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Gayatri Spivak Can The Subaltern Speak Summary

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103 views4 pages

Gayatri Spivak Can The Subaltern Speak Summary

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AJAY BOLT
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Gayatri Spivak Can The Subaltern Speak Summary

The essay of Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak Can The Subaltern Speak


summary is all about the condition of women in the postcolonial era.

The essay addresses the way in which the “Subaltern” woman is


constructed, as absent or silent, someone who is not listened to. No one
cares about them, what they think and what they say.

The use of the term Subaltern in this essay has been influenced by
Antonio Gramsci, an Italian thinker who first used this term.

The work Subaltern refers to “Inferior Rank” which was given to women,
black people, the colonized people, as well as the working class. All
these people were considered to be of lower rank and were thus,
addressed as the Subalterns.

In this essay, the question of gender and sexual difference in the work
has been introduced by Spivak.

According to her, the subaltern is referred to as those people who


belong to third-world countries, that is the undeveloped nation, this is
because it is impossible for these people to speak for themselves as
they are divided and distinguished from others by gender, religion,
caste, region, and certain other narratives. These people are not
valued by the people who take them as inferior.

Spivak, through this essay, wants to give voice to these Subalterns she
has talked about, who cannot speak, or who are silent. Spivak wants
them to stand up for themselves without any fear.

She has also focused on the speculations that are made on widow
sacrifice. She did this by using an example of Sati, the practice which
had been observed among the Hindus in which a woman, after
becoming a widow, would be burnt alive along with the pyre of her
dead husband’s body.

This orthodox practice was outlawed gradually after the arrival of the
Britishers to India and with the help of this, they were also able to secure
their rule in the nation, according to whom, White men (Britishers) saved
brown women from brown men.

And this created the notion that the white men and Britishers were
civilized people and the Indians were rather barbarians (uncivilized)
because they didn’t believe in such orthodox practices.

With this, Spivak also points out that the oppressed people are being
silenced. She has also refused the idea that Western people are more
superior and civilized. She talked about the Subaltern people and the
place that they are given in society and stood with them because
according to her, they are also an active part of society.

Brief

“In the text “Can The Subaltern Speak?”, Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak
tries to analyze how the western culture investigates our own culture.
She also tries to rule out the binary oppositions between self and the
other, occident and the orient, majority and minority, east and west,
and so on.

The term Subaltern in postcolonial terms refers to the colonized mass


who are socially, geographically and politically excluded from the
hierarchy of power. For Spivak, the Subalterns are those who belong to
third-world countries and are divided on the abscess of caste, class,
creed, gender, color, etc.

Can the Subaltern Speak Analysis

As we have already gone through the summary of this essay, now it is


time to check out the Can The subaltern Speak Critical Analysis.

The essay discusses four major points:

1. Truth construction –

Here, Spivak uses deconstruction to analyze how truly the truth was
constructed. She also gives the example of Sati practice for this. British
intervention saved the lives of many women and according to
Britishers, “white men saved brown women from brown men”. This
statement points out the truth that Indians are barbarians and the British
are civilized and therefore colonization can be justified.

Spivak says that our consciousness is randomly structured and our


identities are written and framed by others. This is what she means by
truth construction. Somebody else’s truth may not be justified by the
other person.

2. Eurocentric knowledge is not innocent –

Here, Spivak criticizes Foucault and Deleuze for committing Epistemic


violence which refers to focusing on and projecting eurocentric
knowledge to third-world countries. So, we all know that the academic
thinking and ideology of the eurocentric people or Europeans are
nowhere related to ours. Their knowledge, academic thinking, and
ideology serve good for their interests only and not ours.

So, the Eurocentric knowledge here is a commodity and they try to sell
it out. They carry it out into third-world countries and thus, such
knowledge is never innocent.

She also says that European knowledge is ideal and they take western
thinking into third-world countries therefore, our identities are
constructed and written by them.

3. Criticism of essentialist ideologies

Here, Spivak uses Marxist ideology to criticize the leftists. The leftists
consider the third-world people and themselves as people who have
similar identities and similar ideologies. Therefore, this has a negative
impact on the subalterns. Spivak says that because of this, their major
situations can happen:

1. This paves way for colonialism.

2. 2. It provides a logocentric assumption of cultural unity among


heterogeneous people.

3. The subalterns, rather than speaking for themselves, wait for the
western intellectuals to speak for their conditions and situations.
4. Death of Bhuvaneshwari Bhaduri

Here, Spivak speaks about Bhubhaneshwari Bhaduri who hanged


herself in 1926. Her death was an instantaneous resistance against the
patriarchal ideology. So, while explaining the death of Bhuvaneshwari
Bhaduri, Spivak describes that she hanged herself when she was
menstruating and there was a belief in West Bengal during those days
that if a young woman commits suicide, people used to believe that
she was into some kind of love relationship.

Since Bhyvaneshwari Bhaduri didn’t want people to think about her like
that which is why she killed herself while she was menstruating so that
she could prove that she was not a victim of failed romance. She
wanted to convey patriarchy that she committed suicide due to some
other cause.

Later, her family also found out that she was a member of the anti-
colonial group. She failed to carry out the task of killing a political figure
for which she refused and this turned out to be the cause of her death.

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