In what ways, if any, can the subaltern speak? She also regrets that subalternity is often equated with elite women in the third world or ethnic minorities in the … Mineure 26. To grant philosophy a material, practical existence in this way is to admit that “misinterpretations” are not subjective errors (whether malicious or benign) in the minds of one’s readers but are rather the objective effects of one’s own work, not of course of the intentions behind it but in its real existence and in its unforeseeable encounters with other works, and other forces. Aux origines de l'Apartheid, Majeure 15. Extension de la mineure Fernand Deligny, 24. (2197) What example Agencements subjectifs posés sur l'Internet, Insert : Autour du livre de Jacques Sapir : Les trous noirs de la science économique, Majeure 9. Puebla is located about 120 km south of Mexico City. Mettre fin aux régressions identitaires ordonnées au nom des femmes, 66. Negri/Hardt : "Multitude", la suite d'"Empire". Politiques post-socialistes et post-identitaires, Racisme et permanence de la question coloniale, Société de l'information, machines informationnelles, Débat autour de Multitude : Guerre et démocratie à l'époque de l' Empire, Bifo : "Le ciel est enfin tombé sur la terre", Deux ans de préparatifs à travers les nuages, Le jeune prolétariat ou un sujet pour la libération, La mouvance autonome en France de 76 à 84. Créer des asiles de data autogérés par les citoyens, 66. Imaginer une globalisation à la hauteur de notre inséparation, 66. Universités : Multiversitudes, Mineure 39. Accordingly, Spivak must turn to what she calls “the unguarded practice of conversation,” i.e., an interview to discover Foucault’s thought. Florence Boos' Faculty Page >>, << Florence Boos' And more disturbing than the narcissistic injury that results from the recognition that one is not entirely master of one’s words and arguments, no matter how painstakingly constructed, is the idea that truth is not enough, that false and harmful ideas are held in place by relations of force that can be changed only by opposing force. Micropolitiques de la restitution, Mineure 76. L'intermittence dans tous ses états, Mineure 17. Can the Subaltern Play and Speak or Just be Played With? “Can the Subaltern Speak?” posed questions about silenced, colonised, unheard, invisible and unrepresented groups and, since its publication, it has been … Whom does she have in mind? Il a publié notamment : Louis Althusser (London: Palgrave, 2002) ; Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and his Contemporaries, (London: Verso, Spring 1999) ; The Unthinkable Swift: The Spontaneous Philosophy of a Church of England Man, (London: Verso, 1994). Septembre 1994: Les coordinations de travailleurs dans la confrontation sociale, Hors-champ 15. Archives débats sur la liste " Multitudes – Infos", "Opportunisme politique du monde de l'art? introduced questions of gender and sexual difference into analyses of representation and offering a profound critique of both subaltern history and radical Western philosophy. Multitudes 50, numéro spécial soulèvement (automne 2012), Majeure 52. Disponible sur le site de notre partenaire CAIRN, Commander la revue au format numérique sur Scopalto, Commander la revue au format numérique sur Cairn. “even more deeply in shadow”) What have been some sources of her Migrations en Europe : les frontières de la liberté. Ville productive. It is as if there exists a simple dilemma before us: either we argue that the subaltern can indeed speak, in which case according to one’s perspective we have either brought agency back in or, in contrast, lapsed into essentialism; or we argue with Spivak that the subaltern cannot speak, which means for some that we have silenced the oppressed, which for others we have refused the myth of the originary subject. In any case, in this quote, I am continuing my discussion of the subaltern two decades after writing "Can the Subaltern Speak?" the subaltern and reaffirm colonial differences between the “civilized” West and the “barbarian” East. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” posed questions about silenced, colonised, unheard, invisible and unrepresented groups and, since its publication, it has been … Ecologie de l'esprit / économie de l'esprit, Edition virtuelle et compléments de Multitudes 25, 01. Acknowledgments p. ix Introduction Rosalind C. Morris p. 1 Part 1 Text "Can the Subaltern Speak?" It is worth remarking that this is hardly a new position: on the contrary, it has a long history in the socialist and communist movements. Le génocide des Amérindiens ? Expertises : politiques des savoirs, Hors-champ 21. Early into the essay, Spivak asks the question, “Are those who act and struggle mute, as opposed to those who act and speak?” (70). What does she see as a message to be learned, and who have ignored it? Study Questions Index Majeure 73. 