The New Subaltern: A Silent Interview
Gayatri Spivak, (born Feb. 24, 1942, Calcutta, India), Spivak is a literary critic and theorist. She sometimes regarded as the “Third-World Woman”. She is best known for the article, (Can the Subaltern Speak?). It is considered a founding text of postcolonialism. She is also known for her translation of Jacques Derrida‘s Of Grammatology‟. This translation brought her to prominence. After this she carried out a series of historical studies and literary critiques of imperialism and feminism.
Her Areas of Interest: 19th- and 20th-century literature; Marxism; feminism; deconstruction; poststructuralism; globalization
Key words: Subaltern, post-colonialism studies, subaltern historiography, consciousness of
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It is “A code-word to deceive the prison censor to allow his manuscripts out the prison"(Morton 96). Also, Gramsci used the term subaltern to refer in particular to the unorganized groups of rural peasants based in Southern Italy, who had no social or political consciousness as a group, and were therefore susceptible to the ruling ideas, culture and leadership of the state. Later on, historians of south Asia adopted the word from Gramsci and change its meaning to mean persons and groups cut off from upward-, and in a sense, “out-ward”-social mobility. This also meant that these persons and groups were cut off from the culture line that produced the colonial subject.
“The general political importance of subaltern studies is in the production of knowledge to quote Marxian phrase ‘educating for educator’…the subalternist of production of knowledge was to undermine the monopoly credit rating of the progressive bourgeois and rethink the political so that subaltern insurgency is not seen as invariably pre- political….. ” (p.231)
In order to illustrate The New Subaltern, Spivak
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These have come to be referred to by the term biocolonialism. Further, the obvious connection to colonialism, biocolonialism is also linked to the concept of biopolitics, or biopower, developed by Foucault.
• How we do we define subaltern studies in the wider field of post-colonial studies? Is it simply an Indian-national sector in this wider field or is it a cluster of distinct theoretical positions in this wider field?
“The subaltern studies is certainly related to south Asia history, as Gramsci was related to Italy, its theoretical position, of studying how the continuity of supposedly pre-political insurgency brings culture to crisis and confronts power would make post-colonial studies more conventionally political. One major difference is that the disciplinary connection of post-colonial studies is to literary criticism rather than history and the social science. Subaltern studies has not pursed oral history as unmediated narrative, and its investigation and testimony have generally confined themselves to legal
Post-colonialism is a discourse draped in history. In one point in time or another, European colonialism dominated most non-European lands since the end of the Renaissance. Naturally, colonialists depicted the cultures of non-Europeans incorrectly and inferior. Traditionally, the canon has misappropriated and misrepresented these cultures, but also the Western academia has yet to teach us the valuable and basic lessons that allow true representations to develop. Partly in response, Post-colonialism arose. Though this term is a broad one, Post-colonialists generally agree on certain key principles. They understand that colonialism exploits the dominated people or country in one way or another, evoking inequalities. Examples of past inequalities include “genocide, economic exploitation, cultural decimation and political exclusion…” (Loomba 9-10). They abhor traditional colonialism but also believe that every people, through the context of their own cultures, have something to contribute to our understanding of human nature (Loomba 1-20). This is the theme that Lewis prescribes in his, self described, “satirical fantasy”, Out of the Silent Planet (Of Other 77).
Biopower, a phrase created by a French scholar, historian and social theorist. Michel Foucault 's History of Sexuality, discusses the term as the practice of states and their regulation of subjects through "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations" (Foucault 140). The idea of biopower is that the state assumes control over one’s body. There are many cases where biopower has been used, however, the Tuskegee Syphilis study brings to light how biopower and gender were closely related.
Imperialism - the domination by one country of the political, economic, or cultural life of another country. European Imperialism did not begin until the 1800's. Because of its significant gain in power, and economic and military strength, Europe began an expansion that modern historians call the "new imperialism." This process lead to Europeans feeling racially superior. Because of this, "they applied Darwin's ideas about Natural Selection and survival of the fittest to human societies" (Various). “Social Darwinism is a philosophical, economic, social, and scientific movement that claims that the ways society functions is, and ought to be, a reflection of the methods and movements of biological evolution” (Darity). This concept was particularly executed in Africa. Because of Africa's diversity and traditional culture, they were much easier to conquer than other countries, like India and China. This conquest had a large impact for Europe socially, politically and economically. But by the mid 17-18th centuries, social Darwinism had an intense social consequence on European colonies in Africa.
Le Guin suggests the need for permanent revolution to counter such threats as an incipient bureaucracy and a tendency toward dominance games. Marx used the term “permanent revolution” to describe the strategy of a revolutionary class to continue to pursue its class interests independently and without compromise, despite overtures for political alliances and the political dominance of opposing sections of society. In Can the Subaltern Speak? Spivak explores contemporary relations of power and Western intellectual discourse through representation and the political economy of global capitalism. In place of Earth's global capitalism I will be exploring Urras and Annares' relationship with themselves and each other. Urras and Anarres each view themselves as establishers of the good society.
