As a child, the first identity I became fully aware of was orphanhood. Later, I discovered nationality. Not that I knew what nationality was, I just knew I was not an Iranian, and how badly I wanted to be one. They seemed more secure, more beautiful, more visible, their families possessed a comfort denied to mine. In Iran, we were “Afghani”, and they were Iranian; the distinction mattered in ways that went far beyond the abstract assertion of shared humanity. Later, when we moved to Afghanistan, I learned that even there, belonging had layers. “Afghan” identity itself was stratified and violent. Being Hazara carried a heavy social and political weight, one that shaped where you stood, how you were treated, your livlihood and how much of yourself was allowed to exist openly. And yet, even within this category, I did not fully belong. I was not accepted as a Hazara among Hazaras either. When it came to nationality and heritage, I was at the border, often an outsider.

As awareness of my gender emerged, the conditions under which I could inhabit the world changed. Certain freedoms, movement, expression, ambition were no longer available or imaginable for me. More layers accumulated: religion, language, class, gender, sexuality, body image, self-image, health and vulnerability, migration, legal status, history, and memory. They shaped how I moved through the world, how the world measured me, and how I measured myself. My relationship to these identities was often reactive, reactionary, marked by the desire to shed them entirely, to arrive at a “neutral” self unburdened by my history, social expectation and the rules and boundaries that came with it.

Little did I know that identity does not work that way. You cannot peel through the layers and arrive at a clean slate. Your layers are constitutive. Identity is formed through them. Identity, like history, is plastic, shaped and reshaped and entirely transformed through social and political encounters, through naming and renaming, recognition and exclusion. The unmarked self, imagined as universal or neutral, exists only in relation to power. Across societies, this obsession manifests in race, class, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality, virginity, or cultural “purity”.

Thus, identity cannot be understood as a preexisting core. It exists in tension, in the constant push and pull between how we are seen and how we see ourselves. Understanding it in this way is necessary if we are to grasp the political stakes of recognition, exclusion, and the claims of humanity itself.

It is from this understanding of identity (as historically produced, continually contested and transformed), and inseparable from relations of power) that, this year, at Subaltern Speaks, we turn our attention to identity as a central theme. The task is to sit with the difficulty of the questions identity raises: to dwell in uncertainty, and to allow the texts we encounter to unsettle inherited assumptions rather than confirm them.

Through sustained engagement with these questions, the hope is to build conversation and shared reflection that situate us, historically, politically, and personally, within the present moment.

To explore these concerns, the series turns to works of political theory and political philosophy emerging from postcolonial, feminist, Black, and Global South traditions. Many of these texts were written in moments of crisis, transition, or struggle, when questions of belonging, recognition, and power were definitive. Reading and rereading them now, amid war, displacement, rising authoritarianism, and renewed debates over identity, feels both necessary and urgent, particularly as identity is increasingly mobilized to justify violence and delimit the boundaries of belonging.

Through these series, I want to ask:

How is identity formed?

What parts of the self are learned in response to violence, exclusion, or surveillance?

What does it mean to live at the border between languages, genders, cultures, or political categories?

Can recognition coexist with deep structural inequality?

Can identity-based movements resist co-optation by states, NGOs, and markets?

Is it possible to build political coalitions without fixing identities into rigid categories?

What would politics and social relations look like if identity were neither erased nor absolutized?

How do we hold identity as historically produced without treating it as destiny?

And many more questions as we read along.

How, then, will this series unfold?

Each month, I will take up a book or, at times, a cluster of texts and reflect on the arguments at hand. The process will be thinking through the text, situating my own understanding and positionality in relation to it, and tracing its relevance to the social and political conditions of the present moment.

The reflections will aim to invite discussion, to create space for further reflection, disagreement, and collective thinking. Over time, certain questions may recur; certain texts may need to be reread. I invite rethinking and maybe unlearning and learning as we move through the texts.

I hope that, through these writings, a reading circle or collective might eventually take shape. For now, the invitation is open. You are welcome to join in whatever way and capacity feels possible to you. You can read along, agree with or against the texts, respond to the questions raised, or bring your own histories and contexts into the conversation. These books are not offered as guides for how we ought to understand or inhabit identity. We already live identity, daily, personally, unevenly, and most of the time under conditions not of our choosing. What we are attempting here is the cultivation of a space for critical reading, thinking, and reflecting together.

I look forward to reading with you.

