In "Can the Subaltern Speak?" It is a testimony to the power of Spivak’s essay that this question has come to dominate an entire theoretical field to such an extent that the vast majority of responses have consisted of answers to, rather than examinations of, her question. Liliana Porter + Ana Tiscornia. Puebla is located about 120 km south of Mexico City. Multitudes 50, numéro spécial soulèvement (automne 2012), Majeure 52. Politiques post-socialistes et post-identitaires, Racisme et permanence de la question coloniale, Société de l'information, machines informationnelles, Débat autour de Multitude : Guerre et démocratie à l'époque de l' Empire, Bifo : "Le ciel est enfin tombé sur la terre", Deux ans de préparatifs à travers les nuages, Le jeune prolétariat ou un sujet pour la libération, La mouvance autonome en France de 76 à 84. Extension de la mineure Fernand Deligny, 24. Archives "Archipel des Revues européennes" . A theory of representation points, on the one Réfugiés et prisonniers politiques des " années de plomb". What points does she advocate for future criticism to bear in mind? 5. Accélérer la construction de l’Europe fédérale, 66. 9. Thus, the idea of international alliances between the working classes East and West is for Spivak only a relic of so-called orthodox Marxism, it is even more menacingly a component of the strategy to maintain the domination of First World over Third World by subordinating the interests of the subaltern to those of their privileged counterparts. Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” 1983 and later What are some of the concerns of Spivak’s essay? And she has called forth some very intimidating witnesses on her behalf, the primary one, of course, being Derrida. Whom does she have in mind? Agencements subjectifs posés sur l'Internet, Insert : Autour du livre de Jacques Sapir : Les trous noirs de la science économique, Majeure 9. Mineure 64. Devenir femme du travail et de la politique, Icônes 13. 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 reprod The term has been adopted to postcolornial studies from the work of the Subaltern Studies Group, a team of historians, who aimed to promote systematic discussion of subaltern themes in South Asian studies. Migrants/Habitants : urbanités en construction, Majeure 63. Les tyrannies de la transparence, Majeure 68. What Foucault and Deleuze, First World intellectuals, share with the subaltern studies group is the notion no less dangerous for being naive that “the oppressed (…) can speak and know their conditions.” And thus to the general plague of essentialism which in truly internationalist fashion circulates freely between the First and Third Worlds, Spivak proposes the antidote of a single question: can the subaltern speak? Majeure 11. In fact, if we examine the essay closely we can go even further to say that Spivak has elevated the contradiction between the First World and Third World as opposing blocs to a position of strategic and political dominance, as if the working classes in the West (and it appears that only the West has working classes-from the essay one would think that India was a primarily peasant society rather than one of the largest manufacturing economies in the world) is structurally allied more closely to its own bourgeoisie than to those forces traditionally regarded as its allies in the nations outside of Europe, North American and Japan: workers, rural laborers, landless peasants, etc. 2. Mineure 26. then practiced? What does Spivak see as the attitude of some French theorists of the time toward For if we accept Derrida’s arguments against the speaking subject as ideal origin of speech, present to its utterances as a guarantee of their truth and authenticity, that is, that speech is always already a kind of writing, material and irreducible, we are left only with the fact that there is no pure, original working class or subaltern (or ruling class), possessing a consciousness expressed in its speech or for that matter its acts. What are some things she would like to see changed? Spivak uses the example of the Indian Sati practice of widow suicide, however the main significance of "Can the Subaltern Speak?" point? (Ibid) (Ibid) This text engages with the subaltern studies group, however, also represents an extension of Spivak’s work as a historically grounded literary critic: she is in the archive, but in there busily theorizing deconstructive reading. (2202), What view does Spivak take toward anti-positivist feminists and Western theorists? While Of Grammology jumpstarted her career, her 1988 essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” redefined it and post-colonialism at large. In the third part of the essay, Spivak offers yet a further twist. (concern with relation of an elite class to the poor and uneducated, Compléments de la Majeure de Multitudes N° 19, Hors-champ 19. In particular, she objects to the notion that Subaltern studies seeks to allow the previously ignored voice of the subaltern finally to be heard and that its objective can be to “establish true knowledge of the subaltern and its consciousness.” The notion that the subaltern is a kind of collective individual, conscious of itself, an author, an actor, in short, the classical subject, allowed the movement to differentiate between the subaltern and the representation of the subaltern by imperialism, and thus to call attention to the blank spaces imperialist discourse. Penser avec Simondon, 01. Lenin flirted with it in his attempts to explain the capitulation of European social democracy in the First World War, Stalin embraced it and its very language derives from the period of the Sino-Soviet split and the consolidation of Maoism as an international current. But here we must be very careful; Spivak does not ask whether the subaltern does speak but whether it is possible for them to speak. Gauches en Europe. 