Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty

Introduction

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak at Goldsmiths College, University of London, 2007/CC Licensed

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak at Goldsmiths College, University of London, 2007/CC Licensed

While she is best known as a postcolonial theorist, Gayatri Spivak describes herself as a “para-
disciplinary, ethical philosopher”– though her early career would have included “applied
deconstruction.” Her reputation was first made for her translation and preface to Derrida’s Of
Grammatology (1976) and she has since applied deconstructive strategies to various theoretical
engagements and textual analyses including feminism, Marxism, literary criticism and postcolonialism.

My position is generally a reactive one. I am viewed by Marxists as too codic, by feminists as too male-
identified, by indigenous theorists as too committed to Western Theory. I am uneasily pleased about
this. (Post-Colonial Critic)

Despite her outsider status — or partly, perhaps, because of it — Spivak is widely cited in a range of
disciplines. Her work is nearly evenly split between dense theoretical writing peppered with flashes of
compelling insight, and published interviews in which she wrestles with many of the same issues in a
more personable and immediate manner. What Edward Said calls a “contrapuntal” reading strategy is
recommended as her ideas are continually evolving and resist, in true deconstructive fashion, a straight
textual analysis. She has said that she prefers the teaching environment where ideas are continually in
motion and development. Nonetheless, the glossary of key terms and motifs that is available below may
serve as a kind of legend to a map of her work. It is not intended as a “bluffer’s guide to Spivakism” (The
Spivak Reader) but rather blazes on a trail into this difficult and important body of work.

Biography

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak was born in Calcutta, West Bengal, 24 February 1942 to “solidly metropolitan
middle class” parents (PCC). She thus belonged to the “first generation of Indian intellectuals after
independence,” a more interesting perspective she claims, than that of the Midnight’s Children, who
were “born free by chronological accident” (Arteaga interview). She did her undergraduate work in
English at the University of Calcutta (1959), graduating with first class honours. She borrowed money to
go to the US in the early 1960s to do graduate work at Cornell, which she chose because she “knew the
names of Harvard, Yale and Cornell, and thought half of them were too good for me. (I’m intellectually a
very insecure person … to an extent I still feel that way)” (de Kock interview 33). She “fell into
comparative literature” because it was the only department that offered her money (Ibid.). She received
her MA in English from Cornell and taught at the University of Iowa while working on her Ph.D. Her
dissertation was on Yeats (published as Myself Must I Remake: The Life and Poetry of W.B. Yeats [1974)])
and was directed by Paul de Man (See Yeats and Postcolonialism). Of her work with de Man she says, “I
wasn’t groomed for anything. I learnt from him. I took good notes and slowly sort of understood” (de
Kock interview). “When I was de Man’s student,” she adds, “he had not read Derrida yet. I went to teach
at Iowa in 1965 and did not know about the famous Hopkins conference on the Structuralists
Controversy in 1966″ (E-mail communication). She ordered _de la grammatologie_ out of a catalogue in
1967 and began working on the translation some time after that (E-mail communication). During this
time she married and divorced an American, Talbot Spivak. Her translator’s introduction to Derrida’s Of
Grammatology has been variously described as “setting a new standard for self-reflexivity in prefaces”
(editor’s introduction to The Spivak Reader) and “absolutely unreadable, its only virtue being that it
makes Derrida that much more enjoyable.” Her subsequent work consists in post-structuralist literary
criticism, deconstructivist readings of Marxism, Feminism and Postcolonialism (including work with the
Subaltern Studies group and a critical reading of American cultural studies in Outside in the Teaching
Machine [1993]), and translations of the Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi. She is currently a University
Professor at Columbia. (See Transnationalism and Globalism, Gender and Nation, Essentialism,
Representation, Partition of India)

Glossary of Key Terms in Spivak’s Work

Ethical responsibility/Ethical singularity

Spivak’s usage of “responsibility” (like her dialogic understanding of “speaking,” noted above) is akin to
Bakhtin’s “answerability” (otvetstvennost: sometimes also translated as “responsibility”). It signifies not
only the act of response which completes the transaction of speaker and listener, but also the ethical
stance of making discursive room for the Other to exist. In other words, “ethics are not just a problem of
knowledge but a call to a relationship” (Introduction to The Spivak Reader). The ideal relationship is
individual and intimate. This is what she means by “ethical singularity,” the engagement of the Other in
non-essential, non-crisis terms.

