Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :"Can the Subaltern Speak?"
Figures like the goddess Athena—"'father's daughters self-professedly uncontaminated by the womb"'—are useful for establishing women's ideological self-debasement, which is to be distinguished from a deconstructive attitude toward the essentialist subject. The story of the mythic Sati, reversing every narrateme of the rite, performs a similar function: the living husband avenges the wife's death, a transaction between great male gods fulfills the destruction of the female body and thus inscribes the earth as sacred geography. To see this as proof of the feminism of classical Hinduism or of Indian culture as goddess-centered and therefore feminist is as ideologically contaminated by nativism or reverse ethnocentrism as it was imperialist to erase the image of the luminous fighting Mother Durga and invest the proper noun Sati with no significance other than the ritual burning of the helpless widow as sacrificial offering who can then be saved. There is no space from which the sexed subaltern subject can speak.
If the oppressed under socialized capital have no necessarily unmediated access to "'correct"' resistance, can the ideology of sati, coming from the history of the periphery, be sublated into any model of interventionist practice? [….] this essay operates on the notion that all such clear-cut nostalgias for lost origins are suspect, especially as grounds for counterhegemonic ideological production.
Whoa. You still there?
Okay, take a deep breath and let's start with a little context. There's this ritual in India (banned by the Brits since 1829) where a female widow is able to commit suicide as long as it's done on her dead husband's funeral pyre. We know—sounds bad, thank goodness the Brits banned it, etc. But hold on there. Before we start viewing the Brits as saviors of all these poor Indian women—victims of their own men who are cruel and backward—Spivak wants us to view the whole idea of sati in a more complex manner.
First, sati actually comes from the myth of Sati, a major Hindu goddess who got so mad at her father for abusing her husband Siva (shay it Shiva) that she burned herself to death. Siva, in return, goes Armageddon on Sati's dad and dances this furious dance while holding Sati's burned body above himself. Pieces of her body scatter all over the earth, thereby making the earth as we know it today sacred. Nice story, right? Notice how the myth is totally opposite of the actual rite (there's no dead husband in the myth and Sati is anything but meek).
Anyway, Spivak thinks this is a story that isn't told often enough when people talk about sati, the rite, which is why she's not into the whole "'Brits as saviors"' shtick. Why? Because the Brits—in their eagerness to "'civilize"' India and its "'backward"' rituals—totally erase any understanding of sati as Sati, the Hindu goddess. They commit the great blunder of eradicating a part of India's cultural history.
But wait—Spivak's not done. She's also not totally a cheerleader for ancient Hindu rituals that feature goddesses—instead of your typical male god —at the center. Some people might call that feminism, but not Spivak. She sees it as a form of "'nativism"'—of being overly proud of one's culture to the point that you overlook the whole widow-burning thing.
So where does this leave the "'sexed subaltern subject,"' i.e. the smart, political, postcolonial woman? How does she speak her own story when she's caught between a virtual rock (British imperialist white dude who totally doesn't get her culture) and a hard place (her own culture that once celebrated widows burning themselves for their husbands)?
Spivak gives us a hint, even though she insists here and elsewhere that the "'subaltern cannot speak."' She points out that the myth of Sati can be used like the myth of Athena: as kind of a Ground Zero for women who willingly lower themselves for men. (Athena does this by more or less saying that she's super-cool for being born from her father and not her mother. Not a story you talk about on Mother's Day, mind you.) This is not—we repeat— is not Spivak saying women are naturally self-sacrificial beings or that self-debasement is a plan of action for women.
It's more like saying: "'Okay, this is where we postcolonial women are at. We've got this cool goddess Sati who burns herself to death while sticking up for her man. She's tough, smart, and clearly has some super-fireball power, so she definitely knows how to act for herself. On the other hand, is her husband that great that she has to die while protesting for him? Wouldn't it be better if she just—you know—stayed alive?"'
So the whole Sati/ sati business is a starting point for a feminist postcolonial politics. Where can it go from here? That's what Spivak wants to know too.
This passage basically gives you an idea of what Spivak means when she asks "'Can the subaltern speak?"' And it's a good question too because where, indeed, does the postcolonial woman belong among these men from all sides? What stories and histories does she tell that validate her position? Is there room for a woman at the postcolonial table? (Hint: Duh there is, if Spivak has anything to do with it.)
Quote :In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics
Reading the work of Subaltern Studies from within but against the grain, I would suggest that elements in their text would warrant a reading of the project to retrieve the subaltern consciousness as the attempt to undo a massive historiographic metalepsis and "'situate"' the effect of the subject as subaltern. I would read it, then, as a strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest.
Gayatri, Gayatri, you've done it again.
Let's tackle this piece by piece. First, you need to know that Spivak is talking about an actual group, called "'Subaltern Studies,"' of which she's a member. That's why she talks about their work "'from within."'
But she also has a different, even opposing view (hence, she's reading "'against the grain"'). She looks at their work as a way of correcting historical records so that the "'subject"' (aka, person with political agency) gets identified as the "'subaltern"' (aka, the oppressed).
Now, normally, saying that your typical "'subaltern"' identity is a certain way would be considered "'essentialist"'—a big no-no for theorists since it's a kind of huge generalization about the "'essence"' of a type of person. It's like creating a stereotype, even if it's a "'good"' one.
But Spivak's saying that sometimes it might be necessary to take an "'essentialist"' position in order to advance a political agenda. As long as you're aware of what you're doing, of course, and you know when to stop. Spivak's idea has been totally influential, and not just for postcolonialists. Pick a minority group and, we guarantee you, that group probably toyed with Spivak's "'strategy"' (it's not a "'theory"' if it's meant for political action, according to Spivak).
And this is why: every group is diverse—for example, your typical student government. Every person has his or her own agenda: maybe one person wants to bring In 'N Out onto campus; maybe someone else wants more money to go to the softball team. Then school administrators step in and say that they're raising tuition on all the students by 20%, without your input. Even though you all are totally different (jocks, geeks, princesses, nerds, etc.), you're all "'students,"' and so you band together under that label and rise up against the school administrators. Once you're done fighting for your rights as students at your school, you go back to your different interests and friends and burger preferences.
True, people have been revolting like this for ages, but Spivak actually gave it a theoretical name. That goes pretty far in the world of academics.