Spivak asserts that
the subaltern subject is heterogeneous and, by examining the mechanisms of the supposed ‘recovery’ of their voice, instead an ongoing displacement and effacement is revealed
. The key subject position disentangled by Spivak is that of the female subaltern and the practice of sati or widow immolation.
What did Gayatri Spivak do?
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born 24 February 1942) 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.
What does Spivak say about sati?
Spivak chooses the “sati” women in India as a subaltern who cannot speak. 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.
What does Gayatri Spivak conclude in her essay Can the Subaltern Speak?
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in her influential essay, ”Can the Subaltern Speak? ‘
argues that the abolition of the Hindu rite of sati in India by the British
”has been generally understood as a case of ”White men saving brown women from brown men”.
What does Gayatri Spivak mean when she argues that the subaltern does not speak ‘?
What in the world does Gayatri Spivak mean when she argues that “‘the subaltern does not speak”‘? The subaltern has a different way of expressing herself and
it doesn
‘t involve speech. … The subaltern does not speak as a form of political resistance against her oppressors. The subaltern is mute.
Who coined the term subaltern?
Antonio Gramsci
coined the term subaltern to identify the cultural hegemony that excludes and displaces specific people and social groups from the socio-economic institutions of society, in order to deny their agency and voices in colonial politics.
What does Spivak mean by subaltern?
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.
Where was sati practiced?
Sati was frequently practised in
Rajasthan
, more specifically by the women of royal families. A sati stone was created, which was a memorial of all the wives of the kings who died this way.
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 the Subaltern Speak Gayatri?
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 ” …
Is post colonialism a theory?
Postcolonial theory is
a body of thought primarily concerned with accounting for the political, aesthetic, economic, historical, and social impact of European colonial rule around the world in the 18th through the 20th century
. … It also suggests that colonized world stands at the forgotten center of global modernity.
Can the Subaltern Speak Spivak quotes?
My whole point in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is that you can’t simply makethe subaltern visible or lend her a voice. (Heads up: the subaltern is very often, though not quite always, gendered female in my work… because women the world over are still structurally subordinated to men.)
Can subaltern speak by Gayatri Spivak analysis?
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.
What is postcolonial poem?
For the purposes of this chapter, ‘postcolonial poetry’ means
poetry written by non-European peoples in the shadow of colonialism
, both after independence and in the immediate period leading up to it, particularly works that engage, however obliquely, issues of living in the interstices between Western colonialism and …
Can resistance scholars hear the subaltern speak?
Postcolonial scholar Gayatri Spivak loudly declared that
privileged intellectuals and authors cannot hear the subaltern speak
. Even when we listen to subaltern “voices” expressing pleasure or pain, we cannot hear them as forms of reasonable and meaningful “speech” articulating what is just or unjust.
What is post colonial period?
Postcolonialism,
the historical period or state of affairs representing the aftermath of Western colonialism
; the term can also be used to describe the concurrent project to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of people subordinated under various forms of imperialism.
