Dr K M Krishnan is a distinguished literary critic, author, and translator. His essay Can’t the Subaltern Speak? examines the recent proliferation of autobiographies and memoirs in Malayalam and interrogates the assumption that such texts automatically recover marginalised voices. The essay foregrounds key concerns such as narrative authority, audibility, and power, arguing that autobiographical writing often involves mediation by educated writers, which complicates claims of authenticity.
Summary
The essay opens by noting the recent surge in Malayalam autobiographies, biographies, and memoirs, a trend driven by the desire to document lives that might otherwise remain undocumented. While these texts appear to recover neglected histories, Krishnan cautions that they simultaneously raise complex questions about power, audibility, and narrative control.
A central concern of the essay is the speaking voice in autobiography. Krishnan observes that many autobiographical texts attributed to marginalised figures are, in fact, written or shaped by professionally trained writers rather than by the subjects themselves. This mediation creates a tension between lived experience and narrated experience. The author identifies three key issues governing such texts: power, audibility, and the equipment—or means—required to tell one’s story.
The essay focuses on two Malayalam autobiographies: Janu: C K Januvinte Jeevithakatha, associated with the tribal activist C K Janu, and Kandalkkaatukalkkitayil Ente Jeevitham, the life narrative of environmental activist Kallen Pokkutan. Both subjects occupy social positions that would traditionally deny them access to self-authored life histories. However, their narratives differ significantly in narrative strategy, tone, and ideological implication.
Krishnan discusses Janu as a text constructed through an implied narrator speaking in an ostensibly local dialect. The narrative is impressionistic, fragmentary, and marked by silences. While this strategy lends dramatic intensity, it raises doubts about whether it genuinely enables the construction of Janu’s self. The narrative avoids precise historical and geographical markers, rendering time and place vague and romanticised. Janu’s history emerges not as a documented chronology but as a lost, idealised world.
The essay closely analyses a passage in which the narrator encounters images of gods, political leaders, and cinematic spectacles without recognising their historical significance. Krishnan argues that this apparent innocence is carefully constructed. The narrator’s selective ignorance relies on the reader’s knowledge to identify figures such as Nehru, Gandhi, and M G R, thereby exposing the presence of an interpretive intelligence operating behind the narrative voice. This strategy, Krishnan suggests, produces a fictionalised Janu whose identity oscillates between knowing and unknowing, authenticity and construction.
In contrast, Pokkutan’s autobiography adopts a more direct, factual, and self-conscious narrative mode. Edited by Thaha Madayi, the text explicitly addresses the problem of authorship and literacy. Pokkutan openly acknowledges his inability to read or write Malayalam and questions how an “ordinary person” can write an autobiography. This admission foregrounds the issue of narrative authority rather than concealing it. While less emotionally engaging, the text is presented as historically valuable and ethically transparent, recording environmental activism and social change without dramatic embellishment.
Krishnan concludes by suggesting that while both texts seek to give voice to the subaltern, they do so through markedly different ethical and narrative frameworks, raising fundamental questions about representation, authenticity, and the politics of life writing.
Analysis
Krishnan’s essay is a significant intervention in discussions of subaltern studies, life writing, and narrative ethics within regional Indian literature. Its principal strength lies in its refusal to uncritically celebrate autobiographical recovery. Instead, the essay foregrounds the problematic mediation involved when marginalised lives are narrated through educated intermediaries, thereby complicating the assumption that autobiography automatically enables subaltern speech.
One of the essay’s most compelling contributions is its nuanced engagement with narrative voice. By distinguishing between the empirical subject and the implied narrator, Krishnan exposes how authenticity in autobiography is often an effect of narrative strategy rather than a guarantee of truth. Janu’s analysis is particularly insightful in this regard. The essay convincingly demonstrates how silence, vagueness, and impressionism—often read as markers of subaltern authenticity—can also function as tools of narrative construction and ideological framing.
Krishnan’s reading of the “innocent” descriptions of political and cultural icons is especially effective. By showing how ignorance is staged and mobilised, the essay reveals how power operates subtly within discourse. The subaltern voice, far from being unmediated, is shown to be shaped by later knowledge, editorial choices, and readerly expectations. This argument resonates strongly with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s foundational question about whether the subaltern can honestly speak without being reinscribed within dominant epistemologies.
