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This article emphasises the relevance and importance of Gayatri Spivak's work for those of us involved in the field of development (as academics, researchers or development workers). Spivak underlines how our representations, especially of marginalised Third World groups, are intimately linked to our positioning (socioeconomic, gendered, cultural, geographic, historical, institutional). She therefore demands a heightened self-reflexivity that mainstream development analysts (eg Robert Chambers), and even 'critical' ones (eg Escobar, Shiva), have failed to live up to. The article examines Spivak's writings to illustrate the reasons, advantages and limits of this hyper-self-reflexivity.

How does Spivak approach the signs the madwoman in the attic, the good black servant, the monster and the \"wholly Other\"? What is the basis of Spivak's ethics of interpretation and what are her main tools? Gayatri Spivak: Deconstruction and the Ethics of Postcolonial Literary Interpretation is an ambitious and compelling critical work which answers various questions surrounding one of the most notoriously difficult literary theorists in our times. This book is an in-depth study of Spivak's readings of a cluster of canonical and peripheral literary texts covering Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Frankenstein, Foe and \"Pterodactyl.\" It divides Spivak's literary theoretical practice into two phases; the first is de Manian and the second is Derridean. However, the book also shows that these two phases are not clearly independent from each other; rather, there are continuities between them. The theory resulting from these two phases can be described as affirmative postcolonial literary interpretation: Derridean in spirit but de Manian in technique. The book also meticulously defines Spivak's position within the thought of Derrida, de Man and western feminists and reveals the possibilities available for readers who wish to ethically approach and interpret the sign of the \"wholly Other,\" which reaches in its scope \"the native subaltern female.\" Analysing Spivak's literary interpretation as such, this book offers insights to postcolonial readers and provides them with new tools, such as \"learning from below,\" useful for reading not literature only, but also contemporary political, cultural and social issues from new perspectives.

En esta entrevista, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak revisita la cuestión del esencialismo y antiesencialismo a partir de la reconsideración de diferentes marcos teóricos con los que trabajó a lo largo de su trayectoria intelectual, como los de la deconstrucción, el marxismo y los feminismos, además de considerar el lugar de la filosofía. De toda esta reflexión resulta muy relevante la revisión del concepto de esencialismo estratégico para pensar los movimientos sociales, dado que se aleja de planteamientos anteriores de la autora. Spivak sugiere entenderlo como una crítica constante al modo en que se es esencialista, señalando que este gesto permite guardar lo crítico, lo estratégico y lo necesario de una esencia minimizable. También, reafirma la importancia del posicionamiento en la autoría y de esbozar la propia biograía, lo que la lleva a explayarse sobre lecciones aprendidas durante la niñez. Evalúa la enseñanza como una práctica en la que, en vez de abordar el debate teórico, es posible proponer la experiencia de la imposibilidad de las esencias. Por otro lado, analiza su propio lugar dentro del Grupo de Estudios Subalternos y la idea de \"tercer mundo\" en su sentido político más estricto. Hacia el final, examina el vínculo entre la perspectiva práctica de las esencias con respecto a lo empírico, y la relación entre la persona que investiga con su audiencia. Palabras clave | deconstrucción; esencialismo estratégico; feminismo; marxismo; poscolonialidad In this interview, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak revisits the debate between essentialism and anti-essentialism by reconsidering various theoretical frameworks she has engaged with over her intellectual journey. These frameworks include deconstruction, Marxism, and feminisms, alongside reflections on the role of philosophy. One key focus of her reflection is the concept of strategic essentialism in understanding social movements, diverging from her previous stances. Spivak suggests viewing it as an ongoing critique of essentialist approaches, emphasizing the importance of maintaining critical, strategic, and indispensable elements within a minimalizable essence. She also stresses the significance of authorial positioning and autobiographical narratives, drawing on childhood lessons. She explores teaching as a practice that can convey the impossibility of fixed essences rather than engaging in theoretical debates. She examines her own place within the Subaltern Studies Group and the political connotations of the \"Third World.\" Towards the end, she delves into the practical perspective on essences concerning empirical realities and the dynamic between researchers and their audiences. Keywords | deconstruction; feminism; Marxism; postcoloniality; strategic essentialism Nesta entrevista, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak revisita a questão do essencialismo e antiessencialismo ao reconsiderar diferentes referenciais teóricos com os quais trabalhou ao longo de sua trajetória intelectual, como a desconstrução, o marxismo e os feminismos, além de considerar o lugar da filosofia. De toda essa reflexão, a revisão do conceito de essencialismo estratégico para pensar os movimentos sociais é muito relevante, uma vez que se afasta das abordagens anteriores da autora. Spivak sugere entendê-lo como uma crítica constante ao modo como se é essencialista, apontando que esse gesto permite que o crítico, o estratégico e o necessário sejam mantidos a partir de uma essência minimizável. Ela também reafirma a importância do posicionamento autoral e do esboço da própria biografia, o que a leva a discorrer sobre as lições aprendidas na infância. Avalia o ensino como uma prática em que, em vez de lidar com o debate teórico, é possível propor a experiência da impossibilidade de essências. Além disso, analisa seu lugar no Grupo de Estudos Subalternos e a ideia do \"terceiro mundo\" em seu sentido político mais estrito. No final, ela examina a ligação entre a perspectiva prática das essências com relação ao empírico e a relação entre a pessoa que pesquisa e seu público. Palavras-chave | desconstrução; essencialismo estratégico; feminismo; marxismo; pós-colonialidade

