Subalternity and Scale in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things

Abstract

Reading subaltern agency in The God of Small Things (1997) according to environmentalist notions of “scale” produces more complex, potentially more empowering, refractions of subalternity than straightforwardly Marxist or postcolonial studies have afforded. I argue Velutha is both oppressed subaltern and prototypical eco-warrior of a new planetary order.