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Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's original essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" transformed the analysis of colonialism through an eloquent and uncompromising argument that affirmed the contemporary relevance of Marxism while using deconstructionist methods to explore the international division of labor and capitalism's "worlding" of the world. Spivak's essay hones in on the historical and ideological factors that obstruct the possibility of being heard for those who inhabit the periphery. It is a probing interrogation of what it means to have political subjectivity, to be able to access the state, and to suffer the burden of difference in a capitalist system that promises equality yet withholds it at every turn.
Since its publication, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" has been cited, invoked, imitated, and critiqued. In these phenomenal essays, eight scholars take stock of the effects and response to Spivak's work. They begin by contextualizing the piece within the development of subaltern and postcolonial studies and the quest for human rights. Then, through the lens of Spivak's essay, they rethink historical problems of subalternity, voicing, and death. A final section situates "Can the Subaltern Speak?" within contemporary issues, particularly new international divisions of labor and the politics of silence among indigenous women of Guatemala and Mexico. In an afterword, Spivak herself considers her essay's past interpretations and future incarnations and the questions and histories that remain secreted in the original and revised versions of "Can the Subaltern Speak?"—both of which are reprinted in this book.
Since its publication, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" has been cited, invoked, imitated, and critiqued. In these phenomenal essays, eight scholars take stock of the effects and response to Spivak's work. They begin by contextualizing the piece within the development of subaltern and postcolonial studies and the quest for human rights. Then, through the lens of Spivak's essay, they rethink historical problems of subalternity, voicing, and death. A final section situates "Can the Subaltern Speak?" within contemporary issues, particularly new international divisions of labor and the politics of silence among indigenous women of Guatemala and Mexico. In an afterword, Spivak herself considers her essay's past interpretations and future incarnations and the questions and histories that remain secreted in the original and revised versions of "Can the Subaltern Speak?"—both of which are reprinted in this book.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 7, 2012
SPIVAK'S PROSE IS MORE OPAQUE THAN A CASTLE WALL.
The ideas in this volume are very interesting, but, unless you're a genius, I'd recommend reading this in a class, so that you might be guided through some pretty complex and difficult intellectual waters.
The ideas in this volume are very interesting, but, unless you're a genius, I'd recommend reading this in a class, so that you might be guided through some pretty complex and difficult intellectual waters.
July 11, 2018
Often cited, often referred to in both Postcolonial and Subaltern studies, Spivak poses the now famous question, can the subaltern speak? For anyone wanting to delve into either of these fields this essay is a must as so much writing that came after has been inspired by this text. Despite its convoluted style, the essay´s reflection on the position of women in the developing world continues to be important and also reveals the continuing struggle of intellectuals in the postcolonial field as they often find western based theories inadequate to describe what they see happening in their countries.
January 10, 2016
Typical, completely unintelligible postcolonial prose.
March 13, 2015
Read just the original, quite fascinating, easy to forget, how a process of distanced social construction can take place, creating the subject on which you yourself start to project ideas and conceptions. Is it even possible to study other cultures, without becoming a part of the postcolonial discourse? Her thoughts on, how women from different cultures come into this are interesting, showing how they are pushed out of the discussion all together- their voices are not even there.
February 3, 2026
The Hindu widow ascends the pyre of her dead husband. The colonial administrator shouts: "Let us, as white men, save brown women from brown men." To which the Indian nativist responds: "But the women actually wanted to die." It's against these mutually constitutive ideologies of violence that Spivak sets out to retrieve the muted consciousness of the woman on fire.
A formula of subject constitution that permits women only a mediated expression of agency is repressive. The colonial administrator seizes upon this violence of native patriarchy to justify his civilising mission. The native elite also seizes upon this violence as a marker of coherence of indigenous identity: "Groups ... had come under pressure to demonstrate, to others as well as to themselves, their spiritual 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." The two violences are mutually constitutive because they define themselves in contradistinction against one another, hence writing the other into one's myth of origin. The grieving woman standing at the beginning of the history of sati remains unheard. Here we see one violence force its weight upon another: what happens isn't the demolition of the weaker of the two, but a double stranglehold on any articulation of alternative consciousness.
Can the subaltern's consciousness be retrieved? Spivak says no. She quotes the example of Bhuvaneswari Bhaduri, a young woman who committed suicide due to political despair rather than shame of illegitimate pregnancy. Bhuvaneswari purposefully chose to hang herself during her period to disprove the latter possibility. The waiting for menstrual blood was done but no one could read its meaning for decades. For quite some time the presence of menstrual blood only led to puzzlement and dismissal of the case. Socially sanctioned discourses are hostile to subaltern attempts at re-writing.