As a result of the shift of power and the new role undertaken by human labor, education became increasingly important. A privilege once reserved for the upper class, education was afforded to the working class in an effort to improve industrial efficiency. ...
Colonialism has plagued indigenous people worldwide and has spelled disaster for countless cultures, languages, and traditions. Over the past 500 years there have been different phases of colonization in Africa as well as other various parts of earth. There were many reasons behind exploration and colonization including economic and tactical reasons, religion, and prestige. Colonialism has shaped the contemporary understanding of individuals from Niger as well as other parts of Africa and other places too, like the Chambri and Tlingit people; mainly in economics. Because of the colonial past of so many cultures, numerous indigenous people today face many issues. Today colonialism is still active, known as Neocolonialism, which has devastating effects on global cultural groups.
Postcolonial criticism, as suggested in the textbook, “has developed because of the dramatic shrinking of the world and the increasing multicultural cast of our own country” (1603). As described by Andrea Smith in his book “From Heteropatriarchy and the Three pillars of White Supremacy”, “The
"Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism", Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in The Feminist Reader ed. Catherine Belsey and Jane Moore (1997).
28. Sargeant, B. S. J. (1979) The Circular Fruit: Marxism, the substructural paradigm of discourse and Sartreist absurdity. And/Or Press
Mohanty is drawing upon theoretical perspectives of postmodernism to understand difference and by that uncover essentialist and Universalist interpretations (Uduyagiri 1995:159). In particular she is drawing upon approaches familiar to Edward Said’s Orientalism and Focault’s approach to discourse, power and knowledge. Foucault’s theories are especially useful in a postmodernist argument since he acknowledge that there are several structures of power, and that the there is a diversity of localized resistances ( Udayagiri 1995: 161). Mohanty uses Foucault’s conception of power to uncover Universalist categories and how feminist writers define power as a binary structure – to be in possession of power versus being powerless (Mohanty 1991:71). This limited way of theorizing power fails to recognize counteroffensives and the varied forms of power. Mohanty uses Said’s Orientalism to show how the way Western cultural perceptions of the Orient “became a means of controlling the regio...
In this paper feminist aspect of post colonization will be studied in “Season of Migration to the North” novel by Tayeb Salih. Postcolonial feminism can be defined as seeks to compute for the way that racism and the long-lasting economic, cultural, and political influences of colonialism affect non-white, non-Western women in the postcolonial world, according to Oxford dictionary. As it mentioned earlier about the application of Feminism theory in literature, the provided definition of postcolonial feminism also is not applicable in literature analysis. Therefore, Oxford defines another applic...
This essay will explore the relationship between education and society from a sociological perspective, the topics I have chosen to explore is Marxism, functionalism, education and class, feminism and the last topic is a very general topic which enhances our understanding of sociology and the world we live in. I chose the topics above as they offer an interesting viewpoint of education and sociology; also the topics above interlink this makes it easier to understand the contributions from a sociological perspective. Furthermore, to enhance my understanding of the topics I have found readings from other modules which offer a different perspective of education and society this will enable me to answer the question much more concisely as other viewpoints can challenge the topics I have stated above.
... If one is to read this literature in a way which will shed some light on the postcolonial condition, one must understand and adopt the theory that we are all walking amalgamations of our own unique cultures and traditions. We are all always struggling with our own identities, personal and national. We must understand that there is no "one true voice" representing an easily identifiable postcolonial condition, but, instead, each author is his or her own voice and must be read as such.
In the beginning, Mills discusses theoretical elements and has labeled this section as “General Theoretical Issues” and the second part is comprised of analysis having three sub chapters. The main section of the book examines feminist models of the text and investigates language typologies. According to Sara Mills, language is a form of social communication, a tool to transfer information and a set of mutually decided linguistic choices in any system (Crystal: 1995, 18). Language functions as sharing of thoughts in a framework where options are equally exclusive. Mills criticizes the traditional method to deal with legendary writings which often neglect the fact that the writer has no command over the stuff, being delivered by him or her. Another drawback of this conventional approach is that only the texts which have literary worth are selected for analysis (e.g. the works of Shakespeare, D.H. Lawrence, Beckett and so on) and women’s writings for stylistic analysis are often overlooked. TorilMoi (1985) and Elaine Showalter (1978) are of the view that “women’s writings have frequently been barred from standard status, by the procedure named phallocentric
However, partly due to their biological sexual difference and the socio-cultural surroundings to which they belong, the consequences of these above mentioned social evils are much more on women, especially subaltern women. Giving voice to such oppressed subalterns, the gendered subaltern (women of the deprived sections) and Indian women in general, Gayatri Chakvarty Spivak says: “For if, in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow.” During her analysis of Sati she concludes her essay “can the subaltern” with her declaration that “the subaltern cannot speak” (Ashcroft, Griffths, and Tiffins 218-219).