Inventing Subjects: Studies in Hegemony, Patriarchy and Colonialism

by Himani Bannerji

A collection of essays written from a Marxist-Feminist perspective, Inventing Subjects constitutes a significant contribution in the field of historical sociology. The essays speak of the different ways in which social subjects and their agencies have been constructed and represented in the context of the development of colonial hegemony and socio-cultural formations in India.

222 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Himani Bannerji is a Bengali–Canadian writer, sociologist, and philosopher from Kolkata, West Bengal, India. She teaches in the Department of Sociology, the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought, and the Graduate Programme in Women's Studies at York University, Canada. She is also known for her activist work and poetry. She received her B.A. and M.A. in English from Visva-Bharati University and Jadavpur University respectively, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. Bannerji works in the areas of Marxist, feminist and anti-racist theory. She is especially focused on reading colonial discourse through Karl Marx's concept of ideology, and putting together a reflexive analysis of gender, race and class. Bannerji also does much lecturing about the Gaze and othering and silencing of women who are marginalized.

Reviews

[KT · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and thought provoking read on social subjects and their agencies, which the book argues have been constructed and represented in the context of the development of colonial hegemony and socio-cultural formations in India

Particular highlights included:
The continuation of historians and their historiographical method, which produces ideology, separating forms of knowledge from ways of being both in history and in present day social organisation
The project of inventing cultural categories to accomplish the task of ruling continues

The colonial discourse of racial identity and inferiority that characterised the "Hindu" as a construct was intrinsically patriarchal, with regard to both the men and women of Bengal
Only men were accorded subjectivity and agency and the British could only conduct business with the males of other societies, rendering 'native females' as invisible through a double move of possession and objectification