Subaltern Speaks

The Reading List:

Identity & Subject Formation

1. Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon

2. Women and gender in Islam, Leila Ahmed

3. Orientalism, Edward Said

4. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism, Ashis Nandy

5. Borderlands / La Frontera ,Gloria Anzaldúa

6. Bodies that Matter, Judith Butler

Recognition & Its Discontents

7. The Politics of Recognition, Charles Taylor

8. Justice Interrupts, Nancy Fraser

9. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, Kwame Anthony Appiah

10. Identity, Francis Fukuyama

Identity Politics & Political Critique

11. Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra

12. Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, Amartya Sen

13. Feminism Without Borders, Chandra Talpade Mohanty

14. Necropolitics, Achille Mbembe

15. The Force of Nonviolence, Judith Butler

Identity, Governance & Violence

16. The Politics of the Governed, Partha Chatterjee

17. Define and Rule, Mahmood Mamdani

At the heart of our vision are women of Afghanistan who refuse silence in the face of a campaign that has criminalized ordinary life and seeks to erase women from society entirely. A single blurry picture continues to guide our way: a young woman, Marwa, standing alone in front of Kabul University, protesting the ban on women’s education. Her solitary stance -- defiant, unyielding-- is not only a symbol of resistance, but a reminder of the work before us: to challenge silencing, to continue creating cooperative and collective spaces, and to turn solidarity into action. Subaltern Speaks is a response to that call: to disrupt power, to assert presence, and to reclaim the very language through which we are defined.

Why Subaltern Speaks?

Central to this platform is a question posed by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Can the subaltern speak? Her answer, no, is not a dismissal of the subaltern’s voice, but an urgent recognition of how systems of power silence and distort. When marginalized people speak, their words are often refracted, mistranslated, or overwritten by dominant narratives that shape language, frame stories, and ultimately speak for them.

The silencing is not accidental; it is the product of overlapping systems of oppression. The “epistemic violence” dictating these systems erases, delegitimizes, or distorts marginalized realities. Western scholarship often misrepresents the peoples of the Global Majority, filtering their histories through frameworks that strip away complexity and agency. Western media and cultural dominance reinforce these distortions. Within these marginalized communities themselves, entrenched systems of power silence and overwrite diverse narratives, deepening the layers of erasure.

When the oppressed are spoken for rather than allowed to speak for themselves, their voices become a hollow echo, unheard and unacknowledged. Speaking is a relational act requiring both speaker and listener, but for the subaltern, this reciprocal exchange rarely exists. And yet, this is precisely the condition requiring collective attention and action.

At its core, Subaltern Speaks is a refusal to let silence be mistaken for absence, to allow dominant narratives to remain unchallenged. It draws on the ongoing struggles and resilience of those who have resisted erasure and marginalization. It is also an invitation to join a conversation where no one arrives as a blank slate, and where every act of speaking and listening helps build a world where the subaltern can be genuinely heard.

But speaking is only the first step. Being heard requires more than expression; it requires sustained, collective effort to challenge and transform the systems that distort or silence our words. This means building networks of solidarity, holding each other accountable, and creating spaces where subaltern voices are recognized on their own terms. Only through this continuous interplay of reflection and action can speech move beyond expression and become true recognition.

How Subaltern Speaks?

We approach this space as a process of unlearning, re-membering, reclaiming, and reimagining together.

In that spirit, Subaltern Speaks is not a platform for one voice to address many, but a shared space where knowledge is shaped through dialogue and collective reflection. We reject the idea of knowledge as something handed down in one direction. Our approach is rooted in cooperation, critical inquiry, and praxis, understood as a continuous process where ideas are always evolving, critically questioned, and reexamined in relation to action. We treat reading and writing as active, liberatory acts that unsettle imposed boundaries around who can speak, what can be spoken, and whose words matter.

We will ensure this by:

• Publishing diverse voices through curated essays, interviews, and collaborative projects that reflect marginalized experiences.

• Hosting regular online discussions and reader Q&As to create ongoing, interactive dialogue.

• Inviting contributors to revisit and expand on their work, encouraging evolution of ideas over time.

• Highlighting writing that connects theory with activism, including calls to action or reflections on social movements.

• Establishing clear editorial guidelines to protect contributor consent, context, and the integrity of stories.

• Featuring historical and contemporary narratives that challenge dominant perspectives and encourage critical reflection.

• Cultivating a respectful community through moderation policies and open channels for feedback and accountability.

This is only the beginning of a collective journey. We invite you to join the conversation: engage with the ideas, reflect, and share with others. We count on you.

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