Subalternity and Difference Investigations from the North and the South [Hardcover]

Focusing on concepts that have been central to investigation of the history and politics of marginalized and disenfranchised populations, this book asks how discourses of subalternity and difference simultaneously constitute and interrupt each other. The authors explore the historical production of conditions of marginality and minority, and challenge simplistic notions of difference as emanating from culture rather than politics. They return, thereby, to a question that feminist and other oppositional movements have raised, of how modern societies and states take account of, and manage, social, economic and cultural difference. The different contributions investigate this question in a variety of historical and political contexts, from India and Ecuador, to Britain and the USA.

The resulting study is of invaluable interest to students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines, including History, Anthropology, Gender and Queer and Colonial and Postcolonial Studies.

1. Introduction: The Difference of Subalternity Gyanendra PandeyPart 1: Gender, sexuality and the regime of modernity  2. At Risk: Gender, Sexuality and Epidemic Logic Dilip K. Das3. Homosexuals from Haystacks: Gay Liberation and the Specter of a Queer Majority in Rural California, circa 1970 Colin Johnson 4. Different Speakers, Different Loves: Female Urbanity in Rekhti Poetry Ruth Vanita Part 2: The politics of belonging  5. Roots of the Oriental Quarter in early 19^thCentury London Michael H. Fisher6. Indigenous Immigrants, Religion and the Struggle for Belonging in the United States Mary E. Odem 7. All Stroms Children: Gender, Race, and Memory in the 20th Century American South Joseph Crespino