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Cross-Genealogies in Latin American and South Asian Subaltern Studies

The question of “cross-genealogies,” which was the theme of the Fifth Latin American Subaltern Studies Conference organized by Duke University, begs a definition of the term genealogy. The Oxford English Dictionary defines genealogy as origins, lineage, ancestry, progeny, and pedigree. Situated within the semantic field of the copula, the term generates a series of questions that transcend disciplinary and cultural boundaries. As a metaphor for the production of knowledges and cultures, it brings to mind the rift between legitimacy and illegitimacy as much as it establishes all kinds of hierarchies in the status of their production. “Cross-genealogies” as the copula puts us up against the notion of bastard fields, orphans, and outcasts, as well as bringing with it all the aspects of the hybrid introduced by the hyphen. Despite these two points of disturbance the term introduces, cross-genealogies can be used to discuss the impact of subaltern experiences and agency on the production of elite knowledges. It is in this sense that I will be using the term in this essay. In line with this idea of knowledge as a product of the copula, I wish to address three propositions that will enable me to discuss the relevance of cross-genealogies to subaltern studies. The first proposition is to decenter the metaphor of the copula, which ties knowledge production to the mandates of the natural sciences based on the principles of social Darwinism, and replace it with the notion of gender—in other words, to denaturalize the fields of knowledge and discuss their production as disciplines and scholarship, field competence, the formation of esprit de corps, productivities, and hegemonies.1 The second proposition is to use the