Can the Subaltern Speak by Gayatri Spivak summary?

Can the Subaltern Speak by Gayatri Spivak summary?

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 …

Can the Subaltern Speak Spivak meaning?

The basic claim and opening statement of Can the Subaltern Speak? is that western academic thinking is produced in order to support western economical interests. … Spivak holds that knowledge is never innocent and that it expresses the interests of its producers.

What is the theory of Gayatri Spivak?

Fundamental to Spivak’s theory is the concept of Subaltern. The ‘Subaltern’ is a military term which means ‘of lower rank’. … She wants to give voice to the subalterns who can not speak or who are silent. She focuses on speculations made on widow sacrifice.

What did Gayatri Spivak do?

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, (born February 24, 1942, Calcutta [now Kolkata], India), Indian literary theorist, feminist critic, postcolonial theorist, and professor of comparative literature noted for her personal brand of deconstructive criticism, which she called interventionist.

Who are subalterns in India?

Since the 1970s, the term subaltern denoted the colonized peoples of the Indian subcontinent, imperial history told from below, from the perspective of the colonised peoples, rather than from the perspective of the colonisers from Western Europe.

What is subaltern feminism?

Women’s oppression is the most widespread and the deepest form of oppression in society. … Based on this assumption of inferior position, women are called the subalterns. The issues agitating women belonging to different cultures are different.

Can subalterns speak?

Within the effaced itinerary of the subaltern subject, the track of sexual difference is doubly effected. … 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. . . .

Who started postcolonial theory?

The ruling academic paradigm in academic area studies (especially Middle Eastern studies) is called post-colonial theory. Post-colonial theory was founded by Columbia University professor of comparative literature, Edward Said. Said gained fame in 1978, with the publication of his book, Orientalism.

Who introduced subaltern studies?

Ranajit Guha The SSG arose in the 1980s, influenced by the scholarship of Eric Stokes and Ranajit Guha, to attempt to formulate a new narrative of the history of India and South Asia. The group started at the University of Sussex and then continued and traveled, mainly through Guha’s students.

What does Spivak say about sati?

According to Spivak the word sati means a good wife and the Hindu female woman will not be good & loyal until she burns herself with her dead husband. This practice was common among the Hindu minorities in India. Surprisingly , the number of the sati women increased during the British colonization.

Is Spivak a deconstructionist?

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a leading postcolonial critic, uses deconstruction to problematize the privileged, academic postcolonial critic’s unknowing participation in the exploitation of the Third World. … Here arises one of the central principles of deconstruction.

Is Spivak a Marxist?

She has often referred to herself as a practical Marxist-feminist-deconstructionist. Her predominant ethico-political concern has been for the space occupied by the subaltern, especially subaltern women, both in discursive practices and in institutions of Western cultures.

Who are the subaltern classes?

Subaltern, meaning of inferior rank, is a term adopted by Antonio Gramsci to refer to those working class people in Soviet Union who are subject to the hegemony of the ruling classes. Subaltern classes may include peasants, workers and other groups denied access to hegemonic power.

What is a postcolonial perspective?

Post-colonial criticism is similar to cultural studies, but it assumes a unique perspective on literature and politics that warrants a separate discussion. Specifically, post-colonial critics are concerned with literature produced by colonial powers and works produced by those who were/are colonized.

Can the subaltern speak Spivak 1988?

It was first published in the journal Wedge in 1985, as Can the Subaltern Speak?: Speculations on Widow Sacrifice; reprinted in 1988 as Can the Subaltern Speak? in Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg’s edited collection, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture; and revised by Spivak as part of her History chapter …

Who is the father of subaltern history?

Ranajit Guha (born 23 May 1923, in Siddhakati, Backergunje) is a historian of the Indian Subcontinent who has been vastly influential in the Subaltern Studies group, and was the editor of several of the group’s early anthologies.

Is a captain a subaltern?

A commissioned officer below the rank of captain. But strictly speaking every officer is a subaltern to the grades above him, as the captain is subaltern to the major, and so upward.

What is the subaltern approach?

The Subaltern perspective stands for understanding the society through conditions of subordination of people belonging to the different caste, class, age, gender, race etc. It seeks to present an alternate image of society through the viewpoint of the masses usually unrepresented.

What is subaltern PDF?

Subalternity is a position without identity, a position where social lines of mobility, being elsewhere, do not permit the formation of a recognizable basis of action. The concept originally is used from a strong political perspective against subordination, to understand the mechanisms of subordination better, …

What is subaltern narrative?

Many fictional and Non-fictional narratives in Hindi and in regional languages make perspective of village life and society in colonial time and post-colonial time as well. … The ‘Subaltern’ is a term given by Antonio Gramsci to refer to those groups in society who are under the hegemony of the ruling elite class.

Can the subaltern speak feminism?

Khatun in A Site of Subaltern Articulation: The Ecstatic Female Body in the Contemporary Bangladeshi Novels of Taslima Nasrin talks about Taslima Nasrin, a feminist writer, and how she is against Bangladeshi women being mistreated. … The answer is no, the subaltern cannot speak.

What is subaltern consciousness?

Subaltern consciousness seeks its own vision of a ‘paradise lost’ in the sense of community. The autonomy of Subaltern consciousness is opposed to elite nationalism.

What is epistemic violence?

Epistemic violence is a failure of an audience to communicatively. reciprocate, either intentionally or unintentionally, in linguistic exchanges. owning to pernicious ignorance. Pernicious ignorance is a reliable ignorance or. a counterfactual incompetence that, in a given context, is harmful.

Who is the father of postcolonial theory?

Edward Said

Edward Said
Born Edward Wadie Said 1 November 1935 Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine
Died 24 September 2003 (aged 67) New York City, United States
Education Princeton University Harvard University
Spouse(s) Mariam C. Said

What are the main features of postcolonial theory?

Postcolonial Literature Characteristics

When did postcolonial theory begin?

Postcolonial theory emerged in the US and UK academies in the 1980s as part of a larger wave of new and politicized fields of humanistic inquiry, most notably feminism and critical race theory.

Who is the founder of subaltern studies in India?

Ranajit Guha Ranajit Guha, the founder of the subaltern studies in South Asia, is considered as the practitioner of a critical Marxist historiography, who sought an active political engagement with the postcolonial present, inspired by Antonio Gramsci and Mao Zedong (Chatterjee, 2009).

What is subaltern school?

Subaltern Studies emerged around 1982 as a series of journal articles published by Oxford University Press in India. A group of Indian scholars trained in the west wanted to reclaim their history. Its main goal was to retake history for the underclasses, for the voices that had not been heard previous.

What is the Bengali meaning of subaltern?

(of a proposition) implied by another proposition (e.g., as a particular affirmative is by a universal one), but not implying it in return. translation of ‘subaltern’