Gayatri Spivak and Subaltern

it is the presentation about subaltern and gayatri spivak

1. Prepared by : Latta Baraiya Sem : 3 (M.A.) Topic :- Gayatri Spivak and Subaltern Email id : [email protected] m Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

2. Gayatri Spivak Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is an Indian scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic. She is a University Professor at Columbia University Founding member of the establishment's Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. She is Considered as one of the most influential postcolonial intellectuals

3. Spivak is best known for her essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Her translation of and introduction to Jacques Derrida's De la grammatologie. Spivak was awarded the 2012 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy for being "a critical theorist and educator speaking for the humanities against intellectual colonialism in relation to the globalized world." In 2013, she received the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award given by the Republic of India Utilizes methods and approaches from Marxism, Feminism and Deconstruction.

4. There is no doubt that Gayatri Spivak is one of the most remarkable and outstanding theorists in the postcolonial theory. Along with Said and Bhabha, she is a prominent pillar of the socalled ‘the postcolonial trilogy.’ Additionally, Spivak is one of the foremost feminist critics who have attained an international fame and eminence. Spivak’s writing and field of interest are diverse, including her feminist perspective on deconstruction, her critique of imperialism and colonial discourse, her engagement with the Marxist critique of capital and the international division of labor, and her critique of race in relation to nationality, ethnicity, and immigrant groups. (Landry et al 1996: 3) Spivak According to Landy …

5. What is Subaltern ? Subaltern = Subordinate position in terms of class, gender, race and culture. Subaltern people are those people who are voic eless people, written out of the historical record and ignored because their activities do not count for culture/structure. Subaltern according to Spivak is those who belong to third world countries. It is impossible for them to speak up as they are divided by gender, class, caste, region, religion and other narratives. These divisions do not allow them to stand up in unity

6. The ‘subaltern' is a term Spivak borrow form the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci to signify the oppressed class. Consequently, Spivak chooses to adopt the notion of the subaltern essentially because, “it is truly situational. “Subaltern” began a s a description of a certain rank in the military. The word was used under censorship by Gramsci: he called Marxism “monism”, and was obliged to call the proletarian “subaltern”. That word, used under duress, has been transformed into the description of everything that does not fall under strict class analysis. This is so, because it has no theoretical rigor (Spivak, 1991)

7. Spivak’s well-known (and controversial) argument is that, The subaltern cannot speak for him/herself because the very Structure of colonial power (it must be noted that Spivak is speaking of the context of colonialism) prevents the speaking. Ashcroftet explain about ‘subaltern’, First of all, I would like to start with a general definition of the concept‘subaltern’ and its origin. Subaltern is a concept first used and coined by the Italian Marxist activist Antonio Gramsci to refer to those groups who aresubjects to the hegemony of the dominant classes. (Ashcroftet al 1998: 215)

8. In her influential article “Can the Subaltern speak?” Spivak problematizes the production and retrieval of subaltern speech in the light of its dependence on controlling and dominant discursive practices, which define the modalities of expression of the subaltern subjects and construct the position from which they speak or are heard. (Coronil: 42) Coronil exp lain about the subaltern :-

9. Spivak challenges the widespread thesis that the intellectual (or postcolonial historian) can recover the voice and consciousness of the subaltern. For Said, unlike Spivak, “there has been no major revolution in modern history without intellectuals; conversely there has been no major counterrevolutionary movement without intellectuals. Intellectuals have been the fathers and mothers of movements, and of course sons and daughters, even nephews and nieces” (Said 1996: 11)

10. In India, in the 1980s, the enterprising historians started subaltern studies as aproject to reclaim and rewrite Indian historiography from the subaltern perspective. Ranajit Guha took up the task to probe into the peasant movements of the past whichaccording to him, were showcased as something monumental and outstanding by historians. A theme that emerges across the early work undertaken by Subaltern StudiesGroup is the relationship between the marginalized classes and the anti–colonial movement of the twentieth century.

11. Guha believed that the politics of the subaltern did not constitute an autonomous domain, for it neither originated from elite politics nor did its existence depend on the latter.Subordination in its various forms has always been the central focus of the subaltern studies (Biswas 202).

12. Social formation and the subalterns Social Fomation Subaltern Dominant Group Ideology Class Working classes Capitalist bourgeois Capitalism Empire Natives Europeans Colonialism Patriarchy Women Men Gender Nation Ethnic/ cast Minorities Majority Homogenisation & nationalism

13. Citations Ashcroft et al. Key Concept in Postcolonial Studies. London: Routledge, 1998. Biswas, Amrita. “Research Note on Subaltern Studies”. Journal of Literature, and Media Studies 1.2 (Winter 2009): 200-05. Web. 22 May 2017. < http://www.inflibnet.ac.in/ojs/index.php/JLCMS/article/viewfile/44/42 > Coronil, Fernando. ‘Listening to the Subaltern: Postcolonial studies and the Poetics on Neocolonial States’, in Postcolonial theory and criticism, ed. Laura Christman and Benita Parry, New York: D.S. Brewer, Cambridge, 2000, 37—56.

14. Laundry. D and Maclean. G. The Spivak Reader,ed. New York: Routledge, 1996. Spivak, Gayatri, 1988a. ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial theory: A Reader, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Christman, New York: Colombia University Press, 1994, 66—109. Spivak GS (1988). “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.). Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press.