page_title: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
section_title: Work
hierarchical_section_title: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak / Work
caption_attribution_description: English: The strength of Critique: Trajectories of Marxism – Feminism Internationaler Kongress Berlin, 20.-22.3.2015
context_page_description: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is an Indian scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic. She is a University Professor at Columbia University and a founding member of the establishment's Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.
  Considered one of the most influential postcolonial intellectuals, Spivak is best known for her essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" and for her translation of and introduction to Jacques Derrida's De la grammatologie. She also translated such works of Mahasweta Devi as Imaginary Maps and Breast Stories into English and with separate critical appreciation on the texts and Devi's life and writing style in general.
  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.
context_section_description: In "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Spivak discusses the lack of an account of the Sati practice, leading her to reflect on whether the subaltern can even speak.  Spivak writes about the process, the focus on the Eurocentric Subject as they disavow the problem of representation; and by invoking the Subject of Europe, these intellectuals constitute the subaltern Other of Europe as anonymous and mute.
  Spivak rose to prominence with her translation of Derrida's De la grammatologie, which included a translator's introduction that has been described as "setting a new standard for self-reflexivity in prefaces." After this, as a member of the "Subaltern Studies Collective," she carried out a series of historical studies and literary critiques of imperialism and international feminism. 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. Edward Said wrote of Spivak's work, "She pioneered the study in literary theory of non-Western women and produced one of the earliest and most coherent accounts of that role available to us."
  Her  A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, published in 1999, explores how major works of European metaphysics (e.g., Kant, Hegel) not only tend to exclude the subaltern from their discussions, but actively prevent non-Europeans from occupying positions as fully human subjects. In this work, Spivak launched the concept of "sanctioned ignorance" for the "reproducing and foreclosing of colonialist structures". This concept denotes a purposeful silencing through the "dismissing of a particular context as being irrelevant"; an institutionalized and ideological way of presenting the world.
  Spivak coined the term "strategic essentialism," which refers to a sort of temporary solidarity for the purpose of social action. For example, women's groups have many different agendas that potentially make it difficult for feminists to work together for common causes; "Strategic essentialism" allows for disparate groups to accept temporarily an "essentialist" position that enables them able to act cohesively.
  However, while others have built upon this idea of "strategic essentialism," Spivak has been unhappy with the ways the concept has been taken up and used. In interviews, she has disavowed the term, although she has not completely deserted the concept itself.
  She has been a Guggenheim fellow, has received numerous academic honours including an honorary doctorate from Oberlin College, and has been on the editorial board of academic journals such as Boundary 2. In March 2007, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger appointed Spivak University Professor, the institution's highest faculty rank. In a letter to the faculty, he wrote,
  Not only does her world-renowned scholarship—grounded in deconstructivist literary theory—range widely from critiques of post-colonial discourse to feminism, Marxism, and globalization; her lifelong search for fresh insights and understanding has transcended the traditional boundaries of discipline while retaining the fire for new knowledge that is the hallmark of a great intellect.
  
  In speeches given and published since 2002, Spivak has addressed the issue of terrorism and suicide bombings. With the aim of bringing an end to suicide bombings, she has explored and "tried to imagine what message [such acts] might contain," ruminating that "suicidal resistance is a message inscribed in the body when no other means will get through." One critic has suggested that this sort of stylised language may serve to blur important moral issues relating to terrorism. However, Spivak stated in the same speech that "single coerced yet willed suicidal 'terror' is in excess of the destruction of dynastic temples and the violation of women, tenacious and powerfully residual. It has not the banality of evil. It is informed by the stupidity of belief taken to extreme."
  Spivak has advised many significant
caption: Spivak speaking on The strength of Critique: Trajectories of Marxism – Feminism at the Internationaler Kongress
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