Can the Subaltern Speak? – SummaryGayatri SpivakGayatri Chakravorty Spivak is an unsettling voice in literary theory and especially, postcolonial studies.
She has describes herself as a “practical deconstructionist feminist Marxist” and as a “gadfly”. She uses deconstruction to examine 'how truth is constructed' and to deploy the assertions of one intellectual and political position (such as Marxism) to 'interrupt' or 'bring into crisis' another (feminism, for example). In her work, she combines passionate denunciations of the harm done to women, non-Europeans, and the poor by the privileged West with a persistent questioning of the grounds on which radical critique takes its stand.Her continual interrogation of assumptions can make.
As poststructuralism would have it, human consciousness is constructed discursively. Our subjectivity is constructed by the shifting discourses of power which endlessly speak through us, situating us here and there in particular positions and relations.
1 Can the Subaltern Speak? – Summary Gayatri Spivak Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is an unsettling voice in literary theory and especially, postcolonial studies. She has describes herself as a “practical deconstructionist feminist Marxist” and as a “gadfly”.
In these terms we are not the authors of ourselves. We do not construct our identities, we have it written for us; the subject cannot be sovereign over the construction of selfhood. Instead the subject is decentered, in that its consciousness is always being constructed from positions outside of itself.
It follows then that the individual is not a transparent representation of the self but an effect of discourse. Spivak argues that surprisingly for these figures, when Foucault and Deleuze talks about oppressed groups such as the working classes they fall back into precisely these uncritical notions of ‘sovereign subjects’ by restoring to them a fully centred consciousness. In addition they also assume that the writing of intellectuals such as themselves can serve as a transparent medium through which the voices of the oppressed can be represented. The intellectual is cast as a reliable mediator for the voices of the oppressed, a mothpiece through which the oppressed can clearly speak.Spivak articulates her reasons for her worries in the first part of the essay, applying MICHEL FOUCAULT's understanding of 'epistemic violence' to the 'remotely orchestrated, far-flung, and heterogeneous project to. 2931 Words 12 PagesTsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous ConditionsAt the end of her article “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Gayatri Spivak concludes that the subaltern has no voice. But what defines the subaltern? Traditionally, race, gender, and economics have delineated class distinctions within a particular society.
The postcolonial society, however, complicates this stratification. Tsitsi Dangarembga explores the indistinct notion of class and privilege in her novel Nervous Conditions. Tambu, the narrator, faces the.
9113 Words 37 PagesGayatri Chakravorty SpivakCan the Subaltern Speak?An understanding of contemporary relations of power, and of the Western intellectual's role within them, requires an examination of the intersection of a theory of representation and the political economy of global capitalism. A theory of representation points, on the one hand, to the domain of ideology, meaning, and subjectivity, and, on the other hand, to the domain of politics, the state, and the law.The original title of this paper was. 1958 Words 8 Pageshad done asking it to open up and swallow her hour of peril. The earth did not open up, but she steadied a little.' The sight of Goddess Kali provides her valor as she lies wrilling in agony on ground, delivering a baby boy.
The rigidness of the subaltern condition of women is so much that towards the end of the story, Parvati puts the baby boy in the basket and again go to work at breaking stones. The story presents the image of a woman contracted between life and death.In both the stories, Mulk. 1970 Words 8 Pageslanguages, multiple approaches to literacy, and ability to deal with life events.Although all literacies are not equally valued in our society, there are ways in which all parents make literacy contributions and that awareness of these contributions can occur when parents engage in literacy experiences that have meaningful application in their lives (Crowther and Tett 1997).
The FLITE (Family Literacy Involvement Through Education) program is one example of an effort designed to involve participants.
Author by: Rosalind C. MorrisLanguange: enPublisher by: Columbia University PressFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 35Total Download: 392File Size: 51,5 MbDescription: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's 1988 essay Can the Subaltern Speak? Introduced questions of gender and sexual difference into analyses of representation and offering a profound critique of both subaltern history and radical Western philosophy. Spivak's eloquent and uncompromising arguments engaged with more than just power, politics, and the postcolonial. They confronted the methods of deconstruction, the contemporary relevance of Marxism, the international division of labor, and capitalism's worlding of the world, calling attention to the historical and ideological factors that efface the possibility of being heard.
Since the publication of Spivak's essay, the work has been revered, reviled, misread, and misappropriated. It has been cited, invoked, imitated, and critiqued.
In these phenomenal essays, eight scholars take stock of this response. They begin by contextualizing the piece within the development of subaltern and postcolonial studies and the quest for human rights, and then they think with Spivak's essay about historical problems of subalternity, voicing, and death. A final section situates Spivak's work in the contemporary world, particularly through readings of new international divisions of labor and the politics of silence among indigenous women of Guatemala and Mexico. In an afterword, Spivak herself looks at the interpretations of her essay and its future incarnations, while specifying some of 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.