And who are the subaltern anyway? A heterogeneous group straddling class, gender, race and the most incongruous divides within each category cannot easily be reduced to the 'oppressed masses' in western leftist discourses. Some satis were brahmins. The corruption of 'sati' to 'suttee', and its meaning from 'good wife' to 'the burning of good wife', transcribes only the arrogant white man in his totalising desire to represent all brown women he thinks need his saving. Such a totalising desire to represent is still present in much of the social critique coming out of the West today.
Spivak criticises Foucault and Deleuze for evading the question of the positionality of the investigating western intellectual. Is Foucault commiting 'white men saving brown women from brown men', even an accomplished thinker on heterogeneity and the Other as he is? In the most extreme sense, yes, for the romantic invocation of a globally oppressed population (and the appropriation of their struggles for the French working class) is done without the declaration of the intellectual's interests: the intellectual could walk freely in and out of the subjectivity of this population, as it were, without having to make his own standing place visible. Such sleight of hand from re-presentation as in art and literature (darstellen) to representation as in politics (vertreten) only consolidates the imagined collective Other of the West. (Was Foucault versed with modern Chinese history when he borrowed Maoism to name the French New Left?)
Spivak is speaking from an extremely precarious place, 1) not only against ideologies of violence that perpetuate each other, 2) but also against the outsider-intellectual's desire to carry off the subaltern with his totalising argument, 3) with a full understanding that this subaltern subject, posited to be at the beginning of an infinite series of deferrals of her own articulation, may remain forever elusive or lost (for the very good reason that the deferrals may prove insurmountable).
Will one despair? Will one let the subaltern wander forever in limbo? Despite the irretrievability of subaltern consciousness, Spivak suggests intellectuals keep trying, while fully acknowledging the limits of their own knowledge. I agree with this. The self-immolating sati lends a powerful tool for social critique elsewhere: France's banning of the hijab, America's criminalisation of Islam after 911, UK's proscription of Palestine Action, and most pernicious of them all Israel's hijacking of antisemitism. With regard to the last two instances, Spivak's call for constant anti-hegemonic elaboration is more relevant now than ever.
A formula of subject constitution that permits women only a mediated expression of agency is repressive. The colonial administrator seizes upon this violence of native patriarchy to justify his civilising mission. The native elite also seizes upon this violence as a marker of coherence of indigenous identity: "Groups ... had come under pressure to demonstrate, to others as well as to themselves, their spiritual 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." The two violences are mutually constitutive because they define themselves in contradistinction against one another, hence writing the other into one's myth of origin. The grieving woman standing at the beginning of the history of sati remains unheard. Here we see one violence force its weight upon another: what happens isn't the demolition of the weaker of the two, but a double stranglehold on any articulation of alternative consciousness.
Can the subaltern's consciousness be retrieved? Spivak says no. She quotes the example of Bhuvaneswari Bhaduri, a young woman who committed suicide due to political despair rather than shame of illegitimate pregnancy. Bhuvaneswari purposefully chose to hang herself during her period to disprove the latter possibility. The waiting for menstrual blood was done but no one could read its meaning for decades. For quite some time the presence of menstrual blood only led to puzzlement and dismissal of the case. Socially sanctioned discourses are hostile to subaltern attempts at re-writing.
And who are the subaltern anyway? A heterogeneous group straddling class, gender, race and the most incongruous divides within each category cannot easily be reduced to the 'oppressed masses' in western leftist discourses. Some satis were brahmins. The corruption of 'sati' to 'suttee', and its meaning from 'good wife' to 'the burning of good wife', transcribes only the arrogant white man in his totalising desire to represent all brown women he thinks need his saving. Such a totalising desire to represent is still present in much of the social critique coming out of the West today.
Spivak criticises Foucault and Deleuze for evading the question of the positionality of the investigating western intellectual. Is Foucault commiting 'white men saving brown women from brown men', even an accomplished thinker on heterogeneity and the Other as he is? In the most extreme sense, yes, for the romantic invocation of a globally oppressed population (and the appropriation of their struggles for the French working class) is done without the declaration of the intellectual's interests: the intellectual could walk freely in and out of the subjectivity of this population, as it were, without having to make his own standing place visible. Such sleight of hand from re-presentation as in art and literature (darstellen) to representation as in politics (vertreten) only consolidates the imagined collective Other of the West. (Was Foucault versed with modern Chinese history when he borrowed Maoism to name the French New Left?)