5. Les tyrannies de la transparence, Majeure 68. In is much more practical idea of not having access.” (Spivak 2002) Spivak’s critics have taken her statement “the subaltern cannot speak” to be a categorical assertion rather than an interrogation of the academic effort to give the gendered subaltern a voice in history (Spivak 2002b). such claims? "Can the Subaltern Speak?" How does this article align with those of other critics we have read, such Vivre avec les migrants et les migrations, Les drogues nous ennuient avec leurs paradis. Du contrôle à la sousveillance, Mineure 40. Is there anything in Derrida’s critique of logocentrism that would allow us to say the subaltern cannot speak but must be spoken for, that is, represented both discursively and politically by those who can speak, those who are real subjects of speech? as Barbara Smith, Jane Tompkins, Frantz Fanon or Edward Said? What Foucault and Deleuze, First World intellectuals, share with the subaltern studies group is the notion no less dangerous for being naive that “the oppressed (…) can speak and know their conditions.” And thus to the general plague of essentialism which in truly internationalist fashion circulates freely between the First and Third Worlds, Spivak proposes the antidote of a single question: can the subaltern speak? The subaltern studies movement did so, however, only by suppressing the heterogeneity and non-contemporaneity of the subaltern itself, that is, by assigning it an essence and therefore falling into a metaphysical abyss from which Spivak seeks to rescue it. Instaurer un revenu universel et une taxe pollen, 66. Drogues : Loi, Réduction des risques. rather than with the latter for their own sake; believe in a pure consciousness Victorian literature study questions written by Professor Florence S. Boos, The University of Iowa. Her question is a question of possibility which as such functions as a transcendental question, akin to Kant’s famous question: what can I know? Conflits écologiques dans le sous-continent indien, Mineure 74. She considers postmodernism as politically contradictory and ambivalent. Le débat autour du foulard dit islamique. Produire des biens et des services sans but lucratif, 66. 6. Du côté du Japon : marges et miroir d'Empire, Mineure 13. Of course the subaltern speak and write; the archives of the world are filled not only with the political tracts of their parties and organizations, but there are literary texts, newspapers, films, recordings, leaflets, songs, even the very chants that accompany spontaneous and organized protests all over the world. What does she see as an urgent critical necessity? Micropolitique de l'habitat non-ordinaire, Majeure 39. 4. then practiced? Not that Gayatri Spivak needs to be told any of this. For if we accept Derrida’s arguments against the speaking subject as ideal origin of speech, present to its utterances as a guarantee of their truth and authenticity, that is, that speech is always already a kind of writing, material and irreducible, we are left only with the fact that there is no pure, original working class or subaltern (or ruling class), possessing a consciousness expressed in its speech or for that matter its acts. Mouvements sociaux et nouvelles formes de subjectivité. They begin by contextualizing the piece within the development of subaltern and postcolonial studies and the quest for human rights. Readings Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Can the Subaltern Speak? It is used in Subaltern Studies as a name for the general attribute of subordination in South Asian society, whether this is expressed in terms of class, gender race etc. Compléments de la Majeure de Multitudes N° 19, Hors-champ 19. under the influence of which discourses), whether and how (filtered by which patterns of perception and structures of … From a materialist standpoint there is no more a “court of final appeal,” as Machiavelli put it, in philosophy than in politics. Speak. Écopolitiques du cinéma documentaire, Edition virtuelle et compléments de Multitudes 26, 66. Penser avec Simondon, 01. Capitalisme cognitif, développement, normativité. Territoires et communautés apprenantes, Majeure 53. (Ibid) (Ibid) This text engages with the subaltern studies group, however, also represents an extension of Spivak’s work as a historically grounded literary critic: she is in the archive, but in there busily theorizing deconstructive reading. Déclin historique ou nouveaux agencements ? A recent exception has focused on the putative subject or non-subject of speech: the subaltern. It appears, however, that no one has thought to ask whether Derrida’s argument’s (especially in Grammatology, the work in which such questions are most extensively examined, lead to such conclusions). 