Can A Subaltern Speak Pdf
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is an unsettling voice in literary theory and especially, postcolonia l studies. She has describes herself as a “practical deconstruct ionist feminist ar!ist ' and as a “gad#y'. She uses deconstruction to e!amine $ho% truth is constructed$ and to deploy the assertions of one intellectual and political position &such as ar!ism' to $interrupt$ or $bring into crisis$ another &feminism, for e!ample'. (n her%ork, she combines passionate denunciation s of the harm done to%omen, non).uropeans, and the poor by the privileged +est%ith a persistent uestioning of the grounds on%hich radical critiue takes its stand.er continual interrogation of assumptions can make Spivak dicult to read. /ut her restless critiues connect directly to her ethical aspiration for a $politics of the open end,$ in%hich deconstruction acts as a $safeguard$ against the repression or e!clus ion of $ alterities$)tha t is, people, events, or ideas that are radically $other$ to the dominant%orldvie%.
Can Subaltern Speak Pdf
- Subaltern group, whose identity is its difference, there is no unrepresentable subaltern subject that can know and speak itself; the intellectual’s solution is.
- Can the Subaltern Speak / Ethics Unlearning one ´s priviledge as one ´s loss •-> working critically back through one ´s history, prejudices and learned responses.
LAURA CHRI SMAN. Columbia University Press New York. Can the Subaltern Speak? Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
She%rites against the $epistemic violence$ done by discourses of kno%ledge that carve up the%orld and condemn to oblivion the pieces that do not easily 0t. Characteris tically, she does not claim to avoid such violence herself rather, she self)consciously e!plores structures of violence%ithout assuming a 0nal, settled position. 5 subaltern, according to the dictionary, is a person holding a subordinate position, originally a 8unior ocer in the /ritish army. /ut Spivak dra%s on the term2s nuances.
(t has particularly rich connotations for the (ndian subcontinent because the 5nglo)(ndian%riter 9udyard:ipling &1;;s the Subaltern Studies Group &a collective of radical historians in (ndia%ith%hom Spivak maintains ties' appropriated the term, focusing their attention on the disenfranchised peoples of (ndia. @he $subaltern$ al%ays stands in an ambiguous relation to po%er)subordinate to it but never fully consenting to its rule, never adopting the dominant point of vie% or vocabulary as e!pressive of its o%n identity.
Subalterns, in the (ndian conte!t are de0ned as those%ho did not comprise the colonial elite) such as the lesser rural gentry, impoverished lamdlords, rich peasants and upper middle class peasants. $Bne must nevertheless insis t that the coloni6ed subalter n sub8ect is irretrievably heterogeneous,$ declares Spivak. Can this di4erence be articulated? 5nd if so, by%hom?
5s a%ay of mounting her critiue of the scholarsD assumptions concerning the subaltern in colonial te!ts, Spivak begins by turning 0rst to the%ork of poststructuralist thinkers such as ichael Eoucault and Gilles Felu6e%ho have challenged the notion that human individuals are sovereign sub8ects%ith autonomous agency over their consciousness. 5s poststructu ralism%ould have it, human consciousness is constructed discursively. Bur sub8ectivity is constructed by the shifting discourses of po%er%hich endlessly speak through us, situating us here and there in particular positions and relations. (n these terms%e are not the authors of ourselves. +e do not construct our identities,%e have it%ritten for us the sub8ect cannot be sovereign over the constructio n of selfhood. (nstead the sub8ect is decentered, in that its consciousness is al%ays being constructed from positions outside of itself. (t follo%s then that the individual is not a transparent representation of the self but an e4ect of discourse.
Spivak argues that surprisingly for these 0gures,%hen Eoucault and Feleu6e talks about oppressed groups such as the%orking classes they fall back into precisely these uncritical notions of sovereign sub8ectsD by restoring to them a fully centred consciousness. (n addition they also assume that the%riting of intellectual s such as themselves can serve as a transparent medium through%hich the voices of the oppressed can be represented. @he intellect ual is cast as a reliab le mediator for t he voices of th e oppres sed, a mothpiece through%hich the oppressed can clearly speak. Spivak articulates her reasons for her%orries in the 0rst part of the essay, applying (C-.H EBIC5IH@2s understanding of $epistemic violence$ to the $remotely orchestrated, far)#ung, and heterogeneous pro8ect to constitute the colonial sub8ect as Bther.$ Eoucault vie%s intellectual po%er as functioning discursively to produce the very sub8ect over%hich it then e!ercises mastery.
Can The Subaltern Speak Analysis Pdf
Bf course, no discourse succeeds in obliterating all alternative discourses. (ntellectuals have freuently tried to create counterdiscourses that contest the dominant discourses,%ith the hope of connecting%ith the oppressed2s o%n acts of resistance. Spivak sees postcolonial studies as a ne% instance of this attempt to liberate the other and to enable that other to e!perience and articulate those parts of itself that fall outside%hat the dominant discourse has constituted as its sub8ecthood. She asks%hether such%ork can succeed.
Subaltern Theory
Can)%ith or%ithout the intervention of%ell)intentioned intellect uals) the $subaltern$ speak? -er blunt ans%er is no. /ecause subalterns e!ist, to some e!tent, outside po%er, theorists and advocates of political transformation have consistently looked to them as a potential source of change. ar!ists speak of and for the proletariat, feminists of and for oppressed%omen, and anticolonialists of and for third%orld peoples. (n part, Spivak is reacting against the persistent tendency of radical political movements to romantici 6e the other, especially against the notion that third%orld peoples must lead the 0ght against multinational global capitalism. @o assign them that role is to repeat colonialism2s basic violence,%hich vie%s non).uropeans as important only insofar as they follo% +estern scripts.
Eurthermore,%hen most f the po%er resides in the +est,%hy should the least po%erful of those caught up in globali6ation be responsible for halting its advance? Einally, Spivak points out that the suggestion that all third%orld peoples stand in the same relation to global capitalism and should resp ond to it in the same%ay is $essentialis t.$. Names the belief that certain people or entities share some essential, unchanging $nature$ that secures their membership in a category. (n the 1;s, essentialis m%as the target of much feminist criticism because activists recogni6 ed that generali6ations about $%oman$ inevitably e!clude some%omen.
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Bne respons e%as $di4erence feminism,$%hich stressed alliances among%omen across their di4erences and hoped to replace a solidarity based on shared essential ualities and e!periences. Spivak2s landmark contribution to this debate%as the concept of $strategic essentialis m.$ (n some instances, she argued, it%as important.