Author by: Graham RiachLanguange: enPublisher by: CRC PressFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 31Total Download: 663File Size: 53,9 MbDescription: A key theme of Gayatri Spivak's work is agency: 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. Author by: John McLeodLanguange: enPublisher by: Manchester University PressFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 81Total Download: 777File Size: 42,8 MbDescription: Postcolonialism has become one of the most exciting, expanding and challenging areas of literary and cultural studies today. Designed especially for those studying the topic for the first time, Beginning Postcolonialism introduces the major areas of concern in a clear, accessible, and organized fashion. It provides an overview of the emergence of postcolonialism as a discipline and closely examines many of its important critical writings.
Author by: GRAHAM GRIFFITHSLanguange: enPublisher by: Psychology PressFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 55Total Download: 238File Size: 40,7 MbDescription: The Post-Colonial Studies Readeris the most comprehensive selection of key texts in post-colonial theory and criticism yet compiled. This collection covers a huge range of topics, featuring nearly ninety of the discipline's most widely read works. TheReader's90 extracts are designed to introduce the major issues and debates in the field of post-colonial literary studies. This field itself, however, has become so varied that no collection of readings could encompass every voice which is now giving itself the name 'post-colonial.'
The editors, in order to avoid a volume which is simply a critical canon, have selected works representing arguments with which they do not necessarily agree, but rather which above all stimulate discussion, thought and further exploration. Post-colonial 'theory' has occurred in all societies into which the imperial force of Europe has intruded, though not always in the official form oftheoretical text.
Like the description of any other field the term has come to mean many things, but this volume hinges on one incontestable phenomenon: the 'historical fact'of colonialism, and the palpable consequences to which this phenomenon gave rise. The topic involves talk about experience of various kinds: migration, slavery, suppression, resistance, representation, difference, race, gender, place, and reaction to the European influence, and about the fundamental experiences of speaking and writing by which all these come into being.
In compiling this reader, the editors have sought to stimulate people to ask: 'How might a genuinely post-colonial literary enterprise proceed?' The fourteen sections include: Issues and Debates; Universality and Difference; Textual Representation and Resistance; Postmodernism and Post-Colonialism; Nationalism; Hybridity; Ethnicity and Indigenity; Feminism and Post-Colonialism; Language; The Body and Performance; History; Place; Education; and Production andConsumption. Contributors include many of the leading post-colonial theorists and critics-such as Franz Fanon, Chinua Achebe, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Homi Bhabba, Derek Walcott, Edward Said, and Trinh T. Minh-ha-in addition to a number of the discourse's newer voices.The Post-Colonial Studies Readerwill prove an authoritative compilation, representing an invaluable contribution to the study of post-colonial theory and criticism. Author by: Michael W. AppleLanguange: enPublisher by: RoutledgeFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 81Total Download: 398File Size: 42,7 MbDescription: The question of whose perspective, experience and history is privileged in educational institutions has shaped curriculum debates for decades. In this insightful collection, Michael W.
Apple and Kristen L. Buras interrogate the notion that some knowledge is worth more than others. The Subaltern Speak combines an analysis of the ways in which various forms of power now operate, with a specific focus on spaces in which subaltern groups act to reassert their own perceived identities, cultures and histories. Author by: Laura MossLanguange: enPublisher by: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. PressFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 54Total Download: 997File Size: 44,6 MbDescription: How can postcolonialism be applied to Canadian literature? In all that has been written about postcolonialism, surprisingly little has specifically addressed the position of Canada, Canadian literature, or Canadian culture.
Postcolonialism is a theory that has gained credence throughout the world; it is be productive to ask if and how we, as Canadians, participate in postcolonial debates. It is also vital to examine the ways in which Canada and Canadian culture fit into global discussions as our culture reflects how we interact with our neighbours, allies, and adversaries. This collection wrestles with the problems of situating Canadian literature in the ongoing debates about culture, identity, and globalization, and of applying the slippery term of postcolonialism to Canadian literature. The topics range in focus from discussions of specific literary works to general theoretical contemplations. The twenty-three articles in this collection grapple with the recurrent issues of postcolonialism — including hybridity, collaboration, marginality, power, resistance, and historical revisionism — from the vantage point of those working within Canada as writers and critics. While some seek to confirm the legitimacy of including Canadian literature in the discussions of postcolonialism, others challenge this very notion. Author by: P.
CainLanguange: enPublisher by: Taylor & FrancisFormat Available: PDF, ePub, MobiTotal Read: 39Total Download: 247File Size: 41,8 MbDescription: The philosopher W.B. Gallie argued many years ago that there could be no simple definition of words such as 'freedom' because they embodied what he called 'essentially contested concepts'. They were words whose meaning had to be fought over and whose compteting definitions arose out of political struggle and conflict. Imperialism, and its close ally, colonialism, are two such contested concepts.
This set will give readers an insight in to the main lines of debate about the meanings of imperialism and colonialism over the last two centuries.