The essay’s comparative structure further enhances its critical depth. By juxtaposing Janu’s narrative with Pokkutan’s autobiography, Krishnan avoids generalisation and acknowledges heterogeneity within subaltern life writing. The appreciation of Pokkutan’s text for its ethical transparency, despite its lack of narrative flair, reflects a mature critical stance that privileges responsibility over aesthetic appeal.
However, the essay’s measured tone and theoretical restraint may appear understated to readers expecting overt political critique. Krishnan does not dismiss mediated autobiography outright; instead, he exposes its tensions and contradictions. This refusal to provide easy conclusions strengthens the essay’s academic credibility but demands a high level of critical engagement from the reader.
Power, Audibility, and the Problem of Autobiographical Representation
Krishnan identifies three governing issues in subaltern autobiography: power, audibility, and the equipment to narrate one’s life. Many marginalised subjects lack literacy or access to narrative tools, resulting in life stories being shaped by others. This raises ethical questions about whose voice is heard and how experience is translated into text.
Narrative Strategy and Silence in Janu
In Janu, the narrative is framed as a first-person account delivered in a local dialect, resulting in an incomplete, impressionistic account. While this creates dramatic intensity, it also leads to strategic silences. Historical time, geography, and concrete events are deliberately obscured, presenting Janu’s past as a lost, romanticised world rather than a documented history.
Innocence, Knowledge, and Discursive Control
Krishnan closely examines passages where the narrator describes images of gods, political leaders, and cinema with apparent innocence. This ignorance, however, depends on the reader’s ability to identify figures such as Nehru, Gandhi, and M G R. The essay argues that this is a conscious narrative strategy that exposes the presence of an implied narrator, thereby fictionalising Janu’s identity and undermining claims of unmediated subaltern speech.
Construction of Self and the Question “Who is Janu?”
The essay raises the crucial question of how Janu’s self is constructed in the narrative. Krishnan suggests that the text presents a contradictory figure who simultaneously recognises and fails to recognise historical realities. This paradox reveals that Janu, as represented in the text, is a discursive creation shaped by narrative design rather than a transparent self-portrait.
Factuality and Ethical Transparency in Pokkutan’s Autobiography
Pokkutan’s autobiography adopts a more factual and restrained narrative style. Edited by Thaha Madayi, the text openly acknowledges the author’s illiteracy and raises questions about narrative authority and authorship. The narrative records environmental activism and social change with conscious realism, prioritising ethical clarity over emotional appeal.
Comparative Assessment of the Two Texts
Krishnan’s comparison highlights two distinct modes of subaltern life writing. While Janu employs dramatic narration that risks fictionalisation, Pokkutan’s text foregrounds mediation and limitation. The essay suggests that ethical responsibility in subaltern autobiography may lie in acknowledging constraints rather than concealing them.
Contribution to Subaltern and Life-Writing Studies
The essay makes a significant contribution to subaltern studies and autobiography theory by questioning the politics of representation. Krishnan resists the temptation to romanticise subaltern voices and instead exposes the narrative and ideological structures that shape them.
Strength of Narrative Analysis and Theoretical Insight
Krishnan’s analysis of narrative voice, silence, and selective ignorance is one of the essay’s strongest aspects. His engagement with implied narration aligns implicitly with poststructural and postcolonial theories, particularly debates surrounding subaltern speech and epistemic authority.
Ethical Concerns and Limits of Representation
The essay is ethically attentive, especially in its refusal to equate visibility with empowerment. By foregrounding mediation, Krishnan highlights the responsibility of writers and editors in representing marginalised lives without appropriating or aestheticising their experiences.
Can’t the Subaltern Speak? is a rigorous, thoughtful, and ethically alert essay that challenges romanticised notions of subaltern voice. It compels readers to reconsider autobiography not merely as self-expression but as a contested discursive space shaped by power, literacy, and narrative authority. The essay holds enduring relevance for studies of life writing, marginality, and representation in postcolonial and regional literary contexts.
