as is Bart Moore–Gilbert’s Postcolonial Theory: Con-
texts, Practices, and Politics (London, 1997). Vinayak Chatur-
vedi’s Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial
(London, 2000) gives an excellent historical overview of the
field, as do the introductions to the nine volumes of the Sub-
altern Studies Series.
For a review of the turn to the postmodern, begin with Edward
Said’s Orientalism (New York, 1978), as well as the signifi-
cant reviews by James Clifford (History and Theory 19:2
[1980]: 204–223), Victor Browbeat (American Scholar [Au-
tumn, 1979]: 532–541), and J. H. Plumb (New York Times
Book Review [February 18, 1979]: 3.28). Said’s own “Orien-
talism Reconsidered” in Race and Class 7:2 [1985]: 1–15)
gives some of his own thoughts about the pitfalls of the post-
Orientalist project. Major monographs in the 1990s include
Nicholas Dirks, ed., Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor,
Mich., 1992); Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New
York, 1994); Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Frag-
ments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, 2004);
Gyan Prakash, After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Post-
colonial Displacements (Princeton, 1995); Arif Dirlik, The
Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global
Capitalism (Boulder, Colo., 1997); Gayatri Spivak, A Cri-
tique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing
Present (Cambridge, Mass., 1999); and Dipesh Chakrabarty,
Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical
Difference (Princeton, N.J., 2000). Numerous essays and
more specialized monographs have appeared from these au-
thors in the early 2000s as well. Major critiques of the Subal-
ternist/postcolonial project include that of Aijaz Ahmad, In
Theory: Classes, Nations, and Literatures (London, 1992), and
Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (Delhi, India, 1997), es-
pecially “The Decline of the Subaltern in Subaltern Studies.”
Amin, Shahid. “Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern
UP, 1921–22.” In Subaltern Studies III, edited by Ranajit
Guha, pp. 1–61. Delhi, 1984.
Arnold, David. “Famine in Peasant Consciousness and Peasant
Action: Madras 1876–78.” In Subaltern Studies III, edited by
Ranajit Guha, pp. 62–115. Delhi, 1984.
Arnold, Philip. Eating Landscape: Aztec and European Occupation
of Tlalocan. Boulder, Colo., 2001.
Bayly, C. A. “Rallying Around the Subaltern.” In Mapping Subal-
tern Studies and the Post Colonial, edited by Vinayak Chatur-
vedi, pp. 116–126. London, 2000.
Bays, Daniel H., and Grant Wacker, eds. The Foreign Missionary
Enterprise at Home: Explorations in American Cultural Histo-
ry. Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2003.
Campbell, Horace. Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to
Walter Rodney. Trenton, N.J., 1987.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History:
Who Speaks for ‘Indian’ Pasts?” Representations 37 (1992):
1–26.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Colonizing Europe. Princeton, N.J., 2000.8802 SUBALTERN STUDIES