Every observable moment of subalternity is already a crisis that undermines pure subalternity

Evidence

Now, if I understand the work of the Subalternists right, every moment of insurgency that they have fastened onto has been a moment when subalternity has been brought to a point of crisis: the cultural constructions that are allowed to exist within subalternity, removed as it is from other lines of mobility, are changed into militancy. In other words, every moment that is noticed as a case of subalternity is undermined. We are never looking at the pure subaltern. There is, then, something of a not-speakingness in the very notion of subalternity. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 2293

Categorization

• XREF: Parallel to Spivak’s own later stress that ‘strategic essentialism’ was never about a stable subaltern identity—here the subaltern is defined by its own self-undermining at the point of crisis, mirroring her deconstruction of the term. — connects to: Subalternity by definition marks a space that resists being directly witnessed — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 2293; Subaltern consciousness is irreducible and nonoriginary, impossible to fully recover — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 1751; A prolonged crisis signals irremediable structural contradictions being patched over (+2 more)
• QUESTION: If every noticed instance of subalternity is already undermined (changed into militancy), then can any collective identity be held strategically without that identity itself dissolving at the moment it becomes legible? This bears directly on the reader’s causal-collapse inquiry.

Broader Connections

• Subalternity by definition marks a space that resists being directly witnessed #contradicts (0.85) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 2293
• Subaltern consciousness functions only as a theoretical fiction and never as recovered truth #corroborates (0.85) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1755
• Subaltern consciousness is irreducible and nonoriginary, impossible to fully recover #expands (0.80) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1751
• Working for the subaltern means their insertion into citizenship and loss of subaltern space #responds-to (0.80) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 2430
• A prolonged crisis signals irremediable structural contradictions being patched over #qualifies (0.75)