This book introduces and discusses the works of leading feminist postcolonialist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, by exploring the key concepts and themes to emerge from them. - Focuses on the key themes to emerge from Spivak’s work, such as ethics, literature, feminism, pedagogy, postcoloniality, violence, and war - Assesses Spivak’s often contentious relationship with feminist and postcolonial studies - Considers the significance of her work for other fields, such as ethnography, history, cultural studies and philosophy

The visitor to Karl Marx's Grave in London's highgate cemetery is confronted by a large polished granite plinth, atop which squats an imposing bronze head and shoulders of Marx. Although the artist Laurence Bradshaw designed the rectangular plinth as a proxy for Marx's body, the effect is still to emphasize the head, the supposed locus of Geist, esprit , intellect. Marx was a headworker, it is true. Even in the depths of poverty, plagued by bodily ailments, he was never obliged to purvey körperliche Arbeit (“body work,” “manual labor”) in the restricted sense—that is, a körperliche Arbeit located in a social split that structurally denies the body worker access to the abstractions of a developed geistige Arbeit (“intellectual labor”).

In death of a discipline , Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak attributes the emergence of postcolonial studies to an increase in Asian immigration to the United States following Lyndon Johnson's 1965 reform of the Immigration Act (3). I would like to resituate her genealogy of the field in order to consider the “ab-use,” or “use from below,” of the European Enlightenment she asks us to cultivate in her most recent book, An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization. To perform this move, I will suggest that postcolonial studies began more than one hundred years before the legislation Spivak names in what has become a founding document for the field. I am referring to Thomas Babington Macaulay's well-known 1835 minute on Indian education, which proposed the creation of “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” (729). The class of Western-educated natives who would serve as liaisons between European colonizers and the millions of people they ruled came to be known in postcolonial studies as colonial subjects.

Postcolonial critics Paulo Freire (1921–1997) and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1942–) have both made attempts at offering pedagogical formulas that take into account the student’s experiences in order to oust oppressive tendencies from the classroom, and at first glance, many of their ideas seem close to identical: Freire speaks dismissively of “banking” education (75), and Spivak rejects rote learning (“Righting” 551); Freire argues that a reconciliation of the teacher-student contradiction is a prerequisite for proper education (all participants need to be “teachers and students” simultaneously [53]), and Spivak exhorts the educator to “learn to learn from below” (548). In other words, both scholars advocate a pedagogy whose “very legitimacy lies in…dialogue” (Freire 109), and they both undertake what this text labels a methodological leap from theory to practice. The aim of this article, then, is to find out how or to what extent Freire and Spivak render their pedagogical theories practicable and whether they manage to circumvent the danger of transference, of imposing the educator’s agenda on the learner. The article’s response to this question is no, in Freire’s case, and yes, but only provisionally, in Spivak’s. When Freire puts his teacher in charge of deciding what voices in the classroom should be heard and what voices should be gagged, he leaves the door open for renewed oppression and a mere turning of the tables, clearly against the grain of his own line of argument. Spivak, on the other hand, leaves no loopholes for oppressive tendencies in her methodology; however, as she usually shuns “the production of models [of practice] as such,” withdraws her own formulas, and uses deconstruction as a “safeguard against the repression or exclusion of ‘alterities,” her settling for a certain praxis can only be temporary and provisional (“Can the Subaltern” 103, Norton 2110).

