Living in Subalterinity: The Voiceless Others in Nadine Gordimer’s Selected Short Stories

Abstract

This paper discusses some selected short stories of Nadine Gordimer in the light of the Postcolonial theory of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Gordimer was one of the leading figures in world literature against apartheid, and most of the events in her stories, take place in the context of the black community. As the most critical aspect of her short stories is the description of the lower classes of society in African communities, the postcolonial approach has been chosen to study her works. Spivak describes colonized people as others or inferiors who usually are known as subalterns. Women have a significant role in her theory, and she believes that women in colonial discourse are double subalterns. According to what is expected, it would be seen that in Gordimer’s short stories, the subalterns have no voice, and their identity is affected by the colonizer’s culture, language, and behavior.