The flesh can't be silenced: understanding historical erasure of subaltern bodies

credits: researchgate(reche wommen in everyday activities)

The historical silencing of the subalterns has structurally been produced through colonial extraction and postcolonial repression. Drawing on Spivak, Althusser and Butler; the paper argues how the subaltern expression persists but is systematically forced into becoming illegible within dominant structures of power. This study has been further analysed through the Bodies of Munoo (from Coolie by Mulk Raj Anand) and Dopdi Mejhen (from “Draupadi” by Mahashweta Devi). 

Introduction

The question whether the subaltern can speak is claimed to be “philosophical”. However, the issue is fundamentally rooted in regimes of state disciplining, extraction and regulation. Across history, the state has produced a populace that is visible as labour but inaudible as political subjects. 

The moulds of repression have changed through the transition between colonial empire to an independent nation. But, what has not changed is how apparatuses reduce bodies into disposable resources. The subaltern still remains cornered and it is the system that determines the limit to which they can use their voice. 

This continuity becomes more legible when we analyse characters like Munoo (in Coolie, by Mulk Raj Anand) and Dopdi Mejhen (in “Draupadi” , by Mahashweta Devi). These are not isolated literary characters, rather, are historically situated embodiments of power: colonial capitalism and postcolonial counterinsurgency.

The framework of Colonial Rule's Extraction

What British colonialism primarily functioned on was economic enterprise, organized around extraction of resources and restructuring of labour. This framework didn't really need overt repression for silencing to work, rather, it was simply embedded in material conditions that curtailed the very possibility of political subjectivity. The instruments of control that were used revolved around - hunger, displacement and disease. 

While interpreting Munoo's trajectory of movement across forms of labour - domestic service, factory work and informal employment; we see a structural condition being produced. This further leads to his Body remaining absorbed in survival. This makes him a subject of the “economy” but erases his visibility in the “polity”. 

The concept of interpellation by Louis Althusser clarifies this dynamic by foregrounding the argument: ideology “hails” individuals into fixed roles, shaping how they understand themselves and their place in society. Munoo is constituted solely as labour, unable to exceed the identity imposed upon him. Colonial governance, therefore, relied not simply on repression but on the systematic production of disposability—rendering certain populations indispensable to economic functioning yet expendable as lives. His silencing was not because of the lack of voice, but because of a produced condition wherein there is a systemic denial of necessary conditions of political speech.

Gendered Violence and Performativity

If Munoo marks a contained structural subalternity, Dopdi Mejhen emerges from a different historical conjecture- the Naxal woman who has been failed by postcolonial redistribution. She is the insurgent who is always on the outside of the ideological framework of the State. This makes her an available and accessible target. 

Her naked parading in front of the officials shows her refusal to be folded back into the logic of domination. When analysed through the idea of performativity, it becomes an active insurgency in itself. She defies the normative script of inscribing shame on a defeated subject. However, even after being stripped she doesn't seek for recognition; she confronts it with a form of resistance that cannot be assimilated.

Silencing Across Regimes: From Ideology to Repression

The question of the fundamental transformation in the position of the subaltern falls back to the fact that there has only been changes from ideological control to overt repression. This shift in emphasis is reflected through the movement from colonial to postcolonial governance. 

This is precisely what Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak identifies when she argues that the subaltern's speech : the subaltern’s speech is not simply suppressed. It simply gets re-coded within dominant frameworks. Resistance is translated into criminality; political struggle is reduced to disorder. 

What's haunting is these dynamics remain deeply relevant in contemporary India. Labour still tends to remain precarious and the same labouring bodies still lack representation. Another important factor becomes the “language” national security that often legitimate extraordinary measures blurring the lines between governance and coercion.

Conclusion: Beyond the Question of Voice

The question is not whether the subaltern can speak. The question is if the political and historical structures allow the speech to be recognized and legitimized. 

The bodies of Munoo and Dopdi become sites of study as they reveal the larger truth: silencing is not a failure of communication but a strategy of governance. 

The confrontation of it hence requires a movement beyond recovery of voices. It demands a reading of the Body as a testament to forced silencing and what can happen when the inscribed silence gets broken.

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By Shamiparna Chatterjee

Shamiparna Chatterjee is a 4th year undergraduate student pursuing B.A. (Hons.) English + Research at Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi. She is currently working on the representation of subalternity in literary discourses.

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References

1. Althusser, Louis. On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Verso, 2014.

2. Anand, Mulk Raj. Coolie. Penguin Books, 2001.

3. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990.

4. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton University Press, 2000.

5. Devi, Mahasweta. “Draupadi.” Breast Stories, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Seagull Books, 1997, pp. 1–18.

6. Guha, Ranajit. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. Duke University Press, 1999.

7. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, University of Illinois Press, 1988, pp. 271–313

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