Subalterns weaponized European rumors back against their rulers

Evidence

As importantly, European knowledge was shaped by Gayo, Javanese, Malay, and Chinese assailants, who, in writing their own acts in such ambiguous ways, assured that those acts rarely could be easily and neatly read. Subalterns “speak” throughout the European accounts only in muted reference, clipped words, distorted speech. But such ventriloquisms have a power of their own. The uncertain meanings of their seemingly straightforward deeds of theft and arson repeatedly cut through official reason with forms of subversion that reflectively called upon rumor to stoke fears of impending violence. James Scott persuasively argues that subalterns use the “official transcript” of elites while maintaining hidden ones for themselves. But in Deli subalterns tapped into the uncertainties, fears, and fantasies of European hidden scripts by playing them back to planters and of- ficials for their own political purposes. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1041

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses/extends James Scott’s hidden-transcript model — subalterns use elites’ own hidden scripts, not just their own
• DEEPTHINKING: Dense: flips Scott’s framework by showing subaltern agency operates through the rulers’ own fears and fantasies, a genuinely non-obvious mechanism of colonial knowledge formation.