Diacronie. Studi di Storia Contemporanea (Web); Issue 44; Editor: Elisa Tizzoni, Guest Editor: Roberta Biasillo

Proposals by: 15.04.2020

In 1988 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak published her most influential essay in post-colonial studies and critical theory “Can the Subaltern Speak?”.

Spivak went behind the scene of academic scholarship on colonialism and beyond its issues at stake: she argued for historical accounts explaining why a single-narrative of reality was established as normative and also opened pathways to overcome such normalization (Spivak, 1988). “Can the Subaltern Speak?” posed questions about silenced, colonised, unheard, invisible and unrepresented groups and, since its publication, it has been cited, invoked, imitated, and critiqued (Morris, 2010).

Spivak’s questions seem to us crucial and topical in emerging research foci in environmental history and urge environmental historians to be critical, to speak to and through current ecological emergencies, to reconnect with the environmentalist roots of the discipline (Egan, 2002; Offen, 2004; Armiero, 2008; Barca, 2014). Indeed, recent trends of nature-culture and environmental history research highlight the past of human beings whose perspectives have been neglected and not stored in official archival files, the agency/role of ecological subjects in shaping pasts, potential ways to decolonise research practises and philosophies (Thorpe, Rutherford and Sandberg, 2017).

Moreover, any colonial and imperial enterprise – which is an essential component of subaltern studies – is inseparable from the history of global environmental change. Historians have explored, among other phenomena, flows of raw materials; new methods of farming; displacement of indigenous peoples; the foundation of colonial cities (Beinart and Hughes, 2007; Beckert, 2014).

With this special issue we aim at redirecting and broadly interpreting the term subaltern in relation to the environment and we envision this issue as a forum for ideas and discussion within the subfield of colonial and post-colonial environmental history. The editors expect contributions addressing these two overarching issues: Read more and source … (Web)