A provocative intellectual assault on the Subalternists' foundational work
Vivek Chibber is a professor of sociology at New York University and editor of the Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy.He is the author of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital and Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India, which won the Barrington Moore, Jr. Prize. He has contributed to, among others, the Socialist Register, American Journal of Sociology, Boston Review and New Left Review.
With its focus on cultural identities and mixtures, postcolonial
theory ignored the larger context of capitalist relations and thus
limited its scope to Western academia where it excelled in the game
of growing and profiting from the liberal guilt feeling. Chibber's
book simply sets the record straight, bringing postcolonialism down
from cultural heights to where it belongs, into the very heart of
global capitalist processes. The book we were all waiting for, a
burst of fresh air dispelling the stale aroma of pseudo-radical
academic establishment.
*Slavoj Zizek*
In this scrupulous and perceptive analysis, Vivek Chibber
successfully shows that the 'universalizing categories of
Enlightenment thought' emerge unscathed from the criticisms of
postcolonial theorists. He shows further that-perhaps
ironically-Subaltern Studies greatly underestimates the role of
subaltern agency in bringing about the transformations that they
attribute to the European bourgeoisie. Chibber's analysis also
provides a very valuable account of the actual historical sociology
of modern European development, of Indian peasant mobilization and
activism, and much else. It is a very significant contribution.
*Noam Chomsky*
In this outstanding work-a model of clarity in its architecture and
argumentation-key theorists of the 'Subaltern' and of
postcoloniality have met their most formidable interlocutor and
critic yet. Chibber's critique of postcolonial theory and the
historical sociological studies associated with it is, at the same
time, a vigorous and welcome defense of the enduring value of
certain Enlightenment universals as an analytical framework to both
understand and radically change the world we live in.
*Achin Vanaik*
Vivek Chibber has written a stunning critique of postcolonial
theory as represented by the Subaltern Studies school. While
eschewing all polemics, he shows that their project is undermined
by their paradoxical acceptance of an essentially liberal-Whig
interpretation of the bourgeois revolutions and capitalist
development in the West, which provides the foundation for their
fundamental assertion of the difference of the East. Through a
series of painstaking empirical and conceptual studies Chibber
proceeds to overturn the central pillars of the Subalternists'
framework, while sustaining the credibility of Enlightenment
theories. It is a bravura performance that cannot help but shake up
our intellectual and political landscape.
*Robert Brenner*
Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital is a must-read book
for students of comparative politics and social theory. Vivek
Chibber presents a forceful challenge to the Subaltern Studies
school and to postcolonial theory more broadly. Arguing with great
clarity, Chibber raises fundamental objections to their ideas about
capitalism, power, and agency, and presents an alternative account
of these ideas. Most fundamentally, he rejects the fundamental
division between 'East and West' associated with postcolonial
theory and defends the 'universalizing categories of Enlightenment
thought.' This is a major contribution that is bound to reshape
debate on these important issues.
*Joshua Cohen*
In this book, Vivek Chibber has carried out a thoroughgoing
dissection of Subaltern Studies. Like a highly skilled anatomist,
he lays bare the skeleton, the nervous system, the arteries and
veins of this school ... In the process the reader is also exposed
to the nitty-gritty of a materialist historiography.
*Amiya Kumar Bagchi*
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