Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

• Born: February 24, 1942
• Place of Birth: Calcutta, West Bengal, India

INDIAN-BORN FEMINIST, SCHOLAR, AND TRANSLATOR

A frequently cited authority in subaltern and postcolonial studies, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has increased awareness of oppressed minorities who have no voice within dominant social power structures. She argues not that those in power should speak for the subaltern, but for the construction of a space in which the subaltern is able to speak for him- or herself, thereby losing the subaltern identity.

Early Life

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak was born Gayatri Chakravorty in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India, to middle-class parents. When Spivak was five, India won independence from British rule. Her father died when she was thirteen. In 1959, she graduated from the University of Calcutta with a degree in English. Following graduation, she worked as a tutor for two years in order to earn money to attend graduate school in the United States. She enrolled at Cornell University and studied comparative literature, earning her master’s degree in 1961. Spivak taught at the University of Iowa while working on her doctoral dissertation, on poet William Butler Yeats, under the direction of Cornell literary critic Paul de Man; she finished her doctorate in 1967. She was briefly married to American Talbot Spivak. Her dissertation, Myself Must I Remake: The Life and Poetry of W. B. Yeats, was published in 1974. She taught at the University of Texas, Emory University, and the University of Pittsburgh before her tenure at Columbia University, which began in 1991. She was appointed University Professor at Columbia University, the highest academic rank at the school, in 2007.

Life’s Work

Spivak earned recognition early in her career when she introduced English speakers to the work of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who developed the influential postmodern literary theory known as deconstruction. Specifically, she translated Derrida’s De la grammatologie (1967), published in 1976 as Of Grammatology. Most notable about Spivak’s translation was her lengthy preface, in which she not only introduced Derrida but applied his theory of deconstruction to the preface itself as a genre of writing.

Perhaps Spivak’s most influential original work is her 1988 essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” published in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg. In this essay, Spivak introduces the concept of the subaltern, or cultural subordinate, with a description of a Hindu widow performing the traditional rite of sati, in which, upon the death of her husband, she is burned alive on his funeral pyre. The widow is represented by the cultural elite (Western white males) and, therefore, cannot speak, as she is only an object in this representation and not a subject; hence, she may only be spoken for or about. Significantly, Spivak’s political program calls for a space in which the subaltern can speak for him- or herself, and thus will no longer be identified as a subaltern.

Spivak’s work on subaltern identity, among other topics, is associated more broadly with postcolonial theory, a critical scholarly approach to the intellectual and cultural legacy of imperialism in former European colonies around the world. After publication of her dissertation on Yeats, Spivak turned to cultural studies and literature by authors from the developing world. Her second published volume, In Other Worlds: Essays on Cultural Politics (1987), moves from studies of British literature to political and feminist studies, to studies on the Bengali fiction of Mahasweta Devi. (In addition to translating Derrida, Spivak has translated numerous works by Devi.) The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, published in 1990, contains a dozen interviews with Spivak. The dialogic nature of the interview and its clear location in space, time, and occasion serve to complement the more static nature of Spivak’s traditional prose in the form of argument. In addition, the published interviews with Spivak are often more accessible than her academic prose, which many readers find difficult.

Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993) continues Spivak’s exploration of Derrida, Karl Marx, feminism, cultural studies, and her position on the margins of American academia. The Spivak Reader, edited by Donna Landry and Gerald Maclean, appeared in 1995 and serves to introduce Spivak to novice readers. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present(1999) was faulted by critic Terry Eagleton for the inaccessible nature of its prose, but admired for its range of scholarly influences. Death of a Discipline (2003) presents Spivak’s vision of a new and improved discipline of comparative literature. Other Asias was a 2008 collection of essays examining political and cultural conceptions of Asia, and the essays in An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization (2012) present the case for literary studies and the humanities as paths to global justice. Significant articles published during the twenty-first century include "Crimes of Identity" (2014), "Our World" (2014), and "Can There Be a Feminist World?" (2015). Spivak divides her time between her teaching duties at Columbia University and West Bengal, India, where she runs four rural elementary schools.

In 2024, Spivak was criticized for her treatment of a student at an event at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Dehli. At the event, Spivak repeatedly corrected the pronunciation of Anshul Kumar, a Dalit student. Kumar stated online that he felt humiliated and insulted by the exchange. When later asked about the incident, Spivak responeded that Kumar had not identified himself as Dalit.

Significance

Although she received wide recognition early in her career for Of Grammatology, her English translation of Derrida’s famous work, Spivak is best known as a postcolonial critic. Her writing is often described as inaccessible, but she is one of the most cited authorities in subaltern studies and is sometimes referred to as a founding member of the discipline. However, her most influential work, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” remains uncollected in her own published collections. Spivak did not grant permission for the essay to be republished in The Spivak Reader, as she was in the process of revising it and considered the original version outdated.

Bibliography

Chakraborty, Mridula Nath. “Everybody’s Afraid of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Reading Interviews with the Public Intellectual and Postcolonial Critic.” Signs 35.3 (Spring 2010): 621–45.

Kapoor, Ilan. “Hyper-Self-Reflexive Development? Spivak on Representing the Third World ‘Other.’” Third World Quarterly 25.4 (2004): 627–47.

Kapoor, Ilan. "Spivak, Politics of Pronunciation, and the Search for a Just Democracy." Al Jazeera, 7 June 2024, www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/6/7/spivak-politics-of-pronunciation-and-the-search-for-a-just-democracy. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Landry, Donna, and Gerald Maclean, eds. The Spivak Reader. New York: Routledge, 1996.

McMillen, Liz. “The Education of Gayatri Spivak.” Chronicle of Higher Education 54.3 (2007): B16–19.

Spivak, Gayatri. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988. 271–313.

Spivak, Gayatri. "Gayatri Spivak: 'The Subaltern Speaks Through Dying.'" Interview by Francis Wade. The Nation, 6 July 2021, www.thenation.com/article/culture/interview-gayatri-chakravorty-spivak/. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.