The Chinese Subaltern

What is SUBALTERNITY

• Refers to low ranking and inferior groups
• Derived from a group of scholars in India, known as the Subaltern Studies Group
• The author critiques the SSG for "colonialist elitism" and "bourgeois-nationalist elitism" 

• The once egalitarian society of China quickly became unequal, as a result of market reforms

Gail Hershatter

• Studied prostitutes in Shanghai
• Used subalternity to explore relations of subjugation of oppressed people at intersection of gender, class, state
• Studies uncovered a lot about governance on part of the authors of the subaltern

Examined studies of sociologists:

• Referred to "subaltern speak" a speech of bitterness, that was methodological challenge
• It recognizes suffering glorifies resistance 

Ann Anagost

• Said that the speaking bitterness ritual derives from ability to bring back and make present the suffering that was experienced in the past
• The process of reliving the past is crucial
• By authorizes the process of giving voice to rural class
• The party reinforces its role as the true and legitimate voice of the subaltern 

Examined studies of sociologists:

Lisa Rofel

• Questions how subalternity is culturally produced, embraced, performed, challenged or denied 
• She investigated silk workers in Zhejiang and noted that generational cohorts acted differently towards the state 
• Rofel was convinced that the identity of the subaltern selves is not intrinsic in the relations of productions
• We must consider how gender, class, and state intersect to produce a historically variable range of subaltern and other identities. 

Examined studies of sociologists:

 

• Investigators must understand power as not something that manipulates culture, but something that gains control and influence through culture (hegemony)
• Pun Ngai: explains how young rural female workers are subordinated by triple oppression: State, patriarchy, global capitalism.  
• Inferior status is characterized by gender, the rural and urban disparity, production relations and family 
• Pun argues that domination of power works in ways more complicated than what class structure can explain 

 

• We have to see how gender, place, class and state intersect in post socialist China
• This study requires an deconstructive reading that is acknowledges the voices of the various political actors. 
• How the party state, urban cultural elites, labor advocates and rural migrant workers find destabilization 

 

• An issue of debate is whether the subaltern can speak discursively
• The objective here is to understand how the politics of recognition are played out in an environment that puts profit about social, cultural, ethical concerns.  

 

• In the last reading we saw how the voices of the urban middle class and the voices of the elite are presented as the opinons of the general public 
• Commercialization of the media increased cultural consumption.
• We have to consider how these changes affect the rural class. Do they have enough media literacy to read between the lines of mainstream media and negotiate the meanings embedded in narratives? 
• This is ultimately a question about the political consciousness of the group 

 

• The reading goes into detail about research and ethnographic methods  (p.47

 

• The author concludes by explaining how the engagement with subaltern studies is driven by a strong belief in social inequality and stratification in China, that is produced by systematic conditions of subordination.

 

• Questions of voice, agency, and struggle of the lower class are a matter of political urgency.

Questions 

2. What do think the author meant when he stated that Wen Tiejun,  a well known rural expert stated that there is a lack of "healthy social force" among the middle class - the political economic and cultural elites to push for American liberal style politics because they were afraid of illegal income. Yet it is known that there is high corruption within the media.

3. How does the commercialization reinforce the reconfigured power relation?

Wen Tiejun, a well-known rural expert, provided a lucid explication of this revealing truth when he stated that there is a lack of a “healthy social force” among the “middle class”—the political, economic, and cultural elites—to push for American-style liberal democratic politics, because a majority among them have problems with illegal income. That is, if liberal democracy entails a relatively open system of intra-elite bargaining, the common fear is that the implementation of such a system necessarily involves the exposure of systematic corruption among the elites. The strengthening of one-party rule thus becomes the only self-serving option for the alliance of political, economic, and cultural elites (p.83)