Can the Subaltern Speak? Postkolonialität und subalterne Artikulation

by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Spivaks Aufsatz 'Can the Subaltern Speak?', bislang noch nie vollständig ins Deutsche übersetzt, zählt zu den Schlüsseltexten der postkolonialen Theorie.
Anküpfend an die Arbeit der indischen Subaltern-Studies-Gruppe sowie in kritischer Auseinandersetzung mit poststrukturalistischen Theoriebildungen widmet er sich zentral der Frage von Unmöglichkeit und Möglichkeit eines Sprechens der Subalternen.

Der vorliegende Band enthält neben einer Übersetzung der Originalfassung von Spivaks Aufsatz ein Interview mit der Autorin zur Diskussionsgeschichte, eine Nachbemerkung zur 1999 veröffentlichten zweiten Version des Textes sowie eine Einleitung von Hito Steyerl.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Feminism, Theory, Essays, Politics, History

158 pages, Broschiert

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is University Professor at Columbia University. She is known for her English translation of Jacques Derrida's seminal work Of Grammatology, and her own philosophical writings on the postcolonial condition that introduced the term "subaltern" into the philosophical lexicon.

Reviews

[Lit Bug (Foram) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the most radical criticism coming out of the West today is the result of an interested desire to conserve the subject of the West, or the West as Subject.

Spivak is (in)famous, notorious for her dense prose, and rightly so. This little essay took me an entire day, though I’d read it some years back. Not only does she draw upon innumerable relevant theorists to eventually tease out her own amazing, brilliant, inter-disciplinary argument, she uses technical research terminology that requires me to keep Google handy. To write a review that gives a simple gist of one essay by her that also explains her multiple positionings in the theoretical world – those of a Marxist postmodern postcolonial feminist – is a mammoth task. Her prose is heavily condensed, a dynamite that blows up into fast-moving, searing fragments/arguments flying into all conceivable theoretical positions you could challenge her from.

She espouses feminism, but not Euro-centric. Yet she draws from Euro-feminism instead of attacking it. She talks about Third-World feminism, particularly Asian, but also moves beyond the stereotypical racial feminist discourses of the Afro-American position to talk about Afro-French positioning and the dissolution of ‘color’ from the tag ‘women of color’ in the case of African women in Africa, where color is no longer an issue. She brings in Freud, she brings in Marx and Eagleton. She tackles Cultural Studies theorists while acknowledging both their usefulness and their drawbacks. She makes inferences from postmodernist and post-structural theories, to come upon a unique perspective of her own, a practical one derived of various standpoint perspectives. All in a single essay.

She is more famously known as the person who first translated Jacques Derrida's De La Grammatologie into English, which included a translator's introduction that has since been described as "setting a new standard for self-reflexivity in prefaces". Her dissertation was on W.B. Yeats, directed by Paul De Man, titled Myself Must I Remake: The Life and Poetry of W. B. Yeats. In March 2007 Spivak became the University Professor at Columbia University, making her the only woman of color to be bestowed the University's highest honor in its 264-year history. Interestingly, even Eagleton and Judith Butler, whose own texts are sufficiently difficult to read, rank her among the most difficult theorists ever to read.

Note: Her argument about the practice of Sati/Suttee is dealt with in greater detailer in the spoiler tag for those interested. It is not really a spoiler.

By using the text The Intellectuals and Power: A Discussion Between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, as an example, Spivak examines how seemingly benign Western Discourses unwittingly suffer from the same standpoints they apparently criticize. Drawing upon the discussion between Foucault and Deleuze where they theorize about the working class and Maoism, Spivak points out that their conception of Chinese Maoism is an act of Orientalizing, to quote Edward Said – it is a West-specific idea of what Chinese Maoism must be like, which ends up to be completely different from what Chinese Maoism was.

Going against Enlightenment’s assumptions that people behaved in a ‘rational’ way and possessed complete power over the ways their minds thought, Foucault and Gramsci held that consciousness is constructed discursively, which, in Althusserian terms, means that we are ”always, already interpellated”. Shifting discourses of power influence a person’s inclinations and beliefs. The subject no longer has sovereignty over the construction of the self. Foucault and Deleuze also ended up misconstruing the subject as a sovereign in their book.

In other words, these sites for resistance from within the Western discourse themselves unwittingly became agents of oppression – by conceiving the West as the Subject and producing neocolonialist assumptions that answered the queries of the Western Subject by depicting the Third World as the Other, and not responding to the Other as a Subject. (Refer to Edward Said's Orientalism)

Her charge against Western post-colonialism is that through the heterogenization of diverse cultures into a singular, essentialist nomenclature of ‘oppressed women’ or ‘Dalits’ or ‘Africans’ or ‘labor/working class’, “postcolonial studies ironically reinscribe, co-opt, and rehearse neo-colonial imperatives of political domination, economic exploitation, and cultural erasure”.

She also cites Said’s critique of Foucault as putting forth such a mystifying discourse of power that allows him “to obliterate the role of classes, the role of economics, the role of insurgency and rebellion”, which, I think is quite apt – and furthermore, I personally feel that Althusser too only slightly escapes this trap by being a Marxist theorist, lending him access to economics and class with reference to the role of knowledge and power as Foucault in his Euro-centric discourse alludes to. (Of course, he cannot talk about other subalterns, though his ideas have been the basis for others to build upon their own distinct fields.)

Spivak, as far as I know, has been the only postmodernist deconstructionist theorist of consequence so far who has articulated the most crucial pitfall of her methods – she acknowledges on her own that ‘deconstruction’, one of her tools through which she examines ‘how truths are constructed’ not only opens up potential gaps in other ‘essentialist’ discourses, but is an essentialist discourse in itself. She herself, then it follows, accepts that she is in fact complicit in the production of social formations that she ostensibly opposes.

Furthermore, even while critiquing essentialist positions, she acknowledges the necessity of ‘essentializing’ one’s position as a strategy, to combat the ‘epistemic violence’ that the former discourse inflicts on the latter. She contends it is important to strategically make essentialist claims while simultaneously being aware of its crude generalizations, coining the term Strategic essentialism.

The Leftist tendency to homogenize and romanticize subalterns (her attack is directed at Ranajit Guha, founder member of Subaltern Studies Group, who appropriated the Gramscian term to highlight the silence of the subalterns in discourse), especially Indian subalterns, who, by their diversity are more complex subjects than Europeans on a number of counts, Spivak says, has created two major issues:

(a): A logocentric assumption of cultural solidarity among a heterogenous people

(b): A dependence on western intellectuals to “speak for” the subaltern condition rather than allowing subalterns to speak for themselves

While at one point it was novel, radical and of utmost urgency to ‘make visible the unseen’ as Foucault says, now, contends Spivak, it is time ‘to render vocal the individual, both avoiding any kind of analysis [of the subject] whether psychological, psychoanalytical or linguistic’, and which is, in her own words, “that is consistently troublesome”.

Spivak, in the next section, then turns to Freud who recognized colonialization as a cultural/political discourse whereby the very identity of Whiteness is established by self-proclaimed benevolence on their part, their colonial policies garbed in missionary work.

Then, to counter Freud’s use of women as a scapegoat as an ideological formation that informs the monolithic image of ‘Third-World Woman’, Spivak argues, the process of ‘unlearning’ has to be initiated, by “measuring silences into the object of investigation”.

Siting the removal of ‘sati’ or ‘suttee’, as the British transcribe it (the immolation of women till the 19th century on her husband’s funeral pyre when he died) as not a British practice of protecting women against patriarchy and misogyny, Spivak argues that it was an act of political/colonial consolidation by etching in women’s and official history’s memories a genial picture of the British as “white men who are saving brown women from brown men.”

While this statement seems almost blasphemous to many women among us who cannot imagine being burnt when our husbands died, Spivak’s concern is not with defending ‘brown men’ and scapegoating ‘white men’, but with the exposing of how complex reality is, how fluid it renders discourse owing to diverse ideologies that are deeply incompatible yet generalized by discourse, and how essentialist it would be even on the part of postcolonialism to indulge into simplistic notions of ‘savior’ and ‘scapegoat’.

It is complex because it has been unanimously established that women wanted to be saved, Indian men were bent upon forcing them to immolate themselves, rendering women subaltern and silent by force, and that the British intervened to put an end to it out of horror, humanity and pity. This is the accepted opinion – but the nuanced truth is less pleasant. There were some brown men who were nauseated by it, even if in a minority. By what can be interpreted as an act of Althusserian interpellation by which the victims accept a self-defeating ideology and accept the unjust standards of their perpetrators’ ideology, a huge number of women themselves supported the practice and revolted against the British when Sati was banned. And there were both kinds of British – those who genuinely wished to liberate women from their forced deaths, and those who wielded it as an opportunity to consolidate British rule in India by marking a departure from their former policy of non-interference in internal details of Indians with respect to religion and culture.

