BINARISM

‘Binary’ means a combination of two things. The concern with binarism was first
established by Ferdinand de Saussure, who held that signs have meaning by their
opposition to other signs. While the meaning of signs occurs not by direct reference but
by their difference from other signs, the binary opposition is the most extreme form of
difference possible – sun/moon; man/woman; birth/ death; black/white. Such
oppositions, each of which represents a binary system, are very common in the cultural
construction of reality.
Contemporary post-structuralist and feminist theories have demonstrated the extent to
which such binaries entail a violent hierarchy, in which one term of the opposition is
always dominant (man over woman, birth over death, white over black), and that, in fact,
the binary opposition itself exists to confirm that dominance.
The binary logic of imperialism is a development of that tendency of Western thought in
general to see the world in terms of binary oppositions that establish a relation of
dominance. A simple distinction between centre/margin, colonizer/colonized, metropolis/
empire, civilized/primitive represents very efficiently the violent hierarchy on which
imperialism is based and which it actively perpetuates. Binary oppositions are
structurally related to one another, and in colonial discourse there may be a variation of
the one underlying binary – colonizer/colonized – that becomes rearticulated in any
particular text in a number of ways, for example:
colonizer : colonized
white : black
civilized : primitive
advanced : retrograde
good : evil
beautiful : ugly
teacher : pupil
doctor : patient
Clearly, the binary is very important in constructing ideological meanings in general, and
extremely useful in imperial ideology.

SUBALTERN
Subaltern, meaning ‘of inferior rank’, is a term adopted by Antonio Gramsci to refer to
those groups in society who are subject to the hegemony of the ruling classes.
Subaltern classes may include peasants, workers and other groups denied access to
‘hegemonic’ power.
Gramsci claimed that the history of the subaltern classes is necessarily fragmented and
episodic, since they are always subject to the activity of ruling groups, even when they
rebel. Clearly they have less access to the means by which they may control their own
representation. Only ‘permanent’ victory (i.e. a revolutionary class adjustment) can
break that pattern of subordination, and even that does not occur immediately.

The notion of the subaltern became an issue in postcolonial theory when Gayatri Spivak
critiqued the assumptions of the Subaltern Studies group in the essay ‘Can the
Subaltern Speak?’ This question, she claims, is one that the group must ask. Her first
criticism is directed at the Gramscian claim for the autonomy of the subaltern group,
which, she says, no amount of qualification by Guha can save from its fundamentally
essentialist premise. Second, no methodology for determining who or what might
constitute this group can avoid this essentialism. The ‘people’ or the ‘subaltern’ is a
group defined by its difference from the élite.

Spivak goes on to elaborate the problems of the category of the subaltern by looking at
the situation of gendered subjects and of Indian women in particular, for the ideological
construction of gender keeps the male dominant’. if ‘in the context of colonial
production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is
even more deeply in shadow’. Spivak examines the position of Indian women through
an analysis of a particular case, and concludes with the declaration that ‘the subaltern
cannot speak’. This has sometimes been interpreted to mean that there is no way in
which oppressed or politically marginalized groups can voice their resistance.