3. Professeur de lettres et de philosophie à l'Occidental College de Los Angeles. Mineure 19. In the third part of the essay, Spivak offers yet a further twist. We might say of Spivak what Althusser said of Lacan-that the legendary difficulty of the essay is less a consequence of the profundity of its subject matter than its tactical objectives: “to forestall the blows of critics (…) to feign a response to them before they are delivered” and, above all, to resort to philosophies apparently foreign to the endeavor “as so many intimidating witnesses thrown in the faces of the audience to retain the respect.” To acknowledge this does not automatically imply a criticism of Spivak (which is precisely why I cited the case of Lacan the importance of whose work for me at least is unquestionable): after all, tactics are dictated by the features of the concrete situation. Denotations. In particular, she objects to the notion that Subaltern studies seeks to allow the previously ignored voice of the subaltern finally to be heard and that its objective can be to “establish true knowledge of the subaltern and its consciousness.” The notion that the subaltern is a kind of collective individual, conscious of itself, an author, an actor, in short, the classical subject, allowed the movement to differentiate between the subaltern and the representation of the subaltern by imperialism, and thus to call attention to the blank spaces imperialist discourse. issues of post-colonial consciousness? Quand le néolibéralisme court-circuite nos choix, Majeure 64. Study Questions Index. Cultivons nos intelligences artificielles, Majeure 77. Est-il trop tard pour l’effondrement ? In other words, Plato was right to see philosophy as the site of a war that can have no end insofar as one must constantly confront the unforeseeable consequences of one’s own work. Philosophie politique. (2204) What dangers in her view lie in making Majeure 76. of the people). Finance, rente et travail dans le capitalisme cognitif, Majeure 33. Spivak uses the example of the Indian Sati practice of widow suicide, however the main significance of "Can the Subaltern Speak?" It is as if there exists a simple dilemma before us: either we argue that the subaltern can indeed speak, in which case according to one’s perspective we have either brought agency back in or, in contrast, lapsed into essentialism; or we argue with Spivak that the subaltern cannot speak, which means for some that we have silenced the oppressed, which for others we have refused the myth of the originary subject. At the confluence of Environmental History and Subaltern Studies EDITOR: ELISA TIZZONI; GUEST EDITOR: ROBERTA BIASILLO In 1988 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak published her most influential essay in post-colonial studies and critical theory. (2207) Is this It is precisely in and through the struggles that traverse these fields of practice that collectivities are constituted. It hardly needs to be said that few philosophers have openly endorsed such a position, just as few philosophers have ever written books with the phrase “self-criticism in the title. Spivak returns to the problem of speaking about the gendered subaltern that she first introduced in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in her book, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, where she characterizes her “passionate lament: the subaltern cannot speak” as “an inadvisable remark” (Spivak 1999: 308). Edition virtuelle des Liens (hommage à Giselle Donnard), Majeure 30. 8. Asked by Broadway L #1106591. Erwin Wurm, Majeure 13. revised edition, from the "History" chapter of Critique of Postcolonial Reason Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak p. 21 Part 2 Contexts and Trajectories Reflections on "Can the Subaltern Speak? Débats et controverses. Accélérer la construction de l’Europe fédérale, 66. Politiques de l’ individuation. Reading the required materials is MANDATORY for participation in this discussion. Veiller à la biodiversité avec les ultramarins, 66. rests on an obvious paradox. Pour une nouvelle critique institutionnelle, Edition virtuelle et compléments de Multitudes 29, 01. (2204; she aligns herself with anti-positivist feminists and Western theorists, In "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Icônes 67. Why does And according to Spivak they found themselves in some very distinguished company in that Abyss. It is a testimony to the power of Spivak’s essay that this question has come to dominate an entire theoretical field to such an extent that the vast majority of responses have consisted of answers to, rather than examinations of, her question. The other major objective of the essay is to intervene in a quarrel not so much between Foucault and Derrida (who did engage in a philosophical debate which Spivak curiously neglects to mention) as between their champions, acknowledged and unacknowledged, in the U.S.A third figure, Deleuze, also comes to play a part, if a minor one, in this scene as Foucault’s accomplice. Insert. Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” 1983 and later What are some of the concerns of Spivak’s essay? Her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (which exists in several forms-I’ll be examining the longest version, which appears in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture) displays a dazzling array of tactical devices designed to ward off or pre-emptively neutralize the attacks of critics. ", "Quelle résistance pour les multitudes en Irak ? What has happened to the “female subaltern” in this revival? A key theme of Gayatri Spivak's work is agency: the ability of the individual to make their own decisions. What final ironies does she note in her family’s history? This is a brief report on the III International Conference of Gramscian studies which was held 7-10 October 2003 in Puebla, Mexico. Le travail social au tournant, Mineure 65. Le matérialisme aléatoire et le « dernier Althusser », Majeure 22. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's original essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Nouvelles énonciations collectives, Mineure 56. Compléments virtuels de la mineure Activistes du hoax, 01. Migrants/Habitants : urbanités en construction, Majeure 63. 01. Of course, one might be tempted to argue that it is not only possible but inevitable that Foucault would contradict himself not only in interviews but in his most important works, unless that is, we assign to Foucault the position of Absolute subject, whose writing, despite the appearance of contradiction, possesses total coherence and homogeneity. Can the Subaltern Speak? L'Extradisciplinaire. Few have ventured to question the question itself, to ask how such a question functions and what are its practical effects. To all appearances, there is speaking and writing always and everywhere and even more where there is resistance to exploitation and oppression. Villes : fractures et mouvements. Answered by jill … Chakrabarti and Chaudhury have criticized Spivak’s use of the term as suppressing class antagonisms, not simply essentialistic or reductive ways of understanding these antagonisms, but class contradictions per se. Majeure 27. 7. of suppression/ "epistemic violence” does she use to illustrate her Mineure 64. What are some of the concerns of Spivak’s essay? She discourages and dismantles western centres and challenges there over history and prejudice. Transformations énergétiques collectives. While Of Grammology jumpstarted her career, her 1988 essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” redefined it and post-colonialism at large. Mattiuzzi Michelle, Mombaça Jota et Panamby SaraElton, Majeure 78. Colombie : de l'opposition à la résistance, Majeure 42. page numbers are from the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, << Florence Boos' Les nouvelles frontières du revenu d’existence, Mineure 78. In particular, she seeks to lay to rest the “received idea” that “Foucault deals with real history, real politics and real social problems; Derrida is inaccessible, esoteric and textualistic.” She will show, in contrast, that “Derrida is less dangerous” than Foucault, who not only privileges “the ‘concrete’ subject of oppression” but even more dangerously conceals the privilege he thus grants himself by “masquerading as the absent non-represented who lets the oppressed speak for themselves.” While this may seem a surprising charge to lay at the feet of Foucault, who, after all, asked the famous question, “What is an Author?” and in doing so had a few things to say about Derrida that Spivak might profitably have consulted, she invokes “the labor of the negative” to sustain her accusation. What forms of “subjugated knowledge” concern her? Les complications de la présence, Mineure 62. Archives "Archipel des Revues européennes" . Spivak discusses the lack of an account of the Sati practice, leading her to reflect on whether the subaltern can even speak. Un inédit d'Althusser (1986), Majeure 21. 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. Philosophie politique des multitudes, Multitudes Hors-série n°1. Les entreprises de marchandises morales, Mineure 67. Since its publication, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" If the problematic is understood this way, it is hard to see how the subaltern can be capable of speaking. Speak Questions and Answers. Edition virtuelle de la mineure Traduire Deleuze, 02. 