We all know that when we engage profoundly with one person, the responses come from both sides:
this is responsibility and accountability… The object of ethical action is not an object of benevolence, for
here responses flow from both sides. (SR 269-270)

The ideal relation to the Other, then, is an “embrace, an act of love” (ibid.). Such an embrace may be
unrequited, as the differences and distances are too great, but if we are ever to get beyond the vicious
cycle of abuse, it is essential to remain open-hearted; not to attempt to recreate the Other
narcissistically, in one’s own image, but generously, with care and attention. (See Orientalism)

Margins/Outside

Spivak’s work explores “the margins at which disciplinary discourses break down and enter the world of
political agency” (SR). She interrogates the politics of culture from a marginal perspective (“outside”)
while maintaining the prerogatives of a professional position within the hegemony (See Hegemony in
Gramsci). Through deconstruction she turns hegemonic narratives inside out, and as a third world
woman in a position of privilege in the American academy, she brings the outside in. Hence Outside in
the Teaching Machine (1993). These contradictory positions have led her to develop the notion that the
center is also a margin, more like the center line on a road than the center of town. “This is the classic
deconstructive position, in the middle, but not on either side” (de Kock interview). This reconfiguring of
the “center” (or re-centering, perhaps) also changes the position and status of the margins: no longer
outside looking in, but an integral, if minor, language. (See Mimicry, Ambivalence and Hybridity)

Strategic Essentialism

In the Boundary 2 interview, Spivak wistfully pronounces that, of the two things she is best known for,
both are often misunderstood. The first was her answer to the question “Can the Subaltern Speak?” and
the second is the notion of strategic essentialism.

Essentialism is bad, not in its essence — which would be a tautology — but only in its application. The
goal of essentialist critique is not the exposure of error, but the interrogation of the essentialist terms.
Uncritical deployment is dangerous. Critique is simply reading the instructions for use. Essentialism is like
dynamite, or a powerful drug: judiciously applied, it can be effective in dismantling unwanted structures
or alleviating suffering; uncritically employed, however, it is destructive and addictive.

Spivak’s strategy is deconstructivist, like that of a good lawyer: when on defense, prod the prosecution’s
narrative until the cracks begin to appear and when prosecuting, piece together a case by understanding
the criminal’s motivation. “Strategic essentialism” is like role-playing, briefly inhabiting the criminal mind
in order to understand what makes it tick (See Postcolonial Performance and Installation Art). The
Subaltern Studies group, for example, succeeds in unraveling official Indian history by particularizing its
narrative: “a strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest” (The Spivak
Reader 214). This is also the way Spivak uses deconstruction, for example, without fully subscribing to it
as a viable philosophic system or practice, much less a political program. Or, as she puts it,
“[Deconstruction] is not the exposure of error. It is constantly and persistently looking into how truths
are produced.” (Arteaga interview) “Although I make specific use of deconstruction, I’m not a
Deconstructivist” (Post-Colonial Critic).

The misuse of the concept of “strategic essentialism” is that less “scrupulous” practitioners ignore the
element of strategy, and treat it as simply “a union ticket for essentialism. As to what is meant by
strategy, no-one wondered about that.” She claims to have given up on the phrase, though not the
concept (Danius and Jonsson interview).

Subaltern

Spivak achieved a certain degree of misplaced notoriety for her 1985 article “Can the Subaltern Speak?:
Speculations on Widow Sacrifice” (Wedge 7/8 [Winter/Spring 1985]: 120-130). In it, she describes the
circumstances surrounding the suicide of a young Bengali woman that indicates a failed attempt at self-
representation. Because her attempt at “speaking” outside normal patriarchal channels was not
understood or supported, Spivak concluded that “the subaltern cannot speak.” Her extremely nuanced
argument, admittedly confounded by her sometimes opaque style, led some incautious readers to
accuse her of phallocentric complicity, of not recognizing or even not letting the subaltern speak. Some
critics, missing the point, buttressed their arguments with anecdotal evidence of messages cried out by
burning widows. Her point was not that the subaltern does not cry out in various ways, but that speaking
is “a transaction between speaker and listener” (Landry and MacLean interview). Subaltern talk, in other
words, does not achieve the dialogic level of utterance.

