Professional Documents
Culture Documents
-Santosh kumar
M.Phil
Roll No.-457
2
ibid
3
Nivedita Menon, Seeing Like a Feminist
conscious or unconscious agent of patriarchy and archive through its administrative and legal function
played a vital role in this construct. According to comaroff "by appeal to a specifically legal sensibility
that the geography of colonies was mapped, transforming the landscapes of others-typically seen by
Europeans as wilderness before it was invested with their gaze-into territory and real estate; a process
that made spaces into places to be possessed, ruled, improved, pro- tected"4. That is, colonial gaze
became an important facet to how colonial subjects were gazed were constructed and reflected in the
archive. For comaroff, this approach was an essential feature of "criminalization of politics" 5. The rhetoric
of criminal subjects of these colonies the colonial government can enhance its iron hold over the
territory and at the same time create a discourse of transformation with violence as it's necessary
resistance. Also, he points out how through legal means economic rights, entitlements, and proprieties
were established, that the vigilance of labor relations became even more established and pertinent. To
be sure, the language of the law was the language that Europeans tended most avidly to try to teach6.
Knowledge became the instrument of power as the epistemology of this knowledge derived its roots
from the colonial state and ideologies. As charu gupta points out 5, how the archives of UP substituted
the explicit reference to sexuality of the prisoners in ambiguous moral terms which permeated
in the further discourse as we find references to terms like 'indecent behaviour', 'pleasure
seeking'7. As Foucault points out, through these silences and hushes sexual moors are talked
about without being named8. But the question arises, were the colonial subjects mere
recipients of the archive. And here we need to expand our definitions of archive, state, power
and agency. Archive should be expanded both in sense of source as well as a subject. That is,
not only we need to include new and varied sources be it written, oral, visual sources. Sources
can be written impromptu like pamphlets or news headlines or over a period of time. These
alternative archives help us to reinstate the agency and perspective of the subjects. Especially
important in this context is how the flourishing publishing industries in 19th and 20th century
India gave a boost to both expression and reception of alternative moralities which questioned
not only the colonial construct but also the nationalist imagining of the nation with a particular
role assigned to women particularly9. But this is not to say that these archives didn't have
problems of their own. What we find is that dominant discourses permeates it's way even in the
local literature and by no means the growth of alternative archive means a subversion of power,
but rather the very act of writing is also an act of power, and when we are talking about 19th
4
J. Comaroff; Colonialism, Culture, and the Law: A Foreword
5
ibid
6
J. Comaroff
7
Charu Gupta; Writing Sex and Sexuality $UFKLYHVRI&RORQLDO1RUWK,QGLD
8
Michel Foucault; History of Sexuality Volume 1
9
Orsini; Print and Pleasure
century for women and other marginal classes, reading was more of a privilege than a right and
thus the writings and perspectives that we generate from these texts as well as the ideologically
charged pamphlets reflects a particular perspective which by nature can be elitist or there is
always a possibility of alternative discourse. Here we must try to define certain notions that
often colour our understanding of archive. One is the understanding of subaltern, who is
counterpoised to the elite. But what actually constitutes a subaltern and what is the drawing
line between elite and subaltern is not always crystal clear. Dalits have emerged as a strong
contender who has tried to assert their perspective as against the elitist historiography of the
national movement as well as the general social discourse. Ranajit guha has often called for an
alternative understanding of archive more inclined towards the subaltern and trying to look at
the archives by "reading against the grain 10, by trying to decode and deconstruct the la gauge
and content of the archive. But scholars like ann stoler and gayatri social has criticized him fir
different reasons. Stoler has tried to study the archives not as a monolithic bloc with a particular
hegemonic perspective thrown in from above. Power is to be understood not as an overarching
structure with a dominant streak but rather try to locate its discursive domains through which it
asserts itself in different nodal points11. Stoler points out the need to look at the archive as a
subject of its own and not just a source encompassing subjectivities, inconsistencies,
perspectives and prejudices12. On the other hand gayatri social has pointed out the question of
agency. When the discourse is mediated by the elite or the colonial agents, when the narrative
is provided by them how we can ascertain that the faint voice of subaltern that we are trying to
chart out from our critical reading of archive reflects the authentic voice of the subaltern 13. Also
it is pertinent to ask is it enough to make the categories of sexuality, gender, class etc visible in
the archive or is it more necessary to make their voice, their agency also visible. And here we
come at the crossroads because we have a dearth of sources to do the latter and thus it limits
its horizon though the discourse remains important nevertheless.
10
Ranajit Guha; The Small Voices of History
11
Ann Stoler; Colonial Archive And the Art of Governance
12
ibid
13
Gayatri Spivak; Does the Subaltern Speak