Peasants And Rural Areas As "Subaltern"

The problem of subaltern has been one of the hottest topics among recent intellectual debates. Behind the various discourses about subaltern, there lies the structural change of social topography ever since the foundation of PRC. We also notice that the largest group of so-called subaltern exists in the vast countryside, with its biggest population peasants.If we regard the subaltern as a symptom, then what is actually behind this symptom is dramatic political and social changes that happened in China. On the political level, as the power of state retreat from the country land after 30-year of socialism experiment, the peasants there became sub-citizen. On the economic level, as the Reform and market solve the involution problem of agriculture, they also bring hundreds of peasants to the off-sea cities. With the peasants being caught in the whirlpool of commercial economy, they are gradually marginalized as the subaltern of the cities. These two factors formulate the basic social backdrop of subaltern's story.With the Opening-up, the peasants and the countryside are also caught in process of modernization and globalization. The invasion of modernity of the countryside creates a kind of sub-modernity or kirsch modernity, a phenomenon which also embodies with the ideology of colonialism. The sub-modernity is realized through the mass media such as TV, which provide to the peasants their imagination of modern and city. Thus, the consumption of mass media becomes a form of production of subjectivity.The invasion of modernity to the countryside also results in a cultural colonialism. The commodity fetish makes the peasant identify with the urban culture. The phantom of the urban culture allures the peasant to be away from the countryside, which breaks the totality of the traditional country life. Now, the country life becomes fragmented and alienated. This fact makes the peasant a kind of bare life, an object without subjectivity. The poverty of the peasants are not only political one and economic one, but also cultural one, which is the fundamental factor and core of the problem.The meaning of this paper is to find the reason for why and how the peasants become subaltern. I will also depict the real scene of the situation of the peasants nowadays. I will ask that whether this alienated group will finally become the residue of developism. Furthermore, we should also pay attention to the memory and experience of the fore-subaltern age when discussing the current issue.