Also, that class of Indians, whom Thomas Babington Macaulay in his (in)famous Speeches: With His Minute On Indian Education, called “Indians in blood and colour but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect”, were compelled to adopt the British attitude towards other Indians and were yet eager to turn back to their Indian selves – as Spivak says,

Groups rendered psychologically marginal by their exposure to Western impact… had come under pressure to demonstrate, to others as well as to themselves, their ritual purity and allegiance to traditional high culture. To many of them sati became an important proof of their conformity to older norms at a time when these norms had become shaky within.

While this is just a short mention of the multiple perspectives from which she views Sati as it was viewed in the 1800s by Hindus, i.e., the social POV, the economic POV, the religious/shastra/Vedic POV, the political POV and the patriarchal ideology POV, it follows that the British neither really understood what really plagued women under the guise of immolation, nor did they care.

A gross simplification of it is misrepresentation alright, but when opposed in the literal sense in the light of Spivak’s argument, the fallacy of generalization becomes all the more clear, because then the roles would be inversed, with white men becoming the scapegoat and the brown men becoming the savior – when all the while, women, the original subject-subaltern, have no say in it, and are effectively silenced in the rhetoric. If the former argument was espoused by Colonial theories to model history on their ideology, postcolonialist theory slips as well by not being able to let the real ‘subaltern’ speak for themselves by initiating an alternative take on history on their behalf.

Similarly, Spivak discusses the ritual of Jauhar (Mass suicide of Rajput women when their husbands, who were kings, were taken as POW, or were about to be defeated, in order to escape the fate of being gangraped) from various standpoints. Finally, she discusses the 1926 suicide of Bhuvaneswari Bhaduri, a single 16-year old woman and a member of India’s armed struggle against the British, and unable to come to terms with being entrusted a political assassination, waited till she began menstruating before she committed suicide – knowing well that her act otherwise would be construed as the result of illegitimate pregnancy. Despite her menstruation when she died, her family, let alone the society in general, still believed it was due to illicit love.

Drawing upon various arguments through which Spivak marks women’s bodies through socio-economic discourse by going beyond “deconstruction”, she ends on the note that the subaltern cannot speak. Because the very act of speech denies them the status of a subaltern.

I find this very curious as an observation when I remembered an essay by Aniket Jaaware some years ago, titled The Silence of the Subaltern - though the context was that of the silence of subaltern students in a classroom, I remember distinctly that Jaaware ended his essay with the note that “the subaltern is not silent per se – their silence is their scream to be heard, which is conveniently not heard – the subaltern speak through their silence.”

While Jaaware’s argument is about ‘making visible the unseen’, Spivak’s argument is supported by her own admission that the next step is trickier – that of escaping essentialist positions in the quest to be ‘heard’.

Required Basic Prior Reading/Familiarity with:
Foucault’s discourse on Power and Knowledge
Althusser’s notions of Ideology and Interpellation
Gramsci’s concepts of Subaltern and Cultural Hegemony
Ranajit Guha’s Subaltern Studies Group
Marx
Terry Eagleton
Deleuze
Freud on women/female psychology
Hegel
Jonathan Culler
Derrida’s Deconstruction and basic summary of ‘Of Grammatology’
Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’
Jean-Francois Lyotard’s differend

[Zanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is a summary of the highlights of what I understood from the title essay, the only one I have read (taking 6 days). I have written this for aide memoire purposes and because I think through writing. In sharing it, obviously, I mean to entice you to read the essay, not to offer my inept interpretations as a substitute for it, but I have tried to make my 'review' as accessible as possible.

Spivak examines a conversation between Foucault and Deleuze (MF&GD), in which she says they 'ignore the international division of labour, render 'Asia' transparent and reestablish the legal subject of socialised capital' and treat 'the workers struggle' as a monolithic subject, linked to desire (to destroy power or which destroys power). They fail to explain relations between desire, power and subjectivity, and they are totally down on ideological critique, so they cannot articulate a theory of interests (as in holding a stake).

Spivak quotes Althusser on the ideological reproduction of social relations (submission to the ruling class, and the ability to manipulate ruling ideology are made for/in each generation) and notes that while Foucault had a go at shaking this up, he didn't admit that a theory of ideology admits its own institutional production (as postcolonial academics, for example, do). In MF & GD's talk desire, which always follows from interest, is opposed to ideology (seen as 'being deceived' or 'false consciousness') and desire implies an undivided subject, which becomes... Europe!

Intellectuals' valorizations of oppressed subjects and their location of them 'reality is what actually happens in a factory, in a school, in barracks, in a prison, in a police station' serves to reinforce rather than undermine their own epistemic authority: they judge and mark 'reality' and the people who can reveal it. Spivak notes that 'positivist empiricism [is the] foundation of capitalistic neocolonialism and so this use by the intellectual of 'concrete experience' can help to consolidate the international division of labour (the current mess). Intellectuals give us lists of subalterns who can speak, making themselves, representing those folks, transparent.

Spivak highlights the two distinct meanings of the word represent, working through a passage of Marx on class interest, to show that keeping them separate undermines the idea of an undivided subject, whether individual or collective, for whom interest and desire are one as Deleuze suggested. For Marx, class agency is not natural, not rooted in desire (its source is not the erotic in Audre Lorde's sense), because the conditions it responds to (the economic conditions that form a class) are artificial (though they reflect interests - of the ruling class/ideology).

Here is an observation that I really like

'the relationship between global capitalism (economic exploitation) and nation-state alliances (geopolitical domination) is so macrological that it cannot account for the micrological texture of power'

To do that, we need theories that examine the subjects micrologically working the interests that work the macrologic relation (reveal the details of how people/groups on the level of daily interactions structure the global situation). Such theories grasp both kinds of representation: they note how the world is staged in representation to make 'heroes, paternal proxies, agents of power' appear necessary

So, rather than do as Foucalt and Deleuze here and 'reintroduce the individual subject through totalising concepts of power and desire' by loudly refusing to speak for the subaltern, the intellectual should show that the subject can't be undivided, and that their refusal to occupy the subject position is disingenuous because impossible (representation and re-presentation are not the same). Intellectuals should formulate theories of ideology that make their role in ideological reproduction visible. Pointing out this irresponsible sleight of hand that reinstates the subject can be added to Edward Said's critique of Foucault - by mystifying power Foucault can ignore class, economics, the role of rebellion (just like (neo)colonial ideology). Said and Spivak emphasise the intellectual's accountability.

Spivak reminds us that Foucault described the redefinition of sanity at the end of the European C18th and marked it as epistemic violence (Madness and Civilization right?) but she suggests that this is part of the same history of Europe that includes the epistemic violence in constructing the colonial subject as Other, noting the British codification of Hindu law and colonial education in India.

So, from the 'First World' and 'under the standardization and regimentation of socialized capital' (the academy/institutionality/'Western' intellectual status I think), Foucault and Deleuze declare that the oppressed, the illiterate peasant, tribal etc etc, given the chance (issues of representation & re-presentation) and on the way to solidarity, can know and speak their conditions. Spivak replies, on the other side of the international division of labour from the European intellectual (socialised capital) and from 'inside and outside of the circuit of the epistemic violence of imperialist law and education supplementing an earlier economic text, can the subaltern speak?'

This is a question that a particular group of intellectuals - the 'Subaltern Studies' group, who acknowledge Foucault's influence - must ask. Spivak looks at Ranajit Guha, attempting to rewrite the history of the development of Indian national consciousness (because it had previously been written under (or by?) the colonised episteme, and is all about the leadership and importance and heroism of British elites and neocolonial all-India elites (I paraphrase flamboyantly)) and what looks like his strategic essentialism on behalf of 'the people' (subaltern) to locate them and their consciousness, and compares this to Marx (she finds 'moments of productive bafflement' in Marx about subjectivity and consciousness). At least the struggle to make the impossible possible remains in sight and the subject remains divided and heterogenous? I am at sea for a bit...

Woah then she says that the international division of labour depends on the urban proletariat of the comprador countries (Third World ruled by members of the international elite who have no responsibility to the population) not being trained in the ideology of consumerism, because that ideology leads to... political resistance. People who work in Third World sweatshops must not be able to buy the goods they make, or they would form coalitions and demand their rights.

