Subalternity: an exercise from within

It is never too late to learn something about yourself.
Well now is the time for subalternity. A chance to flip a coin, a time to give voice to the ‘other’ within yourself, a moment of inner reflection.
You may have till now considered yourself white or black; male or female; flippant or serious; young and fairly healthy or aging and falling apart; modern or old-fashioned; European, African or Asian, and educated or unschooled.
In order to achieve fairness and just balance within yourself, you will need to consider your hidden self. I say hidden but it’s more than that. This could always have been you, always there was a possibility, it always lived within you as a potential existence, an alternative way of being. To know yourself is to know this person and to love this person is to love yourself.
To get what I mean, draw up a list of words, adjectives really that describe who you think you are. This is will take a moment of introspection. Go ahead and be honest, nobody else is going to read this list, only you.
(Take a minute if you like)
By now you should have your list and you are ready to begin. I’m going to give you my list afterwards, at least you’ll be able to figure it out. But first, you need to do something to each word in your list. You will need to flip it around to give it’s opposite by adding the word ‘non-‘ or ‘un-‘. If there is a better word use it, like in my list I put ‘un-healthy’ instead of ‘healthy’, ‘aged’ instead of ‘not young’ suite yourself, use your own internal language. My list comes out something like this: non-white, female, uncaring, not serious, not young, unfunny, punctual, modern, non-European, non heterosexual and un-stressed. Well there you have it! This is my subaltern and in my case it’s a she, if you identify yourself as a female it will likely be a he, anyway it’s so happy because today is the very first day in it’s life that you have actually recognized ita existence.

According to psychologists, the silent subaltern within oneself has been there all along since childhood, in fact, back in those days she played happily and babbled away happily within you. But then something tragic happened to it that made it disappear, its existence was denied and that is a calamity for a child. Every time she tried to speak she was silenced, every time she acted she was pushed away. They called it education, good manners and necessity – but psychologists see this as socialisation, suppression and subjugation that causes damage to the inner self. But there is good news, she lives on mysteriously. Despite all efforts to identify with others, to be accepted, to impress your peers. Yes you allowed yourself to become a new creature, slightly less than human, but you can recuperate your human nature. Today is a great day, because today is the day that you have opened a window and allowed your and complete self to breath. You have discovered your Yang and now you’ve found your Ying, you have discovered your silent passenger and in doing so you are closer to discovering your gift, your humanity.