An Analysis Of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak S Can The Subaltern Speak

A critical analysis of Spivak's classic 1988 postcolonial studies essay, in which she argues that a core problem for the poorest and most marginalized in society (the subalterns) is that they have no platform to express their concerns and no voice to affect policy debates or demand a fairer share of society’s goods. A key theme of Gayatri Spivak's work is agency: the ability of the individual to make their own decisions. While Spivak's main aim is to consider ways in which "subalterns" – her term for the indigenous dispossessed in colonial societies – were able to achieve agency, this paper concentrates specifically on describing the ways in which western scholars inadvertently reproduce hegemonic structures in their work. Spivak is herself a scholar, and she remains acutely aware of the difficulty and dangers of presuming to "speak" for the subalterns she writes about. As such, her work can be seen as predominantly a delicate exercise in the critical thinking skill of interpretation; she looks in detail at issues of meaning, specifically at the real meaning of the available evidence, and her paper is an attempt not only to highlight problems of definition, but to clarify them. What makes this one of the key works of interpretation in the Macat library is, of course, the underlying significance of this work. Interpretation, in this case, is a matter of the difference between allowing subalterns to speak for themselves, and of imposing a mode of "speaking" on them that – however well-intentioned – can be as damaging in the postcolonial world as the agency-stifling political structures of the colonial world itself. By clearing away the detritus of scholarly attempts at interpretation, Spivak takes a stand against a specifically intellectual form of oppression and marginalization.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's original essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" transformed the analysis of colonialism through an eloquent and uncompromising argument that affirmed the contemporary relevance of Marxism while using deconstructionist methods to explore the international division of labor and capitalism's "worlding" of the world. Spivak's essay hones in on the historical and ideological factors that obstruct the possibility of being heard for those who inhabit the periphery. It is a probing interrogation of what it means to have political subjectivity, to be able to access the state, and to suffer the burden of difference in a capitalist system that promises equality yet withholds it at every turn. Since its publication, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" has been cited, invoked, imitated, and critiqued. In these phenomenal essays, eight scholars take stock of the effects and response to Spivak's work. They begin by contextualizing the piece within the development of subaltern and postcolonial studies and the quest for human rights. Then, through the lens of Spivak's essay, they rethink historical problems of subalternity, voicing, and death. A final section situates "Can the Subaltern Speak?" within contemporary issues, particularly new international divisions of labor and the politics of silence among indigenous women of Guatemala and Mexico. In an afterword, Spivak herself considers her essay's past interpretations and future incarnations and the questions and histories that remain secreted in the original and revised versions of "Can the Subaltern Speak?" both of which are reprinted in this book.

This title provides a picture of the state of Marxist thinking. It aims to provoke a debate that will be of interest to those concerned with the status and development of Marxism and also to theorists in all fields of the human sciences.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's landmark essay in decolonial thought is animated for a new generation with art by Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza In 1985, Indian scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born 1942) published what would become a landmark essay in the academic study of colonialism. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" interrogates the obstructions that prevent certain subjects from being heard and how this state-enforced silence maintains the degradation of those at the peripheries of society. Over three decades later, Spivak's piece is perhaps even more compelling in its affirmation of Marxism's relevance to contemporary decolonial thought. This volume revives Spivak's text for yet another generation of thinkers, placed in dialogue with artwork by Ecuadorian artist Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza (born 1978). Loaiza's preoccupation with questions of occlusion and the need for and absence of image makes for an art series that shares a clear kinship with Spivak's line of reasoning. Loaiza's visual vocabulary echoes and refracts the central ideas put forth by Spivak in a compelling new interpretation of this essential text.

Are the “culture wars” over? When did they begin? What is their relationship to gender struggle and the dynamics of class? In her first full treatment of postcolonial studies, a field that she helped define, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, one of the world’s foremost literary theorists, poses these questions from within the postcolonial enclave. “We cannot merely continue to act out the part of Caliban,” Spivak writes; and her book is an attempt to understand and describe a more responsible role for the postcolonial critic. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason tracks the figure of the “native informant” through various cultural practices—philosophy, history, literature—to suggest that it emerges as the metropolitan hybrid. The book addresses feminists, philosophers, critics, and interventionist intellectuals, as they unite and divide. It ranges from Kant’s analytic of the sublime to child labor in Bangladesh. Throughout, the notion of a Third World interloper as the pure victim of a colonialist oppressor emerges as sharply suspect: the mud we sling at certain seemingly overbearing ancestors such as Marx and Kant may be the very ground we stand on. A major critical work, Spivak’s book redefines and repositions the postcolonial critic, leading her through transnational cultural studies into considerations of globality.

During the past twenty years, the worldÕs most renowned critical theoristÑthe scholar who defined the field of postcolonial studiesÑhas experienced a radical reorientation in her thinking. Finding the neat polarities of tradition and modernity, colonial and postcolonial, no longer sufficient for interpreting the globalized present, she turns elsewhere to make her central argument: that aesthetic education is the last available instrument for implementing global justice and democracy. SpivakÕs unwillingness to sacrifice the ethical in the name of the aesthetic, or to sacrifice the aesthetic in grappling with the political, makes her task formidable. As she wrestles with these fraught relationships, she rewrites Friedrich SchillerÕs concept of play as double bind, reading Gregory Bateson with Gramsci as she negotiates Immanuel Kant, while in dialogue with her teacher Paul de Man. Among the concerns Spivak addresses is this: Are we ready to forfeit the wealth of the worldÕs languages in the name of global communication? ÒEven a good globalization (the failed dream of socialism) requires the uniformity which the diversity of mother-tongues must challenge,Ó Spivak writes. ÒThe tower of Babel is our refuge.Ó In essays on theory, translation, Marxism, gender, and world literature, and on writers such as Assia Djebar, J. M. Coetzee, and Rabindranath Tagore, Spivak argues for the social urgency of the humanities and renews the case for literary studies, imprisoned in the corporate university. ÒPerhaps,Ó she writes, Òthe literary can still do something.Ó

Edward Said’s Orientalism is a masterclass in the art of interpretation wedded to close analysis. Interpretation is characterized by close attention to the meanings of terms, by clarifying, questioning definitions, and positing clear definitions. Combined with one of the main sub-skills of analysis, drawing inferences and finding implicit reasons and assumptions in arguments, interpretation becomes a powerful tool for critical thought. In Orientalism, the theorist, critic and cultural historian Edward Said uses interpretation and analysis to closely examine Western representations of the “Orient” and ask what they are really doing, and why. One of his central arguments is that Western representations of the East and Middle East persistently define it as “other”, setting it up in opposition to the West. Through careful analysis of a range of texts and other materials, Said shows that implicit assumptions about the “Orient’s” otherness underlie much Western thought and writing about it. Clarifying consistently the differences between the real-world East and the constructed ideas of the “Orient”, Said’s interpretative skills power his analysis, and provide the basis for an argument that has proven hugely influential in literary criticism, philosophy, and even politics.

These ten essays culled from the five volumes of 'Subaltern Studies' aim to 'promote a systematic and informed discussion of subaltern themes in the field of South Asian studies, and thus help to rectify the elitist bias characteristic of much reserach and academic work in this particular area.'