To recap - one one side of the international division of labour is the intellectual, and then Guha's buffer zone, the indigenous bourgeoisie and/or other dominant social groups (who may believe in coalition, who may be consumers, who may speak?) and on the other 'those most separated from any possibility of an alliance among "women, prisoners, conscripted soldiers, hospital patients and homosexuals" [this is Foucault's list]... the females of the urban subproletariat' who 'cannot know and speak the text of female exploitation even if the absurdity of the nonrepresenting intellectual making space for her to speak is achieved'. Spivak then points out that there are people on or beyond the margins of the international division of labour (eg subsistence farmers) who are part of the 'heterogenous Other' that, in confronting, we would have to learn to see ourselves...

Foucault then, ignores the production of the West by the imperialist project. He reinstated the unacknowledged Subject of the West, presiding by disavowal, by pretending to vanish, and his admirers are fooled by the trick. It is absurd, and dangerous, for the First World intellectual to 'masquerad[e] as the absent nonrepresenter who lets the oppressed speak for themselves'.

In contrast to everyone thinking good old Foucault is so politically right on, everyone hates Derrida, but, have a look at this bit of writing by Derrida on grammatology, which actually helps 'the task of the First World subject of knowledge in our historical moment to resist and critique the 'recognition' of the Third World through 'assimilation', by marking and critiquing European ethnocentrism in the constitution of the Other (Spivak says this isn't an apology for Derrida, helpfully, as I am always tempted to see lit crit as a horse race). Keep doing this: mark the positionality of the investigating subject

A little further on *glosses over more stuff I don't really understand* Spivak mentions widow sacrifice in India:

The abolition of this rite by the British has been generally understood as a case of 'White men saving brown women from brown men'. White women - from the nineteenth British Missionary Registers to Mary Daly - have not produced an alternative understanding. Against this is the Indian nativist argument, a parody of the nostalgia for lost origins: 'The woman actually wanted to die.' The two sentences go a long way to legitimise each other. One never encounters the women's voice-consciousness. Such a testimony would not be ideology-transcendent or 'fully' subjective of course, but it would have constituted the ingredients for producing a countersentence

Imperialism paints itself as establishing a good society, and this picture includes woman as the object of protection from her own kind.

Spivak asks if, allowing that the abolition of sati is 'a good thing', an intervention in the poisonous dialectic of white saviours and nativist nostalgia both speaking for the subaltern woman is possible. There follows a look at Hindu scripture (Spivak marks her positionality as postcolonial woman, non-expert etc etc) and what can be salvaged of the history (overwritten by colonial episteme) of sati. She finds that 'what the British see as poor victimised women going to the slaughter is in fact an ideological battleground' (I think of Said here: Orientalist thought erases ideology) since its prevalance in Bengal (it was generally unusual, following the scriptural investigation Spivak calls it an 'exceptional signifier of her own desire') is linked to the fact that widows could inherit property (ie pressure from family members) to population control, to communal misogyny. Moreover, while some praise the courage and devotion of the self-immolating widow, two incompatible 'diagnoses' of female free will are made.

The British had homogenized Hindu law under the imperialist episteme, and using this construct they consulted with learned Brahmans on the legality of suttee (as the British called it), often appearing to condone the practice, but when the law was written this history of collaboration was erased and the writing gives an impression of the noble Hindu triumphing over the bad Hindu and sati, which might be better read as a form of martyrdom, was positioned along with murder, infanticide, the lethal exposure of the very old, erasing 'the dubious place of the free will of the sexed subject as female', so, I conclude, we can no longer see and critique the agenda that paints self-immolation as free will, and as the path to release from the misfortune of having a female body in the cycle of rebirth, or the interests (patriarchy!) that lie behind such an agenda. We are left with (Said's) ritual-obsessed, transfixed, unchangeable, homogenous Orientals and White saviours.

This loss of the subaltern subject also happens even more forcefully in the case of widow celibacy (the word used for this is the word for the pre-sexual stage of life, so the implication is that the widow regresses to a pre-sexual state - there is another word for the virtuous post-sexual elective celibacy accessible to men), because it was ignored while sati was energetically debated.

In fact (I love this point), the word sati means good wife, and the word for widow immolation is 'the burning of the sati' so the British made a grammatical error in their naming (like Columbus, she notes, with 'American Indian'). And this error identifies self-immolation with good-wifeness, narrowing the ideological space to emphasise the heroism of the White man. Spivak looks at Edward Thompson's list of literally translated names of burned widows - pure Orientalism. She then notes that Sati is a popular given name among Hindus, after the goddess Sati, the wifely manifestation of Durga, whose story is one of sacrifice for her husband. Between the two sentences 'White men saving brown women from brown men' and 'The women really wanted to die' then, there is no space from which the sexed subaltern can speak.

Spivak gives (with lots of cautions obviously) as example of the possibility of interventionist practice the case of a young woman, Bhuvaneswari Bhaduri, who killed herself (in 1926) because she had been entrusted with a task of political assassination that she could not face, but waited until she was menstruating so that it would be clear that it was not a case of illicit pregnancy. Spivak's reading makes this a subaltern re-writing of sati because Bhuvaneswari inscribes in her body its non-imprisonment within legitimate passion by a single male. Menstruating widows had to wait for the 4th day ritual cleansing before self-immolation. This unread text recovered by Spivak parallels the nativist rewriting of the social text of sati with the hegemonic Durga story that is 'well documented and popularly remembered through the discourse of the male leaders of the independence movement [and thus, I venture, speak in the place of Foucault & Deleuze's 'people', the 'worker's struggle']. The subaltern as female cannot be heard or read'

And given that the subaltern cannot speak, 'the female intellectual as intellectual has a circumscribed task which she must not disown with a flourish'

[Manal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can the Subaltern Speak? Is an Excellent essay written by a powerful Indian writer. Gayatri Spivak is known as a post colonial theorist. The title of her controversial essay is catchy! Who are the Subaltern? In general the term "subaltern" refers to the poor & the marginalized people in any society. However, the term here refers to the colonized women in India.. Spivak chooses the "sati" women in India as a subaltern who cannot speak. According to Spivak the word "sati" means a good wife and the Hindu female woman will not be good & loyal until she burns herself with her dead husband. This practice was common among the Hindu minorities in India. Surprisingly , the number of the sati women increased during the British colonization. According to Spivak the increased number of sati woman can be interpreted as a form of resistance against the British colonization. Spivak argues that Satis is an Indian ritual, but according to the Colonizer it's a crime! The colonizers claim that it is the social duty of the "white men" to save the "brown women from brown men." Spivak moves to make fun of Edward Thompson's book "suttee" and his failed attempt to anglicize the word "sati." Spivak asserts that the ideology behind the British failed attempts to stop this practice in India is to justify their imperialism! Thompson & many others consider the imperialism as a civilizing mission! Therefore, the subaltern woman cannot speak! Her voice is lost between 2 ideologies . First, the ideology of the Indian culture ( tradition) and the ideology of the social mission of the colonizer (modernization) that consider sati as a crime or a suicide! Finally, Spivak ends her essay by answering her question. She states that the subaltern cannot speak because no one will listen to them....

[Asam Ahmad]

My brain has never hurt this much.

[Adriana Scarpin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nós mulheres do sul global podemos falar? Spivak escreveu esse texto sobre isso já há 40 anos invocando as mulheres indianas, mas a pergunta persiste e as considerações formuladas com base em muita pesquisa ainda reverbera na mulher como ser político.
Livro brevíssimo, mas denso e bem articulado.

[AYAH · Rating 1 out of 5]

Painful read! It was really hard not to hate this! The language was way too annoying for me to care what she had to say :/ Sometimes I wondered if she actually had anything to say, really! But then again i may not be "sophisticated" enough although no amount of sophistication can allow for such a ridiculously contrived use of language.. Life is too short & i promise you can be an accomplished human being without reading Ms Spivak (unless you're a literature grad student in which case I suggest you fake it till you make it!)

[Mollie! · Rating 1 out of 5]

Let's just slam everyone theorist and use impossible verbiage to cover our lack of actual work, shall we? Because short of wanting to rip this apart in frustration, the only person who I think shouldn't speak is Spivak. Let the subaltern speak--I do believe they have a voice, and Spivak isn't the end-all like she believes to be.

