International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research

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Speaking from the Centered Margin: Subaltern Testimony and Indigenous Resistance in Rigoberta Menchú’s I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala

Author(s) Ms. A. Nazira Begum, Dr. A. Ajmal Khaan
Country India
Abstract Rigoberta Menchú's testimonial story, "I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala," is a fundamental book in postcolonial and subaltern studies, expressing the voice of the marginalised within oppressive institutions. This essay explores how Menchú strategically centres the margin to recast the indigenous subject as an actor of political and epistemological resistance rather than as a passive victim of colonial oppression. The research examines Menchú's story as both witness and counter-discourse, using Homi K. Bhabha's ideas of hybridity and enunciation as well as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's theory of the subaltern. This article argues that Menchú's use of Spanish, the language of her oppressors, is a decolonial praxis that restores narrative sovereignty. The book develops an indigenous epistemology that opposes state-sanctioned erasure and Western history through rituals, collective memory, and physical resistance. By putting gender, land, and cultural survival front and centre, Menchú turns individuals’ suffering into communal political awareness. In the conclusion, this essay argues that I, Rigoberta Menchú, represent what postcolonial scholar Ashis Nandy refers to as "the intimate enemy": a place where resistance arises from the centre of the periphery by radical self-articulation, reappropriation, and redefinition rather than rejection.
Keywords Keywords: Subalternity, Testimonio, Indigenous Resistance, Postcolonialism, Cultural Survival, Decolonial Praxis, Epistemic Violence, Gender and Testimony, Centered Margin
Field Sociology > Linguistic / Literature
Published In Volume 7, Issue 5, September-October 2025
Published On 2025-10-30
DOI https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i05.59142
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