Spivak is speaking from an extremely precarious place, 1) not only against ideologies of violence that perpetuate each other, 2) but also against the outsider-intellectual's desire to carry off the subaltern with his totalising argument, 3) with a full understanding that this subaltern subject, posited to be at the beginning of an infinite series of deferrals of her own articulation, may remain forever elusive or lost (for the very good reason that the deferrals may prove insurmountable).
Will one despair? Will one let the subaltern wander forever in limbo? Despite the irretrievability of subaltern consciousness, Spivak suggests intellectuals keep trying, while fully acknowledging the limits of their own knowledge. I agree with this. The self-immolating sati lends a powerful tool for social critique elsewhere: France's banning of the hijab, America's criminalisation of Islam after 911, UK's proscription of Palestine Action, and most pernicious of them all Israel's hijacking of antisemitism. With regard to the last two instances, Spivak's call for constant anti-hegemonic elaboration is more relevant now than ever.
February 17, 2014
It was my first encountered with post-colonialism literatures, when my professor introduced me to Gayatri Spivak's works. Through this book, we can have a profound understanding about the power relation between the dominant one (colonial and its legacy) and the subaltern one, who always being oppressed during the time frame of its perpetual relation.
But can the subaltern speak and stand up in order to represent their identity? That is the question.
But can the subaltern speak and stand up in order to represent their identity? That is the question.
June 20, 2024
Blows the bloody doors off this one does.
January 7, 2018
What I love about Rosalind Morris’s (re)presentation of Gayatri Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is that she situates what can be an incredibly dense text to read through and pairs it with other scholarly work so that Spivak’s key ideas in the text can percolate and further resonate. More importantly, however, Morris fronts the volume, following her introduction, with Spivak’s revised edition of the essay, instead of the more problematic original. (Although having read both versions, they are much the same except for some omissions in the newer version that originally appears in Critique of Postcolonial Reason and a revised position that the Subaltern can indeed speak in certain circumstances.) I find it fascinating to see how this idea has evolved and how much the revision especially turns to a mode of praxis for addressing the issues associated with the hegemonic appropriating of Subaltern texts.
May 4, 2024
I focused on the rather famous opening essay by Spivak, which gives this volume its title. The original essay and its revised version come to about a third of the book.
The original essay makes for difficult reading, even when somewhat initiated into the relevant vocabulary. Spivak either does or doesn't help the reader get through the difficult jargon (depending how you look at it) by offering occasional, though meagre narrative enticement. The eminently readable, important point of the essay that we knew was arriving takes a whole fifty plus pages to arrive, at which point a reader might wonder whether—in today's context—the preceding fifty pages had indeed really been necessary to contextualise the point accurately.
The original essay makes for difficult reading, even when somewhat initiated into the relevant vocabulary. Spivak either does or doesn't help the reader get through the difficult jargon (depending how you look at it) by offering occasional, though meagre narrative enticement. The eminently readable, important point of the essay that we knew was arriving takes a whole fifty plus pages to arrive, at which point a reader might wonder whether—in today's context—the preceding fifty pages had indeed really been necessary to contextualise the point accurately.
January 19, 2020
Can the Subaltern Speak? Is a theoretically dense, but rich text that stands as a fundamental pillar of thought in post-colonial studies. The essay composed just a fraction of the book, complemented by scholarly extrapolations of the concepts within the essay into application throughout history.
This idea is essential in sobering the notion of an international democratic ideal and provides a heavy, but liberating concept of bridging these layers of identity into a more honest conversation that veers away from the more common Eurocentric, male dominated world of development and post-colonial studies.
This idea is essential in sobering the notion of an international democratic ideal and provides a heavy, but liberating concept of bridging these layers of identity into a more honest conversation that veers away from the more common Eurocentric, male dominated world of development and post-colonial studies.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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January 24, 2022I had just about enough background to get the main idea of Spivak's original essay. The supplementary essays and her closing response really helped make sense of this for me. Pivotal and complex, and I can see why the essay was so influential. Definitely not for the faint of heart--she could give Donna Haraway a run for her money.
Want to read
August 13, 2025Udah baca tapi belum selesai. Mau baca lagi saat sudah bisa.
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January 24, 2026read this need to re-read i think...lmk if you want to read together....
May 6, 2021
Everything wrong with academia, particularly the social sciences in one convoluted, obfuscated essay. References both Marx and Mao...is that enough said?
This is an incredibly intersectional and feminist essay. I tried to forgive it, because, I mean, it's a postcolonial text, obviously it's going to steeped in intersectional feminism. But it was the flavor of radical intersectionalist that becomes condescending and robs the groups talked about of their agency. Just look at that title.