Postcolonialism emerged as a field within literary studies during the 1980s as part of the discipline's general restructuring. That restructuring has, perhaps, been insufficiently acknowledged by the profession, and at any rate there seems to be little consensus as to its significance and shape. But it seems undeniable that, during the 1980s, literary criticism ceased to ground itself on its attention to its objects' literary qualities or on its efforts to establish convincing literary judgments about them. It turned rather to thinking about literature as, for instance, a vehicle of cultural-political identities, or as a resistance to ideology, or, more neutrally, as articulated into broader signifying or social structures.

01 02 This book explores several fundamental issues in postcolonial studies through the work of one of its most authoritative, if contentious, figures: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.It explores a number of issues, including the question of representing the other, strategies adopted to resist such representations, and the questions of identity, nationalism, colonialism, feminism, subaltern studies and the English language within the context of Empire. Providing a critique of the paradoxes and conflicts which appear in Spivak's work, the book offers a new approach to postcolonial studies. 02 02 Exploring, amongst other themes, representations of the other, strategies adopted to resist such representations, the issues of identity, nationalism, colonialism, feminism, subaltern studies and the English language within the context of Empire, this book projects a study of post-colonialism through the work of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. 16 02 There are innumerable books on the market on postcolonialism and/or Spivak such as:   Moore & Rivera: PLANETARY LOVES: SPIVAK, POSTCOLONIALITY AND THEOLOGY; Fordham University Press, 2010 Miller, Vandome & Brewster: GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK: VDM Publishing House, 2010 Ray: GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK: IN OTHER WORDS; Wiley-Blackwell, 2009 Ashcroft et al (eds.): THE POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES READER, 2ND EDITION; Routledge, 2005 Ashcroft et al: THE EMPIRE WRITES BACK: THEORY AND PRACTICE IN POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURES, 2ND EDITION; Routledge, 2005. Gilbet: POSTCOLONIAL THEORY: CONTEXTS, PRACTICES, POLITICS; Verso, 1997 Loomba: COLONIALISM/POSTCOLONIALISM; Routledge, 1998   The proposed book differs from these in the author's intention to critique the paradoxes and conflicts in her work and incorporate the work of Middle Eastern writers which have been under-represented in postcolonial studies. 04 02 Acknowledgements Preface PART I Post-Colonialism and Postmodernism A Four-Hundred Year Old Woman The Greatest Gift of Deconstruction Spivak and the Literary Canon PART II English in the Clamped Mortar of Empire Identity Nationalism PART III For Language, Against Style Utopian in a World Without Utopia The Complicity between Post-Colonialism and Imperialism Feminism and the Risks of High Theory Conclusion Bibliography Index 13 02 TAOUFIQ SAKHKHANE is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the College of Arts and Human Sciences Fes-Sais, Morocco, and a translator of texts from English into Arabic. 19 02 Unlike many books which assume that Spivak is synonymous with post-colonialism, this volume provides a critique of the paradoxes and conflicts that appear within her work Incorporates the work of Middle Eastern writers such as Darwish, and other Arabic writers, which have been under-represented in postcolonial studies Provides a Middle Eastern perspective on the work of Spivak Explores fundamental issues in postcolonial studies, such as identity, subalternity, nationalism and femininity 31 02 An interrogation of Postcolonial Studies through the consideration of the work of one of its leading figures-Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

This study examines Gayatri Spivak's contributions to post-colonial and subaltern studies. The study aims to identify the elements that make Spivak's work relevant, distinctive, and vital amid a deluge of literary theories. Throughout her work, Spivak explores the experiences of oppressed women. Subaltern women's identification and struggle have been fundamentally challenged in her publications. This study highlights Spivak's distinctive critical perspective, incorporating and transcending some essential modern critical theories, including feminism and subaltern studies. In addition, the study engages with post-colonial interpretations of the Bengali collection of short stories. The “Breast Giver” challenges the post-colonial narrative and consciousness within the preeminent ideological paradigms. According to the subaltern interpretation of the selected narrative, many different and complex ways exist to represent women. In addition, there are differing degrees of agency, prejudice, oppression, and possibility of action on the part of the main female character. Due to this, the texts' interpretations are diverse and varied, resisting readers' quick judgments about subaltern tyranny.