Here are brief summaries of notables works, books and essays by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Here is a general brief introduction into Spivak's thought.
Three Women as Texts and a Critique of Imperialism
In her essay Three Women as
Texts and a Critique of Imperialism, Spivak examines three novels written by
women, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. She shows that literature created in an
imperialist social context does not undermine imperialism by being written by
women. Thus the novels of Brontë and Rhys reflect the social mission of
nineteenth-century women to domesticate and civilize the wild, animalistic males.
In Frankenstein, however, this dualism is avoided; the binary construction of
an English lady and a nameless monster is canceled here. The “Third World” (or
what corresponded to it in the 19th century) was also a signifier in
19th-century literature written by women, which made us forget the “social
mission” of the imperialist states, through which the Third World first came
into being was made into what it has been ever since. There is a parallel to
the capitalist commodity fetish , which allows the creation of the product to
disappear in the labor process.
Can the Subaltern Speak
Spivak’s notable essay “Can the Subaltern speak?” deals with the situation of the Subalterns who
are speechless in the face of the overpowering system of rule or who remain
unheard and misunderstood. The knowledge production of western intellectuals
prevents the subaltern from speaking. In this respect, Spivak also criticizes
the eloquent representations of Western feminism and human rights, which have
distanced themselves far from the underclasses of the Global South they
protect, and counters this with a model of “subversive listening” that empowers
reading and speaking. For her, narration is an important strategy in the fight
against the injustice of the world, but the untold is not identical with the
untold.
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason
The book A Critique of
Postcolonial Reason (alluding to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason), which deals
with many topics with recourse to Jacques Derrida's concept of
différance. The book begins with a critical-ironic analysis of the thoughts of Kant
(about the "savages" from the Critique of Judgment ), Hegel (on the
"mindless creative talent" of Indian art in the lectures on aesthetics
) and Marx (on the Asian mode of production). She understands these concepts as
an expression of a patriarchal-Eurocentric discourse that considers
non-Europeans to be ignorant, who only enter the realm of history and spirit
with the European conquest, and completely ignores women. According to Spivak,
there is no place in the thought systems of these philosophers for cultural or
gender differences, which capitalism does not level, as Marx predicted, but
rather produces it again and again. Marx's concept of the Asian mode of
production stands for the question, which he also did not answer, as to why the
whole world did not develop linearly according to the European model. This
problem lives on in Stalin's speeches on the non-simultaneity of development,
the question of nationalities and multiculturalism. Mao Zedong radicalized the
idea of making the superstructure independent of the economy by calling for a
cultural revolution of the superstructure. The telos of increasing the tribute directed
oriental economies was not capitalism but the colonial exploitation to which
these economies have fallen victim to this day. In Europe, on the other hand,
capitalism probably only developed because of a temporary weakness in the
European feudal systems, as well as in the neighboring non-European ones, which
had lost important military resources as a result of the Crusades. Marx also
failed to recognize that the increase in the proportion of women in the
capitalist labor process that he perceived was still largely pre-industrial
domestic work. The abolition of the differences between the various
categories of labor power did not exist in the form he postulated. However,
Spivak's book also contains warnings about the limits of Cultural Studies, from
a naive enthusiasm towards the Third World and certain excesses of the
globalized culture industry. The book contains an ironic examination of various
streams of postcolonial and cultural theory, e.g. with cultural nativism ,
elitist poststructuralism , urban feminism, linguistic hybridism, and white
postcolonialism.
Righting Wrongs
In Righting Wrongs, Spivak
criticizes the way in which unjust conditions are established by the Global
North through the assessment and allocation of human rights. Since the local
human rights activists of the Global South are largely descendants of the
colonial elite, it seems paradoxical when the human rights activists demand
that the subalterns claim it is their duty to demand human rights.
An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization
Spivak made a notable turn in
her collection of essays, An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization
(2012). She assumes that pairs of terms such as traditionalism and modernity,
colonialism and postcolonialism are no longer sufficient to describe the
current conflict situation. Ethics shouldn't be played off against aesthetics,
the multitude of languages shouldn't be wiped out by the media of global
communication. Based on her experiences with teacher training in India she sees
in this theory of aesthetic education, in particular in the deepening of the
literary education of African and Asian intellectuals, an instrument for the
production of more justice and democracy.
More about Postcolonialism.