An Analysis of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Can the Subaltern Speak?

by Graham Riach

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

Genres: Nonfiction, Anthropology

106 pages, Hardcover

Published July 15, 2017

Reviews

[Dorrit · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bad

[irina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the Macat guide-books and this one was pretty good too. 1) They could be quite useful as additional tools when working on the text because it places the writing in historical context as well as in academic debates - especially helpful for people new to the discipline 2) These books are useful in case you are not too dedicated to reading tones of various key works but want to have some general ideas around them in just few hours. The language is very accessible and no prior knowledge is required to understand the text. Basically the main audience is the wider public who are interested but feel discouraged by (often needless) complexity of lot of academic texts.

[Carol Lina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This little guide was a good general introduction to Gayatri Spivak's essay. However, much of what this book covers can easily be found for free online. I wish the book had gone a bit deeper and helped to break down some of the especially difficult passages in Spivak's original work to make it more accessible to the general reader. Instead, this guide reads more like a translation.

[Jane Dodge · Rating 1 out of 5]

How can you change the world if no one can parse out your argument?

[Stella Butler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful danke