Subaltern his­to­ries writ­ten with an eye to dif­fe­rence can­not consti­tute yet ano­ther attempt, in the long and uni­ver­sa­lis­tic tra­di­tion of “socia­list” his­to­ries, to help erect the subal­tern as the sub­ject of modern demo­cra­cies, that is, to expand the his­to­ry of the modern in such a way as to make it more repre­sen­ta­tive of socie­ty as a whole. This is a lau­dable objec­tive on its own terms and has undoub­ted glo­bal rele­vance. But thought does not have to stop at poli­ti­cal demo­cra­cy or the concept of ega­li­ta­rian dis­tri­bu­tion of wealth (though the aim of achie­ving these ends will legi­ti­ma­te­ly fuel many imme­diate poli­ti­cal struggles). Subaltern his­to­ries will engage phi­lo­so­phi­cal­ly with ques­tions of dif­fe­rence that are eli­ded in the domi­nant tra­di­tions of Marxism. At the same time, howe­ver, just as real labor can­not be thought of out­side of the pro­ble­ma­tic of abs­tract labor, subal­tern his­to­ry can­not be thought of out­side of the glo­bal nar­ra­tive of capital—including the nar­ra­tive of tran­si­tion to capitalism—though it is not groun­ded in this nar­ra­tive. Stories about how this or that group in Asia, Africa, or Latin America resis­ted the “pene­tra­tion” of capi­ta­lism do not, in this sense, consti­tute “subal­tern” his­to­ry, for these nar­ra­tives are pre­di­ca­ted on ima­gi­ning a space that is exter­nal to capital—the chro­no­lo­gi­cal­ly “before” of capital—but that is at the same time a part of the his­to­ri­cist, uni­ta­ry time frame within which both the “before” and the “after” of capi­ta­list pro­duc­tion can unfold. The “out­side” I am thin­king of is dif­ferent from what is sim­ply ima­gi­ned as “before or after capi­tal” in his­to­ri­cist prose. This “out­side” I think of, fol­lo­wing Derrida, as some­thing atta­ched to the cate­go­ry “capi­tal” itself, some­thing that straddles a bor­der zone of tem­po­ra­li­ty, that conforms to the tem­po­ral code within which capi­tal comes into being even as it vio­lates that code, some­thing we are able to see only because we can think/theorize capi­tal, but that also always reminds us that other tem­po­ra­li­ties, other forms of worl­ding, coexist and are pos­sible. In this sense, subal­tern his­to­ries do not refer to a resis­tance prior and exte­rior to the nar­ra­tive space crea­ted by capi­tal ; they can­not the­re­fore be defi­ned without refe­rence to the cate­go­ry “capi­tal.” Subaltern stu­dies, as I think of it, can only situate itself theo­re­ti­cal­ly at the junc­ture where we give up nei­ther Marx nor “dif­fe­rence,” for, as I have said, the resis­tance it speaks of is some­thing that can hap­pen only within the time hori­zon of capi­tal, and yet it has to be thought of as some­thing that dis­rupts the uni­ty of that time. Unconcealing the ten­sion bet­ween real and abs­tract labor ensures that capital/commodity has hete­ro­ge­nei­ties and incom­men­su­ra­bi­li­ties ins­cri­bed in its core.