Speaking About or Fort he Subaltern

Abstract

This chapter considers the capacity of social scientists of speaking about or for subaltern people. It reflects on their agency and on the tension between deconstructing the essencialization of culture and ethnicity and strengthening advocacy. I refer to my experiences of doing applied anthropology as a way of speaking about or for peasants and immigrants. I depict several cases in which the tension between scientific knowledge production and socio-political engagement upset me.I conclude that cultural critics should lead us beyond essentialism to recognize heterogeneity and power relations within the subaltern groups. I encourage social scientists to produce critical knowledge that may help to ameliorate the lives of the subaltern and be useful to represent them in the politic arenas. I also suggest being astute enough so as not to reveal their resistance tactics and the ways in which they resort to strategic essentialism.