Beyond this specific misunderstanding (proof perhaps that Gayatri Spivak cannot speak?) Spivak also
objects to the sloppy use of the term and its appropriation by other marginalized, but not specifically
“subaltern” groups. “Subaltern,” Spivak insists, is not “just a classy word for oppressed, for Other, for
somebody who’s not getting a piece of the pie.” She points out that in Gramsci‘s original covert usage
(being obliged to encrypt his writing to get it past prison censors), it signified “proletarian,” whose voice
could not be heard, being structurally written out of the capitalist bourgeois narrative. In postcolonial
terms, “everything that has limited or no access to the cultural imperialism is subaltern — a space of
difference. Now who would say that’s just the oppressed? The working class is oppressed. It’s not
subaltern” (de Kock interview).

Another misreading of the concept is that, since the subaltern cannot speak, she needs an advocate to
speak for her, affirmative action or special regulatory protection. Spivak objects, “Who the hell wants to
protect subalternity? Only extremely reactionary, dubious anthropologistic museumizers. No activist
wants to keep the subaltern in the space of difference … You don’t give the subaltern voice. You work for
the bloody subaltern, you work against subalternity” (ibid) (See Museums and Colonial Exhibitions,
Myths of the Native). She cites the work of the Subaltern Studies group as an example of how this critical
work can be practiced, not to give the subaltern voice, but to clear the space to allow it to speak.

Spivak is particularly leery of the misappropriation of the term by those who simply want to claim
disenfranchisement within the system of hegemonic discourse, i.e. those who can speak, but feel they
are not being given their turn. “Many people want to claim subalternity. They are the least interesting
and the most dangerous. I mean, just by being a discriminated-against minority on the university
campus, they don’t need the word ‘subaltern’ … They should see what the mechanics of the
discrimination are. They’re within the hegemonic discourse wanting a piece of the pie and not being
allowed, so let them speak, use the hegemonic discourse. They should not call themselves subaltern”
(ibid).

Unlearning one’s privilege as one’s loss

Privilege is also a kind of insularity which cuts off the privileged from certain kinds of “other” knowledge.
One should strive to recognize these limitations and overcome them, not as a magnanimous gesture of
inclusion, but simply for the increase of knowledge. The way to do this is by working critically through
one’s beliefs, prejudices and assumptions and understanding how they arose and became naturalized.
Any Zen master, chiropractor, or guitar teacher will tell you that real learning can only begin once years
of mental habit, bad posture, and learning riffs the wrong way are undone, or unlearned.

What we are asking is that the holders of the hegemonic discourse should de-hegemonize their position
and themselves learn how to occupy the subject position of the other rather than simply say, “OK, sorry,
we are just very good white people, therefore we do not speak for the blacks” (Intervention interview).

Major Publications
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Translation of and introduction to Derrida’s Of Grammatology. Baltimore:
John’s Hopkins, 1976.

An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization. Harvard University Press, 2012.

A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge: Harvard UP,
1999.

“Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg, eds. Marxism and the interpretation of
Culture. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988: 271-313.

Death of a Discipline. New York, Columbia University Press, 2003.

“Displacement and the Discourse of Woman” in Mark Krupnik, ed. Displacement: Derrida and After.
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983: 169-95.

In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics.London: Methuen, 1987.

Outside In the Teaching Machine. London: Routledge, 1993.

Selected Subaltern Studies. Ed. with Ranajit Guha. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988.

The Spivak Reader. Ed. Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean. New York and London: Routledge, 1996. This
book includes an extensive list of publications, including many interviews.

The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. Ed. Sarah Harasym. London: Routledge, 1990.