Now, the essay does bring up some interesting things to consider: like how can the subjugated group truly speak when they are so influenced by the hegemony of the imperialists? That's an interesting question, but it could be considered without totally dismissing the agency of the subaltern. This is exactly what mainstream liberal feminism does and it is why I am not a feminist. I may be influenced by my surroundings, my culture, the dominant cultural ideologies and all of that, but I still have agency.
The reason I bumped my rating up to two stars is because, in considering the question of female subaltern agency, many interesting topics surrounding Hindu traditions and how the British Empire responded to these traditions, were brought up. I found the topic of sati, or "good wives" incredibly tragic, yet very interesting. These widows jump to their deaths from their husbands' funeral pyres and this act is revered as an act of righteous femininity. The subaltern men, the "brown men" that the white men are "saving brown women from" argue that this tradition is the choice of the women, that they want to die and their autonomy should be respected. The essay notes that these women make this choice due to how the act is revered and what their place in society would be as a widow if they did not commit suicide. I appreciate that the essay goes so into depth on that latter point, explaining that in some parts of India widows without sons would inherit all of their husband's property and in others this would not be the case.
I also found the case of the woman who waited for her period to start before committing suicide very interesting. She did this just so that people would not think she killed herself to hide a pregnancy.
All in all, I liked learning more about colonial India and Hindu traditions (as tragic as some of them might be), but I couldn't stand how needlessly dry and difficult to understand the first half of the essay is, and I hate the academic woke practice of being so darn intersectional it's paternalistic and dismissive of human agency.
The essay ends with the author coming to the conclusion that no, the subaltern can not speak, and the female subaltern DEFINITELY can't speak, so it's up to female "intellectuals", presumably of the colonizing class, to speak for them. There is a heavy implication that the privileged women who do not take care to speak for the subaltern women are engaged in a terribly moral failing.
Yeah...this was all a load of baloney.
But I'm the dumbass who wasted my thursday reading this for, I dunno, reasons...
This is an incredibly intersectional and feminist essay. I tried to forgive it, because, I mean, it's a postcolonial text, obviously it's going to steeped in intersectional feminism. But it was the flavor of radical intersectionalist that becomes condescending and robs the groups talked about of their agency. Just look at that title.
Now, the essay does bring up some interesting things to consider: like how can the subjugated group truly speak when they are so influenced by the hegemony of the imperialists? That's an interesting question, but it could be considered without totally dismissing the agency of the subaltern. This is exactly what mainstream liberal feminism does and it is why I am not a feminist. I may be influenced by my surroundings, my culture, the dominant cultural ideologies and all of that, but I still have agency.
The reason I bumped my rating up to two stars is because, in considering the question of female subaltern agency, many interesting topics surrounding Hindu traditions and how the British Empire responded to these traditions, were brought up. I found the topic of sati, or "good wives" incredibly tragic, yet very interesting. These widows jump to their deaths from their husbands' funeral pyres and this act is revered as an act of righteous femininity. The subaltern men, the "brown men" that the white men are "saving brown women from" argue that this tradition is the choice of the women, that they want to die and their autonomy should be respected. The essay notes that these women make this choice due to how the act is revered and what their place in society would be as a widow if they did not commit suicide. I appreciate that the essay goes so into depth on that latter point, explaining that in some parts of India widows without sons would inherit all of their husband's property and in others this would not be the case.
I also found the case of the woman who waited for her period to start before committing suicide very interesting. She did this just so that people would not think she killed herself to hide a pregnancy.
All in all, I liked learning more about colonial India and Hindu traditions (as tragic as some of them might be), but I couldn't stand how needlessly dry and difficult to understand the first half of the essay is, and I hate the academic woke practice of being so darn intersectional it's paternalistic and dismissive of human agency.
The essay ends with the author coming to the conclusion that no, the subaltern can not speak, and the female subaltern DEFINITELY can't speak, so it's up to female "intellectuals", presumably of the colonizing class, to speak for them. There is a heavy implication that the privileged women who do not take care to speak for the subaltern women are engaged in a terribly moral failing.
Yeah...this was all a load of baloney.
But I'm the dumbass who wasted my thursday reading this for, I dunno, reasons...
December 21, 2016
"Can the Subaltern Speak?" transformed the analysis of colonialism through an eloquent and uncompromising argument that affirmed the contemporary relevance of Marxism while using deconstructionist methods to explore the international division of labor and capitalism's "worlding" of the world. Spivak's essay hones in on the historical and ideological factors that obstruct the possibility of being heard for those who inhabit the periphery. It is a probing interrogation of what it means to have political subjectivity, to be able to access the state, and to suffer the burden of difference in a capitalist system that promises equality yet withholds it at every turn.
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