Subalternity in an Age of Planetary Crisis

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that Gramsci's conceptualisation of subalternity offers crucial resources for theorising and intervening in the global climate crisis to popular democratic ends. While ‘the subaltern’ has proven highly generative in postcolonial writings—and in geographical thought more widely—Gramsci's own conceptualisation has been relatively neglected. Nevertheless, recent philological approaches have shed light on his highly distinctive interpretation, one that captures how subaltern social groups are integrally included in the relations of the modern state, limiting their autonomy and ability to enact political change. When the integral state is situated within its metabolic conditions of possibility, subalternity can be viewed as a form of domination specific to the age of fossil capital. Most importantly, Gramsci's methodological and strategic approach enables us to identify moments through which an age of planetary crisis might be transformed in popular democratic ways.