>The Subaltern School's Founder Ranajit Guha has long argued that historians
>have played little attention to the religious consciousness of rebellious
>peasants ( see Selected Subaltern Studies, ed. Guha and Gayatri Spivak);
>there has been some criticism that the rebellions that subalternists may
>ascribe to spontaneous religious consciousness were actually inspired, if
>not organized, by self conscious leftist political parties. Irfan Habib and
>Bipan Chandra are likely to have voiced such criticism.
There's a big row going on over here in the pages of the London Review of Books (a bit like the NYRB) over a rude review of Spivak's latest book (in fact a critique of post-colonial writers) by Terry Eagleton. Eagleton expresses a basic sympathy with Spivak's point, but lambasts here for obscurantism, with some very funny quotes as support. Judith Butler has written in denouncing Eagleton as a philistine.
-- Jim heartfield