Introduction

This paper will focus towards Edward Said’s concept

‘Orientalism’ and Gayatri Spivak’s concept of ‘subaltern’.

Drawing my interest in Said, Foucault, and Gramsci this paper

examine how the western texts have represented the East , the

Orient or the Subaltern characters. The texts referred in this

paper are informed by my reading of them in postgraduate

courses and reflect my area of interest. Thus the selected texts

should not be treated as paradigmatic of postcolonialism or

orientalism. The texts referred in this paper are: The Tempest by

William Shakespeare Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe ,The

Outsider by Albert Camus, Heart of the Darkness by Joseph

Conrad, A passage to India by E.M. Foster. All the above texts

have been analyzed in the light of theories of Edward Said,

Gayatri Spivak as well as postcolonialism. Basically

Potcolonialism involves the following points: Edward Said’s

concept of ‘Orientalism’ & Gayatri Spivak’s concept of

‘Subaltern’. Analyzing texts produced by the writers who

belong to the countries which were once colonized by British1

Reading texts produced by those who have migrated from

countries with a history of colonialism2

. Rereading the texts

produced during colonialism in the light of theories of colonial

discourse.

EDWARD SAID: Orientalism

“Knowledge is not innocent it is always operated by power” this

Foucauldian notion informs Edward Said’s book

Orientalism(1978)3

. Orientalism is a term applied to ‘the orient’

as discovered, observed and described, in a sense, ‘invented’ by

Europe and the West. In literary context it refers to the

discourse by the West about the East, in all fields, such as,

literary, sociological, and so on, which have no counter point in

the east. This discourse aggregates to a “textual universe”. It

refers to the attitudes of the west towards the east; to the

occident looking in/on/at the east and, explains and interprets

it4

Origin: In the Middle Ages the east became of increasing

interest to the west-it was remote, inaccessible and exotic. Most

of the speculation of such study gained importance because of

travelers’ tales and stories. For instance, Marco Polo (c.1254-

1324) is the prime example of an author who began to introduce

the east to the west with his immensely popular book of travels,

which was translated into many European languages. Sir John

Mandeville, the supposed author of famous travel book also

found in many European languages. The increasing Islamic

empire threatened Christianity and led to the crusades, thus

bringing east nearer to west. The fall of Constantinople in 1453

was virtually the end of Christianity. The expansion of Ottoman

Empire threatened the west even more. The west became fearful

of this matter of urgent military necessity. The travelers’

accounts began to proliferate. Vasco-da-gama discovered India,

provided material for the west to write about the east and

fantasize about it. ‘Arabian Night’s’ Entertainment’ or ‘The One

Thousand and One Nights’ by Antoine Galland appeared in

1704 and 1717. Adventurous travelers went far beyond the

prescribed itineraries or boundaries of the Tour. By 18th century,

Sir William Jones considered as earliest British orientalist who

translated many works from Arabic and Persian which

influenced the oriental themes of romantic poets. Napoleon had

International Science Community Association 48

for such study of the oriental people. Europeans created and

recreated the east as they wanted it to be. The east is always

represented as mysterious, wonderful, and perhaps immoral. In

this way orientalism as a discourse and oriental studies

multiplies yearly.

Orientalism examines the vast tradition of western

“construction” of the Orient. It has been a “corporate

institution” to discuss, Discribe and write about orient by

authorizing views about orient and ruling over it5

. Said’s book is

considered to be one of the influential books of the late 20th

century. He points out that the knowledge about the ‘orient’

produced and circulated in Europe was an ideological

accompaniment of colonial power. He refers a range of writers,

statesmen, political thinkers, philologists and philosophers who

contributed to orientalism as an ‘institution’-a lens through

which the ‘orient’ would be viewed and controlled. Said argues

that representations of the ‘orient’ contributed to the creation of

a dichotomy between Europe and its ‘other’. It maintained and

extended European hegemony over other lands. Orientalism

refers to the sum of the western representations of the orient.

Said’s critique is influenced by Foucault’s work to make

connections between the production of knowledge and the

exercise of power. It allows us to see how institutions which

regulate our daily lives. His basic argument is that orientalism

or the study of the orient was ultimately a political vision of

reality, whose structure promoted a binary opposition between

the familiar (Europe) and the strange (orient).

