Title: NECROIDEALISM, OR THE SUBALTERN'S SACRIFICIAL DEATH
Abstract:Abstract Dipesh Chakrabarty admits that the subaltern who wholly resists incorporation by dominant state forms is 'an ideal figure,' a utopian concept designating the limits of hegemonic thought. I wi...Abstract Dipesh Chakrabarty admits that the subaltern who wholly resists incorporation by dominant state forms is 'an ideal figure,' a utopian concept designating the limits of hegemonic thought. I wish to argue that such a utopian ideal may find its most convincing but problematic representation in the figure of the dead subaltern. In death, the subaltern is perfected as a concept so pure no living referent can contradict or complicate it. As in utopian thinking, it is the subaltern's non-existence that ensures the possibility of its conceptualization as a critical alternative to existing hegemonies. Through a reading of Ranajit Guha's essay 'Chandra's Death', Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, and Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide, I will show how the immortalization of the subaltern involves a troubling logic of sacrifice and necroidealization that replaces the messiness and ambiguity of struggle with the reassurance of an aestheticized political ideal. Keywords: aestheticsalteritynecroidealismsacrificesubalternutopianism Notes 1For further discussion of Povinelli, Spivak and primitivism, see Li (Citation2006). 2Consider, for instance, Murlidharan, the naked, homeless, armless, 'level-crossing lunatic' (Roy 1997: 60) whose abjection can surely neither be apotheosized nor aestheticized. The novel's attention on him is brief, in contrast to its lingering gaze on Velutha's muscular physique.Read More
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-11-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 35
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