New Subaltern Politics

New Subaltern Politics presents a critical dialogue between the analytical templates developed through the Subaltern Studies project and new research on emergent forms of hegemony and resistance in contemporary India. Presenting a set of essays that draw on research into fields as diverse as the lifeworlds of urban subalterns in globalizing Gujarat, the activism of sexual subalterns in Eastern India, discourses of merit in higher education institutions in Tamil Nadu, and struggles over land acquisition in rural West Bengalato name but a fewato suggest possible ways in which to move towards new understandings of the agency that subaltern groups develop to negotiate and resist the workings of power from above in contemporary India. The volume also explores ongoing struggles against dispossession, disenfranchisement and stigma against the backdrop of a political economy that is being reshaped by neoliberalization. The volume investigates the contemporary relevance of Gramscian concepts such as hegemony, subalternity, and the integral state. Furthermore, the analyses presented in the book explore how imagination, faith and affect animate subaltern mobilization in India today. The essays also interrogate how caste and class crisscross processes of mobilization in civil and political society.