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Um amigo meu, acadêmico, havia me indicado este livro para falar sobre representatividade. Comecei a ler e vi que a autora, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, usava muitos termos e teorias foucaultianas e derridianas. Então, perguntei ao meu irmão se ele conhecia esse livro. Claro que conhecia. E ainda me perguntou se eu conhecia um artigo chamado "Pode o subalterno ler Spivak?", que era uma crítica ao texto hiperacadêmico de Spivak, que nunca vai chegar nas mãos de um subalterno, quem dirá ser entendido por ele. Denotando que, por mais que a academia tenha preocupação com as "classes inferiores", a sua produção ainda é incrivelmente elitista e impermeável para muitas pessoas, deixando que o conhecimento circule sempre entre as mesmas pessoas e não se popularize, permitindo, assim, que as elites se mantenham elites e os subalternos, sorry, Spivak, continuem bem subalternos. Se, num momento do texto, Spivak critica os homens brancos que querem defender as mulheres de cor dos homens de cor, será que os acadêmicos não estão fazendo o mesmo movimento? Querem defender as minorias ignorantes e burras das maiorias ignorantes e também burras? Portanto, para um texto fazer a diferença, ele não deve tocar apenas a elite acadêmica, que forma nem 3% da população de um país, mas provocar entendimento e reações da parte que ela mesma estuda e, assim, gerar empoderamento. Não deve, apenas, se colocar degraus acima, bem pasteurizado e de mãos bem lavadas por produzir intelectualmente, olhando tudo com desprezo e descaso, enquanto usam essas minorias para seus prêmios e laureamentos. Todos eles, tanto seus textos como seus prêmios, só conhecidos e valorizados dentro do hermeticíssimo mundinho acadêmico.

[Lorena Fernandes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too many words to say the same thing, over and over. Despite the pretty awsome question, just got the point of it all on the last page.
Guess I'm not intellectually ~mature~ enough for this book yet (?!).

[Duygu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Avrupamerkezciliğe müthiş bir atak. Spivak felaket zeki bir düşünür, söylemin ötesine geçmeyi bu söylemle hesaplaştığını söyleyen isim ve metinler için bile uygulayıp yapısökümünün ne olduğuna dair başarılı bir örnek sunuyor. Fakat metinde bazı problemler var. Öncelikle, Spivak'ın anlatım tarzı akademik metinlerde pek de onaylanmayan düşünürleri, kavramları, metinleri okuyucunun tamamen bildiği varsayımına dayanıyor. Spivak'ın metnini anlamak için kitapta atıf yapılan tüm düşünürleri ve metinleri bilmek gerekiyor zira bazen yarım sayfa bahsettiği metnin neye dair olduğunu bile açıklamıyor. Bu bir problem. Bunun dışında daha metnin ilk sayfasından itibaren tercüme hataları var. İmkan varsa İngilizce'den okunmasını naçizane tavsiye ederim. Son olarak da, teori ile aksiyonu birleştirdiği ikinci bölümde Spivak bir closure yapmaktan daha da uzaklaşıyor ve Bhubaneswari vakasına neden eğildiğini bir çırpıda anlatmaya kalkışıyor, "adaletin hukuki enstrümanı olarak bir sekülerlik arayışı" deyip metinde yeni bir iddia atarak çalakalem bitiriyor.
Metne gelen eleştirilerden biri, Spivak'ın Bhubaneswari vakası üzerinden kendisinin bir madun sesi olmaya kalkıştığı ve madunun mırıltısını susturduğuna dair, zira Spivak kitabın o uzun birinci bölümünü, madun konuşamaz, diyerek sonlandırıyor. Eğer Spivak kitabın ikinci bölümünü, "Yanıt Olarak: Geriye Bakmak" bölümünü, kaleme almasaydı bu eleştiri haksız olurdu. Yine de bu eleştirinin sonuna kadar haklı olduğunu zannetmiyorum zira Spivak 120 sayfalık metnin yaklaşık 110 sayfasında bir hasar tespiti yapıyor. Neyse işte, "Madun Konuşabilir Mi?", Foucault ve Deleuze'e sol bir kroşe Spivak'tan. Zorlu ama nefis bir metin. Tercümedeki sorunlara rağmen Türkçe'de Spivak'ı okumak çok kıymetli.

[Noora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly dense essay, but the reward of working with and understanding this piece is undeniable.

[Gavin Armour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wer den französischen Poststrukturalismus angreifen oder gar verächtlich machen will, muß nur entweder die Frage nach der Verständlichkeit bspw. des Derrida´schen Schreibens und Philosophierens stellen oder aber jene danach, wozu all das Differenzieren, das Nachdenken über das Uneigentliche und vorursprüngliches Werden eigentlich gut sein solle? Wen die Frage aber ernsthaft interessiert, der sollte unbedingt Gayati Chakravorty Spivaks CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK? lesen, findet sich darin doch nicht nur eine ausgesprochen weitreichende Beantwortung der oben gestellten Fragen, sondern auch und vor allem ein Schlüsseltext sowohl postkolonialer wie auch feministischer Literatur. 1988 erstmals in einer wilden, wildes Denken in nahezu unstrukturierter Weise ausdrückenden Version erschienen, ist dies neben Edward Saids ORIENTALISMUS-Buch vielleicht der Schlüsseltext schlechthin, was das Nachdenken hinsichtlich dessen, was lange Zeit „die Dritte Welt“ genannt wurde und deren Entwicklung hin zu einem historischen Subjekt betrifft, zugleich aber auch einer der zentralen Texte der (Post)Moderne in Bezug auf ein (post)modernes Verständnis des Marxismus und, möglicherweise, des Sozialismus.

Es ist ein – das sollte man wohl allen geneigten Lesern fairerweise vorausschauend ans Herz legen – schwieriger Text, ein vielschichtiger Text, der sich die Mühe macht, den eigenen Standort und den Weg zu diesem Standort permanent mitzudenken. Spivak gelingt es, sich gegenseitig befruchtende, bedingende Ebenen fast gleichwertig zu benennen und sie immer wieder in ihrem Text kenntlich zu machen, was die Lesbarkeit allerdings beeinträchtigt, was wiederum keine Kritik sein soll. Wir erleben in diesen Tagen ja eine immense Abneigung gegen jedwede Form des Intellektualismus, komplizierte Sachverhalte sollen bitteschön auf, wenn möglich, 144 Zeichen runter gebrochen werden etc. Das ist allerdings eben nicht mit jedem Sachverhalt möglich. Der Philosoph der frühen Bundesrepublik Karl Popper forderte einst, man solle bitte so sprechen (und schreiben), daß das, was man zu sagen habe, allgemeinverständlich sei. Mag sein, daß das einem Denker der Demokratie gut zu Gesicht steht – es gibt aber Bereiche des Denkens, gerade was historische, soziale und auch emotionale Bereiche und Entwicklungen betrifft, die sich nicht „einfach“ sagen lassen, sondern nur in komplizierten Denkbewegungen darstellbar sind. Ganz besonders gilt dies dann, wenn man versucht denen eine Stimme zu geben, die bisher nicht einmal wussten, daß es „Stimmen“ gibt.

Kann das/die Subalterne sprechen? Was ist das/die Subalterne? Spivak grenzt sich in einer weitausholenden Bewegung zunächst von den gängigen europäischen Intellektuellen ab, die „für“ die unterdrückten Massen in der damals noch so genannten Dritten Welt sprechen – und ihnen damit erneut den Subjektstatus verweigern, indem sie sie nicht „für sich“ sprechen lassen. Namentlich Gilles Deleuze und Michel Foucault sind hier angesprochen, die dieses Gespräch de facto geführt haben. Das hier genannte ‚Subjekt‘ leitet sich aus dem Marxismus ab, aus dem proletarischen Subjekt, das Spivak allerdings in Frage zu stellen wagt, wenn sie fragt, ob es das Marx´sche Proletariat in der Dritten Welt überhaupt gebe? Sind die eurozentrischen Theorien – Ideologien – unmittelbar auf die Bedingungen Afrikas, Südamerikas oder des indischen Subkontinents zu übertragen, dem Spivak selber entstammt? Um den marxistischen Proletarierbegriff zu umgehen, nutzt Spivak den Begriff der „Subalternen“ in dem Sinne, wie er auf der Basis von Gramscis Definition von der ‚Subaltern Studies Group‘ genutzt wurde. Doch stellt sie ihn massiv in Frage, wenn sie ihn zwar gültig findet in dem Sinne, daß in der Dritten Welt genau die Gruppen zu finden sind, die von jedwedem Diskurs durch den Hegemon wie durch die sozialen, die infrastrukturellen und institutionellen Bedingungen ausgeschlossen sind, ihn jedoch weiter ausdifferenziert und spezifisch auf die arme, schwarze Frau anwendet.

