The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Department of English

Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” 1983 and later

What are some of the concerns of Spivak’s essay?

What forms of “subjugated knowledge” concern her? (2197) What example of suppression/ "epistemic violence” does she use to illustrate her point? (2198)

What effect had Thomas Macaulay wished British education in India to have? (2198)

What does Spivak see as the attitude of some French theorists of the time toward issues of post-colonial consciousness? Whom does she have in mind?

What are some claims which have been made by members of the “Subaltern Studies” group? (2200)

What does she see as the limitations of “subaltern studies” as then practiced? (concern with relation of an elite class to the poor and uneducated, rather than with the latter for their own sake; believe in a pure consciousness of the people)

What are some things she would like to see changed?

What has happened to the “female subaltern” in this revival? (2202-2203, “even more deeply in shadow”) What have been some sources of her oppression? (2202)

What view does Spivak take toward anti-positivist feminists and Western theorists? (2204; she aligns herself with anti-positivist feminists and Western theorists, with the qualification that their “positionality” must be marked)

What sentence does she see as embodying “the immense problem of the consciousness of woman as subaltern”? (2204) What dangers in her view lie in making such claims? (2204-2205)

What does she see as an urgent critical necessity?

What is revealed in her account of her relative Bhubaneswari’s suicide? What does she see as a message to be learned, and who have ignored it? (2205-2206)

What responses to her article does Spivak consider have made useful contributions? (2207)

What points does she advocate for future criticism to bear in mind? Why does she say that members of an ethnic group are not necessarily subalterns?

What final ironies does she note in her family’s history? (2207)

How do the closing remarks reflect on the subject of the essay? (2207) Is this an appropriate or effective ending?

In what ways, if any, can the subaltern speak?

How does this article align with those of other critics we have read, such as Barbara Smith, Jane Tompkins, Frantz Fanon or Edward Said?

page numbers are from the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism


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