Author: Graham Riach Publisher: CRC Press ISBN: 1351350234 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 106
Book Description
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 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: Rosalind C. Morris Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231512856 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
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.
Author: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Publisher: Walther Konig Verlag ISBN: 9783960989004 Category : Languages : en Pages : 148
Book Description
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's landmark essay in decolonial thought is animated for a new generation with art by Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza In 1985, Indian scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born 1942) published what would become a landmark essay in the academic study of colonialism. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" interrogates the obstructions that prevent certain subjects from being heard and how this state-enforced silence maintains the degradation of those at the peripheries of society. Over three decades later, Spivak's piece is perhaps even more compelling in its affirmation of Marxism's relevance to contemporary decolonial thought. This volume revives Spivak's text for yet another generation of thinkers, placed in dialogue with artwork by Ecuadorian artist Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza (born 1978). Loaiza's preoccupation with questions of occlusion and the need for and absence of image makes for an art series that shares a clear kinship with Spivak's line of reasoning. Loaiza's visual vocabulary echoes and refracts the central ideas put forth by Spivak in a compelling new interpretation of this essential text.
Author: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674504178 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 464
Book Description
Are the “culture wars” over? When did they begin? What is their relationship to gender struggle and the dynamics of class? In her first full treatment of postcolonial studies, a field that she helped define, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, one of the world’s foremost literary theorists, poses these questions from within the postcolonial enclave. “We cannot merely continue to act out the part of Caliban,” Spivak writes; and her book is an attempt to understand and describe a more responsible role for the postcolonial critic. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason tracks the figure of the “native informant” through various cultural practices—philosophy, history, literature—to suggest that it emerges as the metropolitan hybrid. The book addresses feminists, philosophers, critics, and interventionist intellectuals, as they unite and divide. It ranges from Kant’s analytic of the sublime to child labor in Bangladesh. Throughout, the notion of a Third World interloper as the pure victim of a colonialist oppressor emerges as sharply suspect: the mud we sling at certain seemingly overbearing ancestors such as Marx and Kant may be the very ground we stand on. A major critical work, Spivak’s book redefines and repositions the postcolonial critic, leading her through transnational cultural studies into considerations of globality.
Author: Cary Nelson Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 9780252014017 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 756
Book Description
This title provides a picture of the state of Marxist thinking. It aims to provoke a debate that will be of interest to those concerned with the status and development of Marxism and also to theorists in all fields of the human sciences.
Author: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674072383 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 624
Book Description
During the past twenty years, the worldÕs most renowned critical theoristÑthe scholar who defined the field of postcolonial studiesÑhas experienced a radical reorientation in her thinking. Finding the neat polarities of tradition and modernity, colonial and postcolonial, no longer sufficient for interpreting the globalized present, she turns elsewhere to make her central argument: that aesthetic education is the last available instrument for implementing global justice and democracy. SpivakÕs unwillingness to sacrifice the ethical in the name of the aesthetic, or to sacrifice the aesthetic in grappling with the political, makes her task formidable. As she wrestles with these fraught relationships, she rewrites Friedrich SchillerÕs concept of play as double bind, reading Gregory Bateson with Gramsci as she negotiates Immanuel Kant, while in dialogue with her teacher Paul de Man. Among the concerns Spivak addresses is this: Are we ready to forfeit the wealth of the worldÕs languages in the name of global communication? ÒEven a good globalization (the failed dream of socialism) requires the uniformity which the diversity of mother-tongues must challenge,Ó Spivak writes. ÒThe tower of Babel is our refuge.Ó In essays on theory, translation, Marxism, gender, and world literature, and on writers such as Assia Djebar, J. M. Coetzee, and Rabindranath Tagore, Spivak argues for the social urgency of the humanities and renews the case for literary studies, imprisoned in the corporate university. ÒPerhaps,Ó she writes, Òthe literary can still do something.Ó
Author: Charlotte Keatley Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1350010200 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 115
Book Description
I don't know if you'll ever love me as much as I love you, but one day you'll understand why I've done this to you. Doris, born illegitimate in 1900, exchanges her budding teaching career for marriage and motherhood. When the war is over, her daughter Margaret marries an American and has Jackie, who becomes an archetypal 60s rebel. When Jackie can't face being a single mother, it is decided that baby Rosie will be brought up as Margaret's own. That's the plan anyway . . . Charlotte Keatley's award-winning play is a moving exploration of the relationships between mothers and daughters, and the consequences of breaking the most sacred taboo of motherhood. My Mother Said I Never Should is about the choices we make which determine the course of our lives and how it is never too late to change. This edition was published to coincide with the revival of the play at the St James Theatre, London, in 2016, starring Maureen Lipman and Katie Brayben.
Author: Stephen D. Moore Publisher: Fordham Univ Press ISBN: 0823233251 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 438
Book Description
Postcolonial theology has recently emerged as a site of intense intellectual and political energy and has taken its place in the interdisciplinary field of postcolonial studies. This volume is animated by the conviction that postcolonial theology is now ready for a second, deeper phase of engagement with postcolonial theory, one that moves beyond the general to the specific. No critic has been more emblematic of the challenging and contested field of postcolonial theory than Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. In this volume, the product of a theological colloquium in which Spivak herself participated, theologians and biblical scholars engage with her thought in order to catalyze a diverse range of original theological and exegetical projects. The volume opens with a "topography" of postcolonial theology and also includes other valuable introductory essays. At the center of the collection are transcriptions of two extended public dialogues with Spivak on theology and religion in general. A further dozen essays appropriate Spivak's work for theological and ethical reflection. The volume is also significant for the larger field of postcolonial studies in that it is the first to focus centrally on Spivak's immensely suggestive and vital concept of "planetarity."
Author: Ranajit Guha Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 9780195052893 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 452
Book Description
These ten essays culled from the five volumes of 'Subaltern Studies' aim to 'promote a systematic and informed discussion of subaltern themes in the field of South Asian studies, and thus help to rectify the elitist bias characteristic of much reserach and academic work in this particular area.'
Author: Sangeeta Ray Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 9781444310887 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 160
Book Description
This book introduces and discusses the works of leading feminist postcolonialist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, by exploring the key concepts and themes to emerge from them. Focuses on the key themes to emerge from Spivak’s work, such as ethics, literature, feminism, pedagogy, postcoloniality, violence, and war Assesses Spivak’s often contentious relationship with feminist and postcolonial studies Considers the significance of her work for other fields, such as ethnography, history, cultural studies and philosophy
Author: Graham Riach
Author: Rosalind C. Morris
Author: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Author: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Author: Cary Nelson
Author: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Author: Charlotte Keatley
Author: Stephen D. Moore
Author: Ranajit Guha
Author: Sangeeta Ray