Subaltern Ecologies: Cultures of Concealment and Carbon Socialism

Abstract

The subaltern theory has come to acquire a very rigorous theoretical contestation, particularly within postcolonial societies. We are at that moment of a critical threshold, which urgently requires us to reconfigure our conceptualisation of subaltern. As Spivak also suggests that the “actual practice” of the Subaltern studies requires a methodology that is “closer to deconstruction” (Spivak 1987: 198). This is exactly a kind of clarion call that underlines Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement (2016), more so when he asks us to broaden our domain of “recognition” (2) to include a presence of non-humans. Extending Ghosh’s idea to (re)cognize our relationship with ecology, this essay argues that non-humans, indigenous communities and developing nations are the new subaltern in the human-centric age.