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Engaging Subjective Knowledge: How Amar Singh's Diary Narratives of and by the Self Explain Identity Formation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 May 2004

Lloyd I. Rudolph  and
Susanne Hoeber Rudolph
Lloyd I. Rudolph
Affiliation:
Professor emeritus of political science, University of Chicago (lrudolph@uchicago.edu). He is finishing a book titled Postmodern Gandhi: Essays on Gandhi after Gandhi.
Susanne Hoeber Rudolph
Affiliation:
Professor emerita of political science, University of Chicago (srudolph@midway.uchicago.edu). Her current book project is Living with Difference: Cultural, Legal, and Economic Dimensions of Diversity in India. This article was much strengthened by the lively challenges offered by reviewers and the editor of Perspectives on Politics.
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Abstract

What should count as knowledge in political science? We have tried here to show that subjectivity is valid and useful, that firstperson accounts of experience—‘telling what I know,” narratives of and by the self, partial and contingent truths, and self-asother ethnography—contribute to knowledge. The move to subjective knowledge does not require the abandonment of objectivity. Self-consciousness and reflexivity simply make it possible to render the familiar unfamiliar, to gain a certain detachment, to achieve “objective subjectivity.” Subjective knowledge helps to explain identity and category formation and the politics of recognition. Accessibility to the politics of those taken to be outside the public sphere, those whose behavior is not easily observed or counted by objective political science—colonized persons, subalterns, and marginalized minorities—depends on their ability to articulate their identities, purposes, and interests. Such forms of identity politics have become of increasing interest to political scientists concerned with subaltern agency, multiculturalism, and ethnic conflict and peace.

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Articles
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , December 2003 , pp. 681 - 694
Copyright
© 2003 by the American Political Science Association

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