Said speaks of certain shapes and structures about the orient

such as, orientalism constructs binary oppositions between the

orient and the Occident, where the orient is everything that the

occident is not. Orientalism is a western fantasy. The views of

the west about the orient are not based on the facts that exist in

oriental lands, but often results from the west’s dreams,

fantasies about the orient. Orientalism creates a fabricated

construct. It serves as an institution where opinions views and

theories about the orient circulate as objective knowledge Said

claims that orient became an object suitable for study in

academic. Orientalism influences many of literary writings

coming to the service of orientalism. Orientalism studied

something called Islam without studying the people as it is a

desert religion. Orientalism functions to justify the superiority

of western colonial rule over eastern lands. In order to

emphasize the connection between imaginative assumption of

orientalism and its material effects. Said also shows how

certain stereotypes about east and the orient are expressed in

orientalism. The west is considered as a place of scientific

progress and development, while the orient was deemed remote,

unchanging, primitive or backward. The orient is strange,

fantastic, bizarre, while occident was rational, sensible and

familiar. Orientalism makes assumptions about race. Racism is

product of orientalism. They represent Arabs murderers and

violent, the lazy Indian and the inscrutable Chinamen.

Orientalism represents gendered stereo types. They consider

east as a whole as effeminate or the sexually promiscuous,

exotic oriental female. Oriental man is insufficiently manly.

The oriental women are often depicted nude, as an object of

sexual desire. Orientalism reveals the orient as a site of perverse

desire on the part of male colonizers. The Oriental characters

are always shown as coward, lazy, uncivilized, etc while the

west usually presented us culturally sound and civilized.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Subaltern

She is one of the influential critic who is related to

Postcolonialism , Feminism, Deconstruction and Marxism. She

was a follower of Derrida and his translator. She is the author of

translator’s preface of Derrida’s “Of Grammatology”. She is

interested in seeing how truth is constructed rather than in

exposing error. Fundamental to Spivak’s theory is the concept

of Subaltern. The ‘Subaltern’ is a military term which means ‘of

lower rank’. She borrowed this term from Italian Marxist

Antonio Gramsci. In her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?”

shows the earliest political historiography shifted the voice of

the subaltern groups (women, tribal people, Third world,

orient)6

She is known for her best known essay “Can the Subaltern

Speak?” ,she realizes herself sometimes as Third-world woman,

as a marginal awkward special guest, as a American Professor ,

as a Bengali middle-class exile and sometimes as a success story

in the star system of American academic life. She has been

taken for granted in the positioning of the subject as a Third

World subject7

. In this essay she exposes the irony that the

subalterns have awakened to a consciousness of their own rights

by making practical utterances against unjust domination and

inequality. She denounces the harm done to Women/Third

World women and non-Europeans. She wants to give voice to

the subalterns who can not speak or who are silent. She focuses

on speculations made on widow sacrifice. She attempts to

restore the presence of the women writers who have been

submerged by their male peers. She investigates of Women’s

Double-Colonization (Dalit/Black women)8

She attacks the Eurocentric attitudes of the West. She holds that

knowledge is never innocent, it is always operated by western

economical interest and power. For Spivak knowledge is like

any other commodity or product that is exported from the west

to the Third world. The western scholars have always presented

themselves and their knowledge about the Eastern cultures as

objective. The knowledge about the third world is always

constructed with the political and economical interest of the

west.

Spivak criticizes Foucault other critics accusing them in

cooperating with capitalism and imperialism. Spivak joins

Edward Said in order to criticize the way in which western

writers have represented the third world (subaltern) in their

academic discourse. For example, Caliban in Shakespeare’s The

Tempest, Arabs in Albert Camus’ The Outsider and so on. Research Journal of Recent Sciences
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Vol. 5(8), 47-50, August (2016) Res. J. Recent Sci.