Anhand des Beispiels des britischen Verbots des Witwen-Opfers – der Selbstverbrennung von Frauen bei der Beerdigung ihrer Männer – dekonstruiert Spivak den Begriff der Subalternen und weist durch eine literaturwissenschaftliche Lektüre gültiger Wahrheiten – Sätze wie: „Weiße Männer beschützen braune Frauen vor braunen Männern“ nach, daß die Bedingungen, die das Subalterne definieren, eine Diskursfolge – auch eine Folge eines männlichen, eines weißen, eines eurozentrischen Diskurses - sind. In ihrer Abgrenzung gegen Foucault und Deleuze und deren aus Spivaks Sicht typisch eurozentrischen Blicks auch und gerade der sich links oder kritisch gebenden europäischen Intellektuellen, gelingt es ihr, sich aus vorgefertigten Kategorien und Narrativen verschiedener intellektueller Diskurse zu befreien und dennoch keine Haltung einzunehmen, die in Opposition gehen muß.

Sich des Beitrags der Foucault´schen Theorien zu Machtbildung und Machtdiskursen vollends bewusst und diese sehr wohl würdigend, kann Spivak – und diese Wechsel der Ebenen und der dauernden Hinweise der Relais-Stellen, wo die Ebenen ineinander übergehen, bzw. sich bedingen, machen die Lektüre oft anstrengend – nutzen, was ihrer Argumentation nutzt und dennoch Kritik üben, wo sie begreift, welchen Begrenzungen Wissenschafts- und Ideologietheorien unterliegen. Im Rückgriff auf den Dekonstruktionsbegriff, wie Jacques Derrida ihn in seiner GRAMMATOLOGIE entwickelt und definiert hat, kann Spivak scheinbar unvereinbare Ebenen kritischen Diskurses, kritischer Betrachtung, zusammenbringen und dringt tief ein in die Konstruktion dessen, was diskursiv als „Dritte Welt“ bezeichnet wird.

Gerade mit dem Beispiel der Witwenverbrennung und anhand der doppelten Dekonstruktionsbewegung, die sie unternimmt, kann Spivak die sich oft widersprüchlich verheddernden Ebenen aufzeigen, die aus diskontinuierlichen Zeitabläufen entstehen. Mag die urbane, emanzipierte, weiße, mitteleuropäische oder amerikanische Frau einen Diskurs über die Metaebene feministischer Diskurse führen, darüber, ob man viral feministisch sein kann oder welche seltsamen Bündnisse es einzugehen gilt, wenn die verstärkten Einflüsse eines patriarchalen islamischen Denkens in unsere Gesellschaften zurückgedrängt werden müssen - der „Feminismus“ einer Subalternen in Spivaks Sinne besteht schlicht darin, sich zunächst einmal selbst als Subjekt zu begreifen.

Wenn in den Kasten, von denen Spivak spricht, also einige Frauen bereit waren, ihren Männern in den Tod zu folgen – was de facto nur in wenigen Fällen zutraf, während weitaus häufiger Zwang dahinter gestanden haben mag – mag das aus europäischer Sicht ein grausames und barbarisches Verbrechen sein, es war jedoch auch ein Moment, der diese Frauen einmalig zum Subjekt machte (sic!). Da die Briten in ihren Kolonien das Prinzip anwandten, die herrschenden Systeme zu belassen, solange die britische Oberherrschaft und deren Rückzugsräume akzeptiert wurden, wodurch die Briten meist von den Bevölkerungen der jeweiligen Länder, die sie unterwarfen, separiert blieben, dauerte es lange, bis sie gegen die Witwenverbrennung einschritten und dann auch eher auf Geheiß, sprich in Folge einer Öffentlichkeit, die sich zu erregen begann, was also selbst wieder auf einen eurozentrischen Movens hindeutet. Der Weg, den die britische Besatzung dann wählte, war der des formaljuristisch institutionellen Verbots, also ein rein bürokratischer Terminus, in dem weiße Männer schwarzen Männern Vorschriften machten, wie sie mit ihren Frauen umzugehen hätten. Im Kern aber - also strukturell - bleibt es ein männlicher und europäischer Diskurs, der einer schwarzen Frau das Subjekt-Sein nicht nur einfach nicht erlaubt, sondern in dessen Analyse und Dekonstruktion ergibt, daß die schwarze Frau hier als Subjekt nicht einmal gedacht wird. Man sollte dieses Beispiel nicht als irrelevant abtun, wie man auch den ganzen Text, weit über 20 Jahre nach seiner Veröffentlichung abtun sollte, denn seine sozialen und historischen Implikationen sind bis heute nicht zufriedenstellend beantwortet worden, siind nach wie vor in Indien, in Teilen Asiens und vor allem in Afrika mehr denn je vorhanden.

Spivaks Text– mag er in seiner ursprünglichen Form auch schwer zugänglich sein und in der Vielfalt in seiner Themen und Ebenen, die er durchmischt und zueinander in Bezug setzt manchmal fast wirr erscheinen; Schwächen, die in späteren Ausgaben bereinigt wurden – selbst stellt schon eine Subjektwerdung innerhalb eines Diskurses dar und ist damit schon in seiner reinen Existenz und seinem Zugang zu europäischer Philosophie ein Beitrag auch zu durchaus Europa bestimmende Themen. Spivak – sie weist mehrfach im Text darauf hin – erlaubt sich einen sehr freien und deshalb durchaus auch befreienden Umgang mit den postmodernen Theorien, wodurch sie gerade dem Denken Derridas ganz neue, über seine innere „Grammatik“ hinausweisende Möglichkeiten entnimmt und ihn – wie durchaus von ihm gewünscht – in offene kulturelle Diskurse einspeist, in denen dekonstruktives Denken durchaus zu einem Mehr an sozialem, kulturellen und historischen Verständnis führen kann. Zugleich überführt sie diese Theorien aber auch derer oft engmaschigen eurozentrischen Horizonte und kann, wie nebenbei, nachweisen, wie gerade die, die es doch oft „gut“ meinen, zur Verfestigung von Herrschafts- und Machtstrukturen, von diskursiver und terminologischer Hoheit und somit der Zementierung teils uralter Klischees und daraus resultierender Vorurteile beitragen.

Das macht CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK? zu mehr als einem historisch relevanten Text, es macht ihn zu einem Referenztext, den sich europäisches Denken – neben anderen, jüngeren – immer vor Augen halten, ja, dessen er sich unumwunden bedienen sollte, weist er doch vielerlei Anschlußmöglichkeiten auf, die gerade in Zeiten kultureller „Clashs“ bitter Not tun.

[nizar · Rating 5 out of 5]

es una cosa bárbara
deixem-nos d’althusser, foucault i deleuze i posem-nos a llegir spivak (realment a fuckó i dé-les llegim-los sempre)

[Adolfo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fue un libro que me intereso sobre todo por su gran título pero me fue bastante difícil leerlo. Traté de sacar alguna conclusión pero creo que me han quedado tantas lagunas que me es di´fácil dar una opinión. Lo tendré que leer de nuevo cuando mis conocimientos de filosofía sean mayor ;))))

[Kawtar Morchid · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the shittiest thing i have ever read! I thought Academians got over "beating around the bush" as means to make a point but this lady wouldn't agree and that's for sure ...........

[Aman · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I discerned from my reading was two central arguments, which appear to be connected by Spivak's thoughts about complicity.

(Note: I am citing a copy of the essay from Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, found here: Can the Subaltern Speak?)

Spivak begins with Deleuze and Foucault versus Marx on the question of representation. Consider a contradiction: Deleuze and Foucault's position "valorizes the concrete experience of the oppressed", but their argument simultaneously is "uncritical about the historical role [i.e., concrete position] of the intellectual" (69). This contradiction is maintained by verbal slippage, which is itself made possible by the fact that Deleuze (and perhaps Foucault as well) do not take the signifier seriously. A particular signifier that is not taken seriously is representation. While these two thinkers also celebrate theory to be action/practice (which is true), one cannot discount theory's capacity and proclivity to represent things; one cannot "severe theory's link to the signifier" (70). But this is precisely what they (attempt to) do. In their conversation, their aversion to representation results in Deleuze running together two forms of representation, which are distinct in Marx (70-1):

1. Political representation (vertreten) - "speaking for" another's interests
- e.g., representing the interests of an individual or group

2. Aesthetic-philosophical representation (darstellen) - "re-presentation" (it is what it is, you are just presenting it again)
- e.g., representing an object artistically ("portrait"); in philosophy, it refers to the way a subject is thought to re-present reality to themselves as a consciousness

Given that neither Deleuze nor Foucault are sensitive to this distinction, both forms of representation are rejected simultaneously. The intellectual is not "speaking for" an oppressed group because theorizing is just another action (70)—thus, Deleuze attacks vertreten by ignoring theory's ability to represent (its link to the signifier). Moreover, the subject is not predicated as "a representative consciousness", i.e., the subject is not seen as an entity that re-presents reality to itself—thus, Deleuze attacks darstellen, the "theory of the Subject" (70).

