ABSTRACT
A decolonizing interpretive approach requires that the researcher seek a conceptual lens that is in sync with subaltern sensibilities that drive their investigation. Few service learning researchers question the inexorable colonial relationship that exists within the service learning dynamic, even when radical, subaltern scholars have critically exposed the colonial logic that usurps and colonizes working-class populations. Service learning lives in, moves in, and embeds itself within subaltern communities. There is a dearth in the literature’s engagement of service learning from the standpoint of subaltern concerns. The politics of the subaltern voice engages forthrightly with the phenomenon of human oppression and its debilitating historical impact upon the identities, social location, representations, and material conditions of oppressed populations. Affirmation of the subaltern voice and the social agency associated with a politics of voice is essential here, given the hegemonic constraints of service learning that thwart the knowledge, wisdom, and power of subaltern communities.