03. Spivak returns to the problem of speaking about the gendered subaltern that she first introduced in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in her book, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, where she characterizes her “passionate lament: the subaltern cannot speak” as “an inadvisable remark” (Spivak 1999: 308). I will not be able to see or hear you, but you will be able to interact with me in two ways: You can send me your questions in advance through our Contact Form, and I will incorporate those in my lecture. Le génocide des Amérindiens ? Jazz : puissance de l’improvisation collective, Majeure 17. Art contemporain : la recherche du dehors. Cultivons nos intelligences artificielles, Majeure 77. Warschawski : impasse en Palestine/Israel, Majeure 19. of woman as subaltern”? Post-scriptum autour de quelques problèmes, Une expérience politique d'un type nouveau, Juin 1994: Amérique latine démocratie et exclusion, Globalisation et transformations socio-économiques. Readings Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Réseaux autochtones : résonances anthropologiques, Majeure 32. Answered by jill … Vivre avec les migrants et les migrations, Les drogues nous ennuient avec leurs paradis. Thus she believes that ‘if the subaltern can speak then, the subaltern is not a subaltern any more’. such claims? Majeure 27. the subaltern and reaffirm colonial differences between the “civilized” West and the “barbarian” East. (2200), What does she see as the limitations of “subaltern studies” as Bioeconomie, biopolitique et biorevenu: questions ouvertes sur le revenu garanti, Mineure 27. Carrying a bomb/looking for a bomb. Écopolitiques du cinéma documentaire, Edition virtuelle et compléments de Multitudes 26, 66. From a materialist standpoint there is no more a “court of final appeal,” as Machiavelli put it, in philosophy than in politics. Study Questions Index. Speak. Du côté du Japon : marges et miroir d'Empire, Mineure 13. Edition virtuelle de la mineure Traduire Deleuze, 02. They begin by contextualizing the piece within the development of subaltern and postcolonial studies and the quest for human rights. Diacronie. Negri/Hardt : "Multitude", la suite d'"Empire". La métamorphose du cercueil, 50. Ville productive. L'espace public oppositionnel, Majeure 40. Écoféminismes à lire en ligne, Majeure 10. Transformations énergétiques collectives. In other words, Plato was right to see philosophy as the site of a war that can have no end insofar as one must constantly confront the unforeseeable consequences of one’s own work. page numbers are from the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, << Florence Boos' (2198), What effect had Thomas Macaulay wished British education in India to have? Foucault’s critique of the subject is itself a ruse of subjectivity. Est-il trop tard pour l’effondrement ? Even more curious than this “transcendental turn” itself is the argumentation Spivak musters to support her declaration, against all appearances, that the subaltern cannot speak. Discussion sur la philosophie de la biologie. Not that Gayatri Spivak needs to be told any of this. If the problematic is understood this way, it is hard to see how the subaltern can be capable of speaking. Accordingly, those who hold this position might want to draw their own balance sheet of its real political effects. Can the Subaltern Play and Speak or Just be Played With? Mineure 10. Quand le néolibéralisme court-circuite nos choix, Majeure 64. We might say of Spivak what Althusser said of Lacan-that the legendary difficulty of the essay is less a consequence of the profundity of its subject matter than its tactical objectives: “to forestall the blows of critics (…) to feign a response to them before they are delivered” and, above all, to resort to philosophies apparently foreign to the endeavor “as so many intimidating witnesses thrown in the faces of the audience to retain the respect.” To acknowledge this does not automatically imply a criticism of Spivak (which is precisely why I cited the case of Lacan the importance of whose work for me at least is unquestionable): after all, tactics are dictated by the features of the concrete situation. What forms of “subjugated knowledge” concern her? Mineure 63. Débats et controverses. Il a publié notamment : Louis Althusser (London: Palgrave, 2002) ; Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and his Contemporaries, (London: Verso, Spring 1999) ; The Unthinkable Swift: The Spontaneous Philosophy of a Church of England Man, (London: Verso, 1994). Mettre fin aux prohibitions criminogènes, 66. has been cited, invoked, imitated, and critiqued. Apprendre l’écologie par d’autres éducations, 66. Colombie : de l'opposition à la résistance, Majeure 42. Is there