Sectores subalternos, formas comunitarias y dialéctica de la modernidad

Abstract

Both Dipesh Chakrabarty and Christopher Arthur reject the sheer identification of Marxism with a philosophy of universal history. Chakrabarty analyzes the subaltern form the standpoint of a multiplicity of ways to construct the world, which cannot be completely assimilated or subordinated to modernity and its forms of coexistence. He rejects, thus, the eurocentric assumptions underlying the concept of transition to capitalism. Arthur depicts the eventual overcoming of capitalism as a modified reconstruction of the unity of labor and property, unity that was, thought in different terms, present in communitary forms of society. I intend to suggest a theoretical dialogue between both perspectives, in an attempt to elaborate on how subaltern sectors may appropiate the Marxian emancipatory project and relate to the structural contradictions of modernity.