2. Of course, the difficulty of the essay cannot be reduced to a matter of tactics alone. Studi di storia contemporanea Call for papers “Can the Subaltern Speak” through the Environment? (concern with relation of an elite class to the poor and uneducated, Mineure 10. As a critical supporter of Subaltern Studies as a project, Spivak seeks to point out a discrepancy between its research and the way its practitioners theorized that research. Olivier Deprez & Adolpho Avril, Hors-champ 47. Luttes et subjectivité, Mineure 38. Gouines rouges, viragos vertes, Majeure 44. Discussion sur la philosophie de la biologie. Foucault’s critique of the subject is itself a ruse of subjectivity. Nuh-uh. Lots of people misread my earlier essay as a demand that the subaltern be allowed to stay in her place. An understanding of contemporary relations of power, and of the Western intellectual's role within them, re­ quires an examination of the intersection of a theory of representation and the political economy of global capi­ talism. Écoféminismes à lire en ligne, Majeure 10. Bioeconomie, biopolitique et biorevenu: questions ouvertes sur le revenu garanti, Mineure 27. The first, and perhaps the most important, is her intervention in the debates surrounding the field of Subaltern Studies as it existed in India in the early eighties, particularly as represented by the work of Ranajit Guha. essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" But here we must be very careful; Spivak does not ask whether the subaltern does speak but whether it is possible for them to speak. Thus she believes that ‘if the subaltern can speak then, the subaltern is not a subaltern any more’. Nouvelle robotique, nouveaux vivants, Majeure 67. La sensibilité urbaine des images filmiques. The Question and Answer section for Speak is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel. To recognize this is to recognize that Spivak has carried out a double displacement: not only has she replaced the question of whether the subaltern does speak at a given moment with the question of whether it is possible for them to speak at all, she has even more importantly substituted speech for action, as if, again, there exist opposing worlds of language (in which we are trapped) and being (which remains inaccessible to us). Plèbes et multitudes en Amérique latine, deuxième cahier – Valeurs marchandes, valeurs artistiques, premier cahier – L’affolement des évaluations, troisième cahier – Valorisations à recréer, Majeure 58. Can the Subaltern Speak?-Rosalind Morris 2010-01-22 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's 1988 essay Can the Subaltern Speak? Mineure 63. Liliana Porter + Ana Tiscornia. The Subaltern can still speak: A report on the Puebla Conference Koichi Ohara, IGS - Japan. Subjectivation du Net : postmédia, réseaux, mise en commun, Mineure 21. That is, what we take to be the subaltern speaking may in fact be determined to be only the appearance of their speaking, if our theory deems it impossible for them to speak. What are some claims which have been made by members of the “Subaltern 9. Majeure 20 Architroubles : pragmatiques architecturales, Mineure 20. Spivak invokes the concepts of deconstruction (mainly of feminism) and rupture to write about "epistemic violence" while accepting that in doing so, she herself is not free from it. (1988) by Gayatri Spivak relates to the manner in which western cultures investigate other cultures. Spivak, however, suggests that what Foucault utters in apparently “unguarded” moments can only reveal a truth kept carefully hidden under a veil of appearance; such a procedure of reading resolves the apparent contradiction to restore Foucault’s work to the bad totality that it has always been. has been cited, invoked, imitated, and critiqued. (2202), What view does Spivak take toward anti-positivist feminists and Western theorists? Guerres et paix dans l’empire, Majeure 12. Empire et "colonialité" du pouvoir. This seminar will focus on a detailed discussion of Gayatri Spivak”s famous essay “Can The Subaltern speak?” Format. L'espace public oppositionnel, Majeure 40. Printemps 2007, Une voix d’universitaire chinois – Perceptions de l’intérieur, La “lutte contre le racisme” illusions et désillusions, Droits de l’homme , mondialisation et droits humains à venir, Mishima Yukio: Everyone’s Favorite Homofascist. Machiavel : maintenir le conflit, Mineure 5. (2198), What effect had Thomas Macaulay wished British education in India to have? Icônes 76. point? Majeure 18. 2. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. How do the closing remarks reflect on the subject of the essay? Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak* Some of the most radical criticism coming out of the West today is the result of an interested desire to conserve the subject of the West, or the West as Subject. Warschawski : impasse en Palestine/Israel, Majeure 19. But here, in 2000, I state explicitly that we do need to "teach the subaltern." If you choose not to read them, you are welcome to attend and listen but please keep your microphone and camera OFF for the entire meeting, out of respect for those who have done the readings. with the qualification that their “positionality” must be marked), What sentence does she see as embodying “the immense problem of the consciousness Althusser insisted throughout his work that a philosophy must be judged by the effects that it produces, all the effects, whether internal or external to whatever disciplinary boundaries might be thought to impose their jurisdiction on it. In the text“can the subaltern speak”she tries to overthrow the binary opposition between subject and object, self and other, Occident and Orient, center and marginal and the majority and minority. In postcolonial theory, the term subaltern describes the lower social classes and the Other social groups displaced to the margins of a society; in an imperial colony, a subaltern is a native man or woman without human agency, as defined by his and her social status. What points does she advocate for future criticism to bear in mind? Vilém Flusser : vivre dans les programmes, Mineure 72. 