Deleuze and Foucault, thus, often construct the following argument: if darstellen is rejected, then vertreten is rejected: "Because 'the person who speaks and acts ... is always a multiplicity', no 'theorizing intellectual ... [or] party or ... union' can represent 'those who act and struggle'" (70).

Denying the possibility of representation, Deleuze and Foucault argue that "the oppressed can know and speak for themselves" (74). Thus, they reintroduce the S/subject in two ways: "the Subject of desire [knowing one's interests] and power [successfully being able to communicate one's interests] as an irreducible methodological presupposition" and; "the self-proximate, if not self-identical, subject of the oppressed" (74, my italics). Deleuze and Foucault argue that subalterns can know and speak what they desire, with the power to be heard. Thus, the Subject of power and desire appears to be, in their minds, the oppressed or subaltern. However, "the surreptitious subject of power and desire" is actually that of the intellectuals (75). This is because it is their institutional capacity (power) and their interest in not representing the oppressed (desire) that secretly constructs a subject with a certain "itinerary" (certain desires accomplished by the power/capacities of that subject). In fact, their "S/subject" is "sewn together into a transparency by denegations" (75). They are in denial that there is a subject to represent ("there is only a multiplicity" they say) and they refuse to accept (or acknowledge) their role as representing. Thus, it is their denial that constructs the transparency of their S/subject; this transparency provides "a cover for this subject of knowledge" (66). While Foucault proclaims to undermine the subject, he sneaks in "the unacknowledged Subject of the West", precisely because of his consistent "disavowal" of its existence: the "him" that knows the subject does not exist is the surreptitious subject (87). All of this is to say that Deleuze and Foucault do end up representing subalterns, under the pretense that they aren't representing at all.

What about Marx? Well, with Marx, we begin with class, which is a concept that can be defined descriptively and transformatively. Descriptively, class is an "artificial", "economic", and "differential" category: "millions of families" form a class if they "live under economic conditions of existence that cut off their mode of life, their interests, and their formation from those of other classes" (70-1). Transformatively, class (consciousness) refers to "an identity of interests" producing a "feeling of community" (72). However, what is crucial is that this "feeling of community" is located in the "artificial" or "social" domain of "national links and political organizations" (73, 81); thus, this "feeling of community" does not transform the individual consciousness of each sovereign subject; in fact, Marx leaves open the "(Kantian and) Hegelian critique of the individual subject as agent" (74). Therefore, for Marx, "full class agency", or "the development of a transformative class 'consciousness' from a descriptive class 'position'", is not the transformation of "the ground level of consciousness" (72)— it is not the transformation of "consciousness in its pure form" (81). It is the "replacement" and "appropriation" of one's "economic conditions of existence" (72). The entire idea of class agency is artificial and social, and this is in no way a critique of Marx, but in fact, it is a recognition of his sensitivity to the critique of the sovereign subject.

Turning to small peasant proprietors: descriptively, they form a class because their economic conditions differ from all other classes. However, there is an absence of collectivity, or "feeling of community", among small peasant proprietors; they lack institutional validation, and so they do not form a transformative class (72). Thus, they cannot represent themselves. Thus, they must be represented; they have someone (Louis Napoleon) speak for them (vertreten). This representative is, therefore, working "in another's interests", as a "substitution" or "proxy" (71). However, as Spivak clearly states, for the small peasant proprietors, "The event of representation as Vertretung [...] behaves like a Darstellung" (72). What does this mean?

Darstellung is representation as "signification" (meaning), as a portrait or as subject-predication: the subject re-presents reality in their consciousness (73). While a proxy (Vertretung) acts in another's interests, they (in their act of representation) behave as if they are simply re-presenting the politics of that group (e.g., small peasant proprietors), as communicating the meaning or "signification" of that group's interests—despite the fact that the collectivity of the small peasant proprietors is absent. Thus, there is a complicity between Vertretung and Darstellung, that a proxy can be seen as re-presenting the meaning of the thing itself, rather than being a dislocated representation of another's interests.

However, this complicity can only be understood if we do not collapse the difference between Vertretung and Darstellung. Deleuze and Foucault eschew this difference, and representation altogether, by reintroducing "the individual subject through totalizing concepts of power and desire" (74). But consider, beyond the proletariat and the subproletariat of the Global South, we find the heterogeneous Other: paperless immigrants, the landless illiterate, "subsistence farmers, unorganized peasant labor, the tribals and the communities of zero workers on the street or in the countryside" (84). To address this "paracapitalist" Other (67), we must learn to represent ourselves (darstellen, or present ourselves as representing, as having a position), before we speak in another's interest (vertreten).

Let's consider Derrida's "Of grammatology as a positive science" for lessons "that retain a long-term usefulness for people outside the First World" (87). The benevolent Western intellectual is actually an ethnocentric Subject that establishes its own identity by selectively defining an Other. How do we keep this from happening? It is important to specify that the subject is Western because, rather than making it universal, it gives the subject a history. The role of the intellectual should be to resist "recognition of the Third World through assimilation" (88)—to resist selectively defining the Other.

Derrida's (or deconstruction's) factual critique of "the European intellectual's ethnocentric impulse" cannot be grounded on first principles because one always starts within a field of knowledge with its set of assumptions. Thus, for Derrida, deconstruction is emphatically not "ideological demystification" (88) because it is not a method of ridding us of all assumptions. We cannot ask and answer the "first questions" that rise above empirical examples. He begins by investigating empirical examples using the tools of grammatology, but this calls for "an awareness [that] the itinerary [and the tools] of the discourse of presence [lies] in" the very critique that he levels against such a discourse (89). To begin, the critique Derrida is offering is not against "ethnocentric scorn", but against "hyperbolic admiration" (88). This over-admiration always "consolidate[s] an inside"; thus, this admiration is akin to the attempt to render one's representation transparent. In Derrida's example, one's admiration still selectively defines its Other, which renders the Other's essence transparent (the Other can know and speak for itself), and functions to give definition to one's own interiority (the Western subject that knows and represents). As a result, Derrida discloses a desire for an "ineffable, nontranscendental ('historical') place", while noting the vulnerability of this desire because he is complicit: his critique (as mentioned) takes place "within the discourse of presence" (89). Spivak argues that this ineffable and historical place, within the critique of "the production of the colonial subject", is the subaltern (89).

This essay ends with the story of Bhuvaneswari Bhaduri. In the 1920s, she was a member of a political group "involved in the armed struggle for Indian independence", and was tasked "with a political assassination. Unable to confront the task [of murder] and yet aware of the practical need for trust, she killed herself" (103). Though female suicides were not uncommon during that time, they were often motivated by an "illicit pregnancy" (i.e., outside of wedlock). However, Bhaduri's suicide was not the outcome of an illicit pregnancy, for she "waited for the onset of menstruation" (103). This gesture showed explicitly that she was not pregnant.

This gesture also subverted the rule "against a menstruating widow's right to immolate herself" and become a sati (104). So, let's consider Spivak's discussion of (becoming a) sati. There are two ways in which "the female subject['s]" agency was understood, by the British reformers and by the Hindus that practiced widow sacrifice (97). Consider two sentences:

1. "The women actually wanted to die" (93). For Hindu practitioners, self-immolation was turned into a signifier of choice or desire for suicide on the part of the female subject.

2. "White men saving brown women from brown men" (92). For British reformers, dissuasion from the act was the sign of female freedom, as the act was performed on the female (the female was the object of sati)

Thus, Spivak argues that the constitution of the female subject's agency "is the place of the différend", an untranslatable from one discourse into the other (96). Why? Isn't the banning of sati the very condition which renders women free?

While the reform freed women from sati, the reform did not address the way in which sati caused "the inexorable ideological production of the sexed subject" (96): to become a sati was an "exceptional signifier of [a woman's] desire", and given that it was a choice, it was the "dubious place [that] the free will of the constituted sexed subject as female" (98). For Hindu practitioners, self-immolation was a reward because the woman was choosing to sacrifice herself for her husband. As a result, Spivak suggests that "Perhaps sati should have been read with martyrdom", or "with war" (where sacrificing yourself for your country is akin to sacrificing yourself for your husband): in both cases, one's own death is considered a reward (98). The British considered sati as a crime akin to murder, infanticide, and lethal exposure of the elderly. The act is done to the female, there is no choice. This was true: women were often dragged to the pyre against their will. However, as a result, the Hindus understood female agency in a particular way, and since the British constructed the woman as an object (on which sati was inflicted) not a subject (101), (they felt that) they did not need to address the question of agency. Thus, the place of female agency was not touched by the British reforms. It is transparent that women do not want sati, this resulted in there being no need to open a space for woman's subject-formation.