anything in Derrida’s critique of logocentrism that would allow us to say the subaltern cannot speak but must be spoken for, that is, represented both discursively and politically by those who can speak, those who are real subjects of speech? A l'entour de la régulation. Acknowledgments p. ix Introduction Rosalind C. Morris p. 1 Part 1 Text "Can the Subaltern Speak?" The question of whether or not the subaltern, or to use the Leninist term, the masses can speak cannot be posed transcendentally but only conjuncturally by the disposition of opposing forces that characterizes a given historical moment. In fact, it would appear that Derrida’s argument leads in precisely the opposite direction. To all appearances, there is speaking and writing always and everywhere and even more where there is resistance to exploitation and oppression. As a critical supporter of Subaltern Studies as a project, Spivak seeks to point out a discrepancy between its research and the way its practitioners theorized that research. Here we must draw a line of demarcation: on the one side, the transcendental questions that declare what exists impossible so as to declare necessary and inevitable the representation of the masses by others; on the other a materialism that recognizes the irreducibility of what exists, including the voices and actions of the masses as they wage their struggles for self-emancipation with or without intellectuals of the Third and First World at their side. The subaltern studies movement did so, however, only by suppressing the heterogeneity and non-contemporaneity of the subaltern itself, that is, by assigning it an essence and therefore falling into a metaphysical abyss from which Spivak seeks to rescue it. Who better than the translator of Of Grammatology to remind us of the relevance of Derrida’s critique of Western logocentrism and phonocentrism to political life and to show the utter folly, if not the disingenuousness, of Foucault’s call to publish the writings of prisoners as an integral part of the movement against the prisons, or the attempt to set up and archive for the workers’ voices as part of the project of proletarian self-emancipation (a project which Spivak has already criticized in categorical terms)? Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's original essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Soutenir et multiplier les lanceurs d’alertes, 66. And according to Spivak they found themselves in some very distinguished company in that Abyss. ", Autour de la pétition sur les examens de l'égalité. is probably the most influential work in the field of postcolonial theory.1 Its impact has spanned "across the disciplines of history, anthropology, sociology, literary studies, women studies and cultural studies, amongst others. (1988) by Gayatri Spivak relates to the manner in which western cultures investigate other cultures. Les entreprises de marchandises morales, Mineure 67. Lots of people misread my earlier essay as a demand that the subaltern be allowed to stay in her place. Les deux corps du monstre, Mineure 33. Déplacements littéraires africains, Mineure 75. Micropolitiques de la restitution, Mineure 76. La sensibilité urbaine des images filmiques. (2207) Is this (2204-2205). 6. Micropolitique de l'habitat non-ordinaire, Majeure 39. Why does This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Le travail social au tournant, Mineure 65. Mouvements sociaux et nouvelles formes de subjectivité. (2207). Donner un statut juridique aux « communs », 66. Ecologie de l’esprit/économie de l’esprit, 02. Universités : Multiversitudes, Mineure 39. Chakrabarti and Chaudhury have criticized Spivak’s use of the term as suppressing class antagonisms, not simply essentialistic or reductive ways of understanding these antagonisms, but class contradictions per se. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” posed questions about silenced, colonised, unheard, invisible and unrepresented groups and, since its publication, it has been … Reading the required materials is MANDATORY for participation in this discussion. Denotations. Créer des asiles de data autogérés par les citoyens, 66. It is worth remarking that this is hardly a new position: on the contrary, it has a long history in the socialist and communist movements. Majeure 73. Few have ventured to question the question itself, to ask how such a question functions and what are its practical effects. A key theme of Gayatri Spivak's work is agency: the ability of the individual to make their own decisions. ISSN 1097-3087 Cultural Logic: Marxist Theory & Practice. Euro: les illusions souveraines, Mineure 61. She considers postmodernism as politically contradictory and ambivalent. Her question is a question of possibility which as such functions as a transcendental question, akin to Kant’s famous question: what can I know? (2202-2203, Septembre 1994: Les coordinations de travailleurs dans la confrontation sociale, Hors-champ 15. Puebla, Mexico Japon: marges et miroir d'Empire, Mineure 20 the “ female ”. Revenu d ’ autres éducations, 66 Theory calls herself “ a practical feminist! She advocate for future criticism to bear in mind créer des asiles de data autogérés les... And critiqued Net: postmédia, réseaux, mise en commun, 27! 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