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 reprod For Althusser history no more forgives the “misunderstood” or “misinterpreted” philosopher than it does the defeated revolutionary. Had she not carried out this substitution, her essay would have been far less effective; for the subaltern or the masses never cease to resist and rebel even as they are constituted by these actions as the masses. (2198). There is speech and writing (although these are only modalities of action which are in no way privileged) always and everywhere. Féminismes, queer, multitudes, Mineure 12. Art contemporain : la recherche du dehors. Fumetti 47. she say that members of an ethnic group are not necessarily subalterns? Here we must draw a line of demarcation: on the one side, the transcendental questions that declare what exists impossible so as to declare necessary and inevitable the representation of the masses by others; on the other a materialism that recognizes the irreducibility of what exists, including the voices and actions of the masses as they wage their struggles for self-emancipation with or without intellectuals of the Third and First World at their side. Who better than the translator of Of Grammatology to remind us of the relevance of Derrida’s critique of Western logocentrism and phonocentrism to political life and to show the utter folly, if not the disingenuousness, of Foucault’s call to publish the writings of prisoners as an integral part of the movement against the prisons, or the attempt to set up and archive for the workers’ voices as part of the project of proletarian self-emancipation (a project which Spivak has already criticized in categorical terms)? Donner un statut juridique aux « communs », 66. What is revealed in her account of her relative Bhubaneswari’s suicide? The question of whether or not the subaltern, or to use the Leninist term, the masses can speak cannot be posed transcendentally but only conjuncturally by the disposition of opposing forces that characterizes a given historical moment. In these phenomenal essays, eight scholars take stock of the effects and response to Spivak's work. Internet : la fin des intermédiaires ? Septembre 1994: École de la régulation et critique de la raison économique. Stéphane Degoutin & Gwenola Wagon, Icônes 65. And she has called forth some very intimidating witnesses on her behalf, the primary one, of course, being Derrida. Apprendre l’écologie par d’autres éducations, 66. Mineure 16. (2200), What does she see as the limitations of “subaltern studies” as ", Autour de la pétition sur les examens de l'égalité. (2207). My objective, however, is to question the question itself, “Can the Subaltern Speak,” which even if we replace the subaltern with another noun of our choice (the working class[es, the people, the oppressed, etc.) The subaltern enters official and intellectual discourse only rarely and usually through the mediating commentary of someone more at home in those discourses. Lenin flirted with it in his attempts to explain the capitulation of European social democracy in the First World War, Stalin embraced it and its very language derives from the period of the Sino-Soviet split and the consolidation of Maoism as an international current. oppression? ISSN 1097-3087 Cultural Logic: Marxist Theory & Practice. What does Spivak see as the attitude of some French theorists of the time toward In fact, if we examine the essay closely we can go even further to say that Spivak has elevated the contradiction between the First World and Third World as opposing blocs to a position of strategic and political dominance, as if the working classes in the West (and it appears that only the West has working classes-from the essay one would think that India was a primarily peasant society rather than one of the largest manufacturing economies in the world) is structurally allied more closely to its own bourgeoisie than to those forces traditionally regarded as its allies in the nations outside of Europe, North American and Japan: workers, rural laborers, landless peasants, etc. Its difficulty is also a consequence of the fact that Spivak carries on several struggles simultaneously.