International Science Community Association 49

Spivak’s concept of Worlding : Spivak rejects the idea that

there is a precolonial past that we can recover. A nostalgia of

lost origin, roots, and native culture is flawed project because

there is no ‘pure’precolonial past to recover ; it has been

changed by colonialism. What we can do is only understand the

“worlding” of the “Third World”. Worlding is a process

through which the local population was ‘persuaded’ to accept

the European version of reality for understanding their social

world7

Some Literary Illustrations

In Shakespeare’s The Tempest(1611)9

, Caliban is depicted as
subaltern and secondary, to Prospero who represents the

west/colonizer who is a learned person appears to be manager

controlling natural and unnatural forces of the Island. Prospero

can be identified as stereotypical figure of colonial authority and

domination. Caliban accepts Prospero’s supremacy. Prospero

exploits the natives of the New World. Caliban is represented as

primitive, devoid of Knowledge and any written language

Prospero seeks to civilized natives as a part of his reformist

venture. Myth about Cannibals of Caribbean. Caliban’s name is

like Cannibal also similar to Cariban- name used for the natives

of the West Indies. Edward Said in his book Orientalism shows

how Richard Burton without being a pilgrim to Mecca or

Medina could write about Islamic history and about their

people.

In Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719)10 the hero Robinson

becomes a prototype of British colonialist and Friday the

symbol of subject races. Robinson is represented as Hercules

with a muscular body while Friday a Negro and a cannibal as

physically less strong than Crusoe. The oriental women

encountered by Crusoe are also shown as starkly nude.

Robinson imposes upon Friday his language, religion and God.

He teaches Friday to call him Master. In this text Friday is

submissive, uncivilized and uncouth. The cannibals from the

place of Friday are shown when they are feasting on other

cannibal by killing them. But in reality cannibals eat their own

kind, but only after the death, they do not kill and eat.

In Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899)11 there is a description of

a oriental woman by Marlowe. In the novel Conrad devotes a

passage describing the nude oriental woman encountered by

Marlowe. It is typically stereotypical representation of oriental

women by a western writer. This how and what Said wants to in

focus about the representations of the natives by the western

writers.

In Albert Camus’s The Outsider (1942)12 the Arabs are

represented as murderers who are killed by Meursault (FrenchAlgerian). None of the Arabs are named in
this novel like

Friday. Mr. Raymond’s girl friend’s brother and his Arab

friends are represented as Murderers.

In E.M.Foster’s A Passage to India13 also there are such

stereotypes. For example, in a trip to Marbar caves Mrs. Adela

Quested charges on Aziz that he wanted to rape her even if he

had done nothing like that. Actually west assume that Indians

are rapists, this is how things are ideologically brought up in

many of the western texts. Again Mrs. Moore after coming to

India speaks that Indians need civilization which the west can

give them and is considered as superior than the east14. In a

recent Hollywood movie Iron Man – Arabs/Russians are

represented as murderers. Tony Stark is a English hero who is

kidnapped by Arabs.

Conclusion

Postcolonialism critically examines the relationship between the

colonizers and colonized, from the earliest days of exploration

and colonization. Drawing on Foucault’s notion of ‘discourse’,

Gramsci’s notion of ‘hegemony’, Derrida’s ‘deconstruction’

postcolonialism focuses on the role of texts, literary and

otherwise in the colonial enterprise. It examines how these texts

constructs the colonizers (Masculine) as superior and colonized

(effeminate) as inferior. To be fair Said has responded positively

to some of the criticism made on him. In recent years he has

looked more closely at resistance to Orientalism , covered in his

book ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’ and ‘Culture and

Imperialism’. However, it would be unfair to conclude that just

because Said does not venture into the latter territory he

necessarily suggests that the colonialist discourse is all

pervasive. Foucault’s own work suggests that domination and

resistance are inextricably linked. Foucault himself has been

criticized by Gayatri Spivak for not paying attention to colonial

expansion as a feature of European civil society or how

colonialism may have affected the power/knowledge system of

the modern European state. Hence to put it in a nut shell we

cannot disregard Said’s contribution to literary studies. He

opened the way to various critics, such as, Spivak and Bhabha

to explore their theories. His book Orientalism served as a

monument to the postcolonial studies.