The Humanities in Context: Victimization and Voice across the Disciplines

Catalog description

This seminar investigates the silent language of victims. How can marginalized groups make their voices heard? The notion of subalternity has become crucial for transdisciplinary debates in the humanities. It describes not only a predicament of social, political, and economical oppression, but also one that imposes silence. How to break this silence? The risk is that of producing a representation that enters the dominant discourse while perpetuating the subaltern’s exclusion. Following the notion of subalternity from Antonio Gramsci to postcolonial studies and beyond, this seminar explores the conundrum of subaltern’s representation, its theoretical implications, and several strategies to address it.