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    Spivak 2006 - Can The Subaltern Speak

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    Maximiliano Maza

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    The Post-Colonial Studies Reader Second edition Fated by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin £9 Routledge R fie, Ty 1d, Pads, Coral ws known ot heese ia Bill Ashe Bill Ashe PART O Issues z Bill Ashe: 1 Geor 2 Abdu 4 Gaya 5 Homi (Foucault and Deleuze 19 Chapter 4 GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK? (Abbreviated by the author) an the § baltern Speak?” in Gayatri C 1 Cambridge, Wlass.: Harva worty Spivak y Pr A WOMAN WHO TRIED TO BE DECISIVE in sserom, Sh but women did not, do not, “hear” her. Thus she can be defined as a ‘subaltern” 2 person cial mobil king subaltern is the left sine -e which relate to each other as r networks ¢ also a practice; the 0 quick and within state formation andthe ly are related but fereducibly discontinuous, resented a8 a proof reflects who speaks and acts... is alway [or] party or... union’ can represent “those 1977: 206). Are those who act andl struggle mute, a “¢ problems are bi between the ‘same’ w nd c entation and re-presentation. The critique of id formations and systems of political economy ean now ical practice of the ‘transformation of consciousness. F self knowing, politically canny subalterns st Iectuals represent themselves as transparent. If such a critique and en up, the shifting omy, on the one han nn representation within the political 4 svithin Fy of the Subject, on the other, must not be iterated. Let us consider the play of ‘represent’ in the first sense) and ‘recpresent’ in the second sense) in a famous passage in The Eighteenth Brumaire of CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK? 29 Bonaparte, where Marx touches on ‘class’ as a descriptive and transformative concept. This is ass be e argument ftom the work th from our two Id feminism from the me Marx's contention here is that the descriptive definition of a class can be a differential live under economic conditions of existence that cut off theit mode of lie, their interest, and philosophers andl political third their forn [faindlich tion from those of the other classes and place them in inimical confrontation they form a class’ (Marx 1973: 239). There is no such thing as a existence, which might be ‘opetated by, the differential ind economic, and the 1” at work here. In fact, the collectivity of famil considered the arena of “instinct,” is discontinuous with, th isolation of classes. In this context, the formation of a feconomic agency o interes is impersonal because itis systemic and heter tor interest is tied to the Hegelian critique of the individual subject, for it marks th fempty place in that process without a subject which is history and political economy. Tl the capitalist is defined as “the conscious bearer {Traiges]of the limitless movement of capit Mare king to create an undivided desire and interest coincide, Class consciousness does not operate toward that goal. Both in 7: 254). My point is that M the economic area (capitalist) and in the political (world historical agent), Marx is obliged to construct model We of adivided and dislocated subject whose parts are with each other. A celebrated passig ike the description of capital as the Faustian monster brings this home vividly (Marx 1977: 302) The following passage, continuing the quotation from The Fightecnth Brumaire, is also working on the structutal principle of a dispersed and dislocated class subject: the (absent collective) consciousness of the stall peasant proprictor class finds its “bearer” in a ‘reps sentative’ who appears to work in another's interest, ‘Representative’ here does not derive from n°; this sharpens the contrast Foucault and Deleuze slide over, the contrast, say has received political and ideological exacerbation in the European tradition at least since the poet and the sophist, the actor and the orator, have both been seen as harmful. In the guise we thus encounter a much older debate = to the second, Again, fof a post-Marxist description of the scene of po len belon between representation or rhet first constellation, vsrteren — wil stronger suggestions of substitution ~ t they are related, but running them together, especially in order to say that beyond both is where oppressed subjects speak, act, and know for chemselvs, leads to an essentialist, utopian politics that can, when transferred to single-issue gender rather than class he, which ruthlessly constructs a general will in the UN Plans of Action so that she leyond this concatenation, transparent as thetoric in the service of “truth I subject (as Woman), speaking, rader in development is best for her. It is in the shadow of this support