subalterns

Noun

subaltern (plural subalterns)

1. A subordinate.
2. (UK) A commissioned officer having a rank below that of captain; a lieutenant or second lieutenant.
   • She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, Margaret Devereux ; and made all the men frantic by running away with a penniless young fellow ; a mere nobody sir a subaltern in a foot regiment, or something of that kind.1891, Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC
3. A subaltern proposition; a proposition implied by a universal proposition.

   Antonyms:

   superaltern

4. (literary theory) A member of a group that is socially, politically and geographically outside of the hegemonic power structure of the colony and of the colonial homeland.
   • Young refers sardonically to the existence of reams of postcolonial "theory", and promises to give us "postcolonialism from below, which is what and where it should rightly be, given that it elaborates a politics of ‘the subaltern’, that is, subordinated classes and peoples".2003 August 9, Steven Poole, “Postcolonialism and all that jazz”, in The Guardian

See all 6 meanings of subaltern