Returning to Bhaduri, thus, her act could not even be registered as a "rewriting of the social text of sati-suicide", but rather, was designated "a case of delirium rather than sanity" (104). There was no (institutional) structure, no constellation of concepts, to even recognize what had happened: "her act became absurd" (104). And for some, they still thought it was a case of "illicit love" (104). (Spivak also acknowledges that Bhaduri's suicide may have been prompted by a melancholia, but one triggered by taunts against her for not being married (103). It is not clear what Spivak thinks of melancholia contributing to this act, independent of such taunts.) By this act and its inability to be received, one can identify the subalternity of her position: her ineffable and historical place/moment. For this reason, Spivak concludes that the subaltern cannot speak because their acts cannot be "heard or read" (104). The law banning sati, what was an undeniable good, opened "no space from which the sexed subaltern subject can speak" (103).

The sense in which woman's subject-formation was not touched by the sati reform, thus, appears to present the conditions of possibility for the inability to recognize Bhaduri's act. There are no institutional structures in place to recognize subaltern agency. For the small peasant proprietors, without the ability to have their agency heard, there arised a Vertretung in Louis Napoleon. For the Subaltern Studies group "to rethink Indian colonial historiography from the perspective of a discontinuous chain of peasant insurgences", while addressing "the problem of 'the permission to narrate'" (78-9, my italics), there must be a cognizance of Marx. The Subaltern Studies group rightfully does not eschew the problem of representation, but must eschew the assumption that "there is a pure form of consciousness" (81). "The transformation of consciousness involves the knowledge of social relations" (81): it is artificial. Ultimately, this is why to confront the subaltern "is not to represent (vertreten) them" (as canny political agents with a bedrock consciousness), "but to learn to represent (darstellen) ourselves" (84).

[anne larouche · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bien que j'aie beaucoup aimé le point de Spivak dans cet essai, il était particulièrement ardu à lire (de par les connaissances nécessaires aussi pour s'y mettre). Je ne peux pas garantir avoir tout compris mais j'ai bien aimé l'idée de la transparence du sujet occidental ainsi que la découverte de la logique postructuraliste postcoloniale. Le concept de subalterne posé dans ce concept est définitivement puissant et également dans l'articulation de l'accès au champ politique dans les luttes contre l'hégémonie occidentale dans le monde intellectuel comme dans les luttes décoloniales en tant que telles.

[Jakob Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Puh, sehr dicht geschrieben, aber insgesamt sehr interessant,
Meiner Meinung nach versucht sie hier vor allem derridas dekonstruktion gegen Foucaults genealogische Kritik und Deleuze konzeptualisierung in anti Ödipus zu etablieren (das aber nicht so zentral) und derridas Potenzial einer postkolonial reflexiven feministischen Kritik herauszustellen, also zu fragen, inwiefern die Konstitution eines subalternen, weiblichen Subjektes Teil des imperialen Projekts ist, eine Analyse Dimension die Foucault ihrer Meinung nach nicht ausreichend berücksichtigt

[hanna (lily) · Rating 5 out of 5]

sao tantas camadas, tantas referencias sobrepostas que ainda não consigo alcançar, mas se teve uma coisa que entendi com certeza: a ideia de sujeito não pode ser quebrada com outra ideia de sujeito.

[rory (jess' version)]

:D

[J9sch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brillant essay!!
It was the first piece of postcolonial theory that I read,
She offers a good critique of Deleuze and Foucault and in some way poststructuralizes poststructuralism

[Leni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spivak verweist auf Foucault (Macht und Wissen), Gramsci (Hegemonie), Marx (Ideologie und Unterdrückung) und Derrida (Dekonstruktion) sowie das Verbot der Witwenverbrennung in Indien, um darzustellen, wie dominante Machtstrukturen, koloniale Diskurse und ‚westliche‘ Wissenssysteme die Stimmen der Subalternen systematisch unterdrücken und verzerren.

[Kinga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not the easiest piece to read, but worth the attention

[Miguel Duarte · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://www.comunidadeculturaearte.co...

Tem-se assistido, nos últimos tempos, a um aumentar da visibilidade pública daqueles a quem relegámos à sombra. Homens e mulheres que, fruto do seu estatuto social, do lugar onde nasceram e daqueles de quem descendem, foram votados à subalternidade, lugar reservado para aqueles cujo poder é inexistente, aos que nem direito à sua própria agência têm.

Não é por estas pequenas conquistas recentes, no entanto, que o silenciamento dos subalternos desapareceu. E em sociedades patriarcais que persistem em retirar agência e decidir o que é melhor para determinadas pessoas sem sequer as consultar, são ainda as mulheres os principais alvos deste silenciamento.

Na Índia pré-colonial era vulgar uma cerimónia, de seu nome sati (ou, na versão adulterada pelos britânicos, Suttee), normalmente associada às elites Rajput, na qual mulheres viúvas se imolavam ao lado do marido falecido, alegadamente enquanto prova do seu amor e lealdade. Ora, quando o Império Britânico ocupou a Índia, tal cerimónia foi proibida, com o argumento previsível da defesa das mulheres indianas. O que nunca se procurou fazer foi ouvir as pessoas que alegadamente estariam a ser defendidas.

É precisamente o sati que dá o mote a Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Calcutá, 1942), crítica e teórica Indiana, para Pode a Subalterna Tomar a Palavra?, editado agora em português pela Orfeu Negro, com tradução de António Sousa Ribeiro.

Publicado originalmente em 1985 — a versão revista que serve de base a esta edição em 1988 —, Pode a Subalterna Tomar a Palavra? é uma das obras fundamentais dos estudos pós-coloniais, a par, por exemplo, do famoso Orientalismo, de Edward Said. Mas, enquanto Said se preocupa acima de tudo com o discurso e tem pouco a dizer sobre o destino dos subalternos, das mulheres e dos trabalhadores, da expansão capitalista e da desigualdade económica, Spivak faz disso o âmago do seu discurso.

Pegando na subalternidade de Gramsci, expande-a para designar aqueles que, numa sociedade imperial, mais do que oprimidos, estão completamente fora do discurso hegemónico, com pouco ou nenhum acesso ao imperialismo cultural. Mas não foi para os representar que Spivak escreveu esta obra, já que essa é precisamente uma das críticas que apresenta: “O ventriloquismo do subalterno que fala é a especialidade do intelectual de esquerda”.

Spivak não quer falar pelas subalternas, mas sim perceber se elas próprias têm forma de tomar a palavra, sem que alguém de fora se apresente como sua porta-voz. Apresenta-se, também por isso, muito crítica de uma política de alianças global para um “feminismo internacional”, que julga ser apenas uma forma de prosseguir o imperialismo pós-colonial.

“[A representação], quando é transferida para uma diferença sexual unívoca e não para a classe, pode dar um apoio incondicional à financeirização do mundo, que constrói implacavelmente uma vontade geral na mulher rural engodada pelo crédito enquanto a «formata» através de Planos de Acção das Nações Unidas, de modo que se «desenvolva».”

Sendo obviamente contra a prática do sati, Spivak culpa a sua abolição de modo imperialista, enquanto “homens brancos salvam mulheres morenas de homens morenos”1, pela revitalização da prática com justificações nativistas que se deu após a independência da Índia face ao Reino Unido. Da mesma forma, culpa a racionalização simplista dos britânicos pela associação do sati a um ritual “típico”, uma tradição, quando inicialmente fora até um esquema patriarcal muitas vezes usado para evitar que as viúvas herdassem o dinheiro dos maridos mortos.

Claro que não é apenas dependente dos britânicos o paternalismo e machismo do sati, nem a noção de que o faziam para serem “boas esposas”, mas a própria deturpação linguística feita pelos britânicos, ao associar sati (“boa esposa”) ao acto, quando na realidade o acto se chamava “queima da sati”, é indicador do efeito que tiveram no imaginário local. Aquilo que era um acto incentivado pela elite (masculina), um “rito [que] não era praticado universalmente e não estava fixado numa casta ou numa classe”, torna-se, com a intervenção britânica “salvadora”, um ritual ancestral, rodeado de uma nova aura.

“a «mulher» é apanhada entre a «normalização» interessada do capital e a «inveja» regressiva do homem colonizado” e “o sati regressa pelas fissuras abertas pelo fracasso da descolonização.”

Presa “entre o patriarcado e o desenvolvimento”, a mulher é usada enquanto “missão civilizadora”, para legitimação do poder colonial.

“A imagem do imperialismo (ou da globalização) como princípio estabelecedor da boa sociedade está marcada pela adesão à mulher como objecto de protecção frente aos seus semelhantes.”

É através desta narrativa que homens brancos vêm salvar mulheres morenas de homens morenos. Spivak não quer com isto sugerir que há uma fantasia colectiva de todos os homens brancos, mas sim mostrar como o mero enquadramento do “salvamento” da mulher morena é um globalizar da forma de olhar ocidental, que dá ao sujeito colonial uma branquitude honorária. A universalização não é mais que uma continuação do imperialismo, um persistir em pensar o “Terceiro Mundo” através do “Primeiro Mundo”, sendo a própria construção monolítica da “mulher do Terceiro Mundo” que tem de ser protegida parte da formação ideológica masculina-imperialista.

“[…] a protecção da mulher (hoje em dia, a «mulher do Terceiro Mundo») torna-se um significante para o estabelecimento de uma sociedade boa (agora, um planeta bom)”

Acabar com o sati é, então, uma mera confirmação da superioridade ocidental, um “salvamento” velado que ignora as pessoas que salva. Visto do “Primeiro Mundo”, o sati é meramente grotesco, nunca albergador de complexidade. O auto-sacrifício, em tantos contextos defendido como uma abnegação do eu, é ali transformado em mera incivilidade.

“Era claro que o sati não podia ser lido nos mesmos termos que o martírio feminino cristão, com o marido defunto em vez do Um transcendental, ou que a guerra, com o marido em vez da soberania ou do Estado, por causa dos quais pode mobilizar-se uma ideologia inebriante de auto-sacrifício. […] A acção era sempre masculina; a mulher era sempre a vítima.”

Ora, pode então a subalterna tomar a palavra, se ninguém a quer ouvir? É precisamente para tentar responder à questão que Spivak traz o exemplo de uma familiar sua afastada, Bhubaneswari Bhaduri, que, com dezasseis ou dezassete anos, se enforcou no modesto apartamento do pai na zona norte de Calcutá em 1926. Fê-lo, no entanto, menstruada, para não deixar dúvidas de que a razão do seu suicídio não fora uma gravidez indesejada, aquela que seria a razão automaticamente atribuída a um caso como o seu. Bhubaneswari era membro de um dos grupos envolvidos na luta armada pela independência da Índia e tinha sido incapaz de levar a cabo um assassínio político que lhe tinha sido confiado. Sem outra forma de tomar a palavra, acaba a reescrever o texto social do suicídio sati, sendo que até a menstruação dialoga com esse ritual, invertendo-o, já que, no sati, a viúva nem sequer tinha o direito de se imolar enquanto menstruada.

Mas aquilo que neste caso é importante para responder à pergunta de Spivak é a memória que ficou de Bhubaneswari na sua família: ninguém via nela qualquer relevância, e as suas sobrinhas achavam que se tinha suicidado por um amor ilícito. Bhubaneswari Bhaduri não era, realmente, uma subalterna; pertencia, aliás, à classe média. Tentara falar através do seu corpo e não fora ouvida. Não era subalterna e nem sequer fora capaz de tomar a palavra. Acabou até por conseguir fazer chegar a sua mensagem a Spivak, tantos anos mais tarde, mas é inegável que para o fazer teve de pagar com a sua vida, e que a generalidade das pessoas não a ouviu.

Com uma pergunta tão directa a dar-lhe título, Pode a Subalterna Tomar a Palavra? pode até dar uma ideia de inteligibilidade, de acessibilidade, mas é um livro densamente teórico e académico, mais parecido com uma tese que com um manifesto político. Spivak está interessada em usar o caso do sati como base para desenvolver o seu pensamento face à abordagem ocidental aos problemas dos ditos “países do Terceiro Mundo”, agora países em desenvolvimento. É, também, uma crítica à postura dos ocidentais que julgam poder falar pelos interesses dos subalternos, acima de tudo os intelectuais ocidentais, e ao feminismo ocidental capitalista, enquanto luta “global” que pode acabar por fazer ainda pior pelas mulheres subalternas.

Muitas vezes puramente filosófico e conceptual, roça por diversas vezes a ininteligibilidade, tal é a quantidade de conceitos e teorias a discutir, partindo, antes de qualquer discussão do sati, de uma entrevista entre Foucault e Deleuze para se espraiar por considerações sobre Marx, Hegel, Kant, Derrida, Freud e tantos outros, criticando o ignorar da “violência epistémica do imperialismo” por parte destes nomes (e as suas consequências no estado actual dos ditos “países do Terceiro Mundo”). O mínimo conhecimento do pensamento destes teóricos é, portanto, recomendável.

A densa teorização de Spivak assusta, sem dúvida, mas, conseguindo ultrapassar essa barreira, o que se extrai é um pensamento rico, complexo, e imprescindível. Num mundo onde persistimos em olhar quem não nos está directamente relacionado como o Outro, talvez retirarmo-nos do centro do Mundo possa ser a diferença entre dar a estas pessoas agência para tomarem as suas próprias decisões ou persistir no erro de as “salvar” delas mesmas.

1 “Moreno” é, neste contexto, utilizado para traduzir brown, enquanto referência racial associada a brown people, ou seja, “pessoas morenas”. Uma decisão algo questionável, dado moreno não ser propriamente empregue nesse sentido na língua portuguesa.

[Leopoldo · Rating 5 out of 5]

De los textos más inteligentes y esclarecedores que he leído en mucho tiempo. Además, el prólogo de Manuel Asensi Pérez ayuda mucho a esclarecer la escritura efectiva aunque súper especializada de Spivak.

[Pseudonymer Pelikan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sehr interessanter und ideenreicher Essay, der einiges an Vorwissen über poststrukturalistische Theorie und ein aktives, ordnendes Lesen erfordert.
Meines Erachtens wurde der Text in seiner Rezeption im Schwerpunkt teilweise verändert.
Die Übersetzung erschwert die Lektüre eher, das in dieser Ausgabe gekürzt und in deutscher Übersetzung enthaltene Gespräch Spivaks zur Rezeption ihres Textes ist dafür sehr aufschlussreich.

Also: Lesen und nicht nur darüber lesen, wenn möglich, im Original und ergänzt durch das Gespräch mit Landry und MacLean

[Manuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm still unsure whether this book is useful for anyone who isn't either in Western academia or involved in some well-intentioned nonprofit-industrial complex type politics. That being said, its critique of Deleuze, Foucault, and its uses and misuses is canonical and worth knowing. I also liked the whole "subalternity as difference" stuff.

Una crítica despiadada de la academia occidental y sus intentos de "darle voz a los sin voz". No deja de ser una crítica interna, de esas que aceitan el aparato ideológico académico-político norteamericano. De cualquier modo, me parece que el concepto de subalternidad como diferencia es muy piola como herramienta en el pensamiento poscolonial o decolonial.

[Simone Sampson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can the subaltern speak? is a wonderful essay that explores the question of subject constitution and object formation in the postcolonial world. The post-colonialist wants to rid the intermediaries to allow those placed in the position of the Other the moment to speak but how will the Other speak when all experience is already constituted through representations? Language is filled with power and so authenticity and transparency are impossible. There must be an interpretation of Other's cultures although it is a messy process. Dashabi criticizes her work for being politically suicidal and untenable, nevertheless Spivak has given us the opportunity to understand the process of subject constitution and object formation is much more complicated in the postcolonial world.

[Lucy Carrillo]

"According to Foucault and Deleuze (in the 1st world, under standardization and regimentation of socialized capital), the oppressed, if given the chance (problem of representation) on the way to solidarity through alliance politics (Marxist thematic at work here), can speak and know their conditions. We must now confront the following question: on the other side of the international division of labor from socialized capital, inside and outside the circuit of the epistemic violence of imperialist law and education supplementing an earlier economic text, can the subaltern speak?"

[Ahmad Hamdy · Rating 3 out of 5]

«هل يستطيع التابع أن يتكلم؟ «ولأول وهلة، يبدو وكأنه نوع من الاستفهام الاستنكاري، فمن الطبيعي أن يتكلم التابع، فهو كائن بشري يستطيع الكلام، والكتابة، والتعبير، لكن مؤدى الفكرة التي تريد سبيفاك طرحها هو هل توفرت السياقات الثقافية المؤاتية للتابع لكي يتكلم؟ هل يتمكن من الحديث، وإسماع الآخرين صوته؟ فالشعوب المستعمرة سلب منها حق تمثيل نفسها، أي سلبت حق الكلام، والكلام هو الوسيلة الوحيدة لتأسيس معرفة متماسكة عن التابع، ووعيه، ووجوده. بعبارة أخرى فثمة فرق بين الفكرة القائلة إن التابع فرد مندمج في جماعة، والأخرى القائلة إنه كائن جرى تمثيله عبر الخطاب الاستعماري