What is the place of the subaltern in collective mobilizations in the Americas? “The subaltern” is to be understood here both as the individuals and groups that occupy subordinate social positions or that self-identify as such, as well as modes of action and intervention in public spaces that tend to be discredited or disqualified, especially cultural, non-directly political, or infrapolitical forms of mobilization. The subaltern, however, should not be conflated with marginality of the condition of outcast, both of which involve exclusion—be it intentional or not. This panel raises multiple questions: Who is a subaltern? Who claims to be? How is this condition defined or challenged, and by whom? Is subalternity just a social condition, or is it also an assignation, an experience, a mode of participation in the social world? Is it immutable or can it be challenged, reversed, transcended? How does it get politically strategized?
Participants are invited to consider the epistemological issues, theoretical choices and potential methodological biases these questions imply. Is the subaltern mainly a matter of hierarchical inferiority? Does it necessarily involve the absence of privilege or does it tie in more subtly, even paradoxically, with socioeconomic positioning? To what extent does racial, ethnic, cultural, and sexual stigmatization intersect with socioeconomic subordination, and what chronological, national, or regional variations do these intersection involve?
We should also bear in mind that perceptions and assessments of subalternity may vary depending on the angle. Far from naturalizing or reifying the subaltern, this panel aims to explore the heuristic nature of this notion. For example, indigenous peoples today are among the most economically and culturally vulnerable and dominated, but they are also among the most mobilized, exposed, and credited groups when it comes to the exploitation of natural resources, economic, social, and cultural rights, and women’s rights. On a different note, are urban, affluent LBTQ people subaltern, have they ever been, and if so why and how? And to what degree does the subaltern bear on these racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities’ collective action repertoire?
Participants are also encouraged to consider how economic, social, political, and identity-based factors interact in the way subalternity is understood. Does the subaltern help us understand the relegitimization of economically underprivileged white people in populist movements, be they marginal or victorious as in Brazil and the United States? On the contrary, does the fact that indigenous peoples today occupy center stage in politics in Bolivia or Ecuador, for example, imply that subalternity has permanently been surpassed, or have structural mechanisms only been challenged temporarily?
This panel is an invitation to approach subalternity in definitional and conceptual terms, address its modalities and practices, and/or consider how it is politicized or instrumentalized. Paper submissions may concern various periods from modernity (16th—18th centuries) to the present. Submissions based on empirical data (archives or fieldwork) and dealing with specific case-studies are especially welcome. Submissions may also discuss the theoretical and methodological issues raised by works in progress or as yet exploratory research.
Session 1 :
Thursday, September 23rd, 9am-11am
Centre de Colloques, room 10
Session 2 :
Friday, September 24th, 9am-11am
Centre de Colloques, Large Auditorium
Organizers :
- Baptiste Lavat (IMAGER – Université Paris-Est Créteil)
- Guillaume Marche (IMAGER – Université Paris-Est Créteil)
Interventions - Session 1 :
Claudia Seldin, Caio César de Azevedo Barros, Pedro Vitor da Costa Ribeiro & Victória Helena Michelini Junqueira (CURL) – Subaltern and (In)Subordinate : Contested Cultural Territories in the Peripheries of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Karol Fayolle Cortes (Triangle – Sciences Po Lyon) – Posicionamiento y formas de movilización de « actores estratégicos » en los círculos de la participación. Consideraciones a partir del conflicto por el agua del Páramo de Santurbán en Colombia
Sandrine Baudry (SEARCH – Université de Strasbourg) & Céline Planchou (Pléiade – Université Sorbonne Paris Nord) – Repenser la subalternité autochtone aux États-Unis au prisme des résurgences territoriales
David Alvarez (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne) – Politiques de l’ambiguïté : la demande de réparation territoriale du peuple Mapuche au Chili face à la dénégation républicaine
Morgane Le Guyader (LC2S – Université des Antilles) – Vivre sa « minorité ». Dire ou ne pas dire sa « raïzalité », des subalternités indicibles
Interventions - Session 2 :
Laura Cahier (CERIC – Aix Marseille Université) – De l’invisibilité à l’émancipation sur la scène internationale : repenser les formes de subalternités à la lumière des mobilisations des femmes autochtones
Maria Elvira Álvarez Giménez (CRALMI – Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne) – Discours, politiques et actions : les femmes syndicalistes en Bolivie après la guerre du Chaco
Jérémie Denicourt (CESPRA – EHESS) – Jeunesses indigènes : itinéraires d’un acteur émergent dans la région mixe. (Oaxaca, Mexique)
Louis Bachaud (CECILLE – Université de Lille) – Le mouvement « Incel » : construction discursive et idéologique d’une identité subalterne
