Echoes in the Margin: Subaltern Voices and Narrative Agency in Modernist Fiction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24113/h6sgr620Keywords:
Modernism, Subaltern Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Narrative Agency, Silence, MarginalityAbstract
Modernist fiction is frequently characterized by its formal experimentation—stream-of-consciousness narratives, fragmented structures, and deep interiority. While these techniques are traditionally celebrated for capturing the alienation of the Western bourgeois subject in the wake of rapid industrialization and war, they also opened unprecedented spaces for marginalized perspectives. This paper examines how Modernist literature engages with subaltern voices—the marginalized, colonized, gendered, and socio-economically silenced "other." By exploring the tension between subaltern silence and narrative agency, this study argues that literary Modernism does not merely mirror imperial and patriarchal hegemonies; rather, through its formal dislocations, it disrupts dominant discourses and allows peripheral voices to resonate within the text.
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References
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Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks (Q. Hoare & G. N. Smith, Eds. & Trans.). New York, NY: International Publishers.
Hooks, B. (1990). Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. Boston, MA: South End Press.
Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271–313). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
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