Subaltern consciousness is irreducible and nonoriginary, impossible to fully recover

Evidence

Because of this bestowal of a historical specificity to consciousness in the narrow sense, even as it implicitly operates as a metaphysical methodological presupposition in the general sense, there is always a counterpointing suggestion in the work of the group that subaltern consciousness is subject to the cathexis of the elite, that it is never fully recoverable, that it is always askew from its received signifiers, indeed that it is effaced even as it is disclosed, that it is irreducibly discursive. It is, for example, chiefly a matter of “negative consciousness” in the more theoretical of these essays. Although “negative consciousness” is conceived of here as a historical stage peculiar to the subaltern, there is no logical reason why, given that the argument is inevitably historicized, this “negative,” rather than the grounding positive view of the consciousness, should not be generalized as the group’s methodological presupposition. One view of “negative consciousness,” for instance, sees it as the consciousness not of the being of the subaltern, but of that of the oppressors (EAP, chap. 2; 3, 183). Here, in vague Hegelian limnings, it is the anti-humanist and anti-positivist position that it is always the desire for/of (the power of the Other) that produces an image of the self. If this is generalized, as in my reading of the “cognitive failure” argument, it is the subaltern who provides the model for a general theory of consciousness. And yet, since the “subaltern” cannot appear without the thought of the “elite,” the generalization is by definition incomplete—in philosophical language “nonoriginary,” or, in an earlier version of “unursprunglich” nonprimordial. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1751

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘nonoriginary’ consciousness-resists-recovery move bears directly on whether strategic essentialism can posit subaltern identity without collapse; connects to Foucault’s race-struggle counter-history motif. — connects to: Every observable moment of subalternity is already a crisis that undermines pure subalternity — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 2293; Subaltern consciousness functions only as a theoretical fiction and never as recovered truth — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 1755; Subaltern consciousness claims fail if female subaltern consciousness is ignored. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 1833 (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Spivak’s own retroactive framing of the negative/nonoriginary consciousness she reads in the Subaltern Studies group foreshadows her later qualification of strategic essentialism.

Broader Connections

• Subaltern consciousness functions only as a theoretical fiction and never as recovered truth #expands (0.95) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1755
• Subaltern consciousness claims fail if female subaltern consciousness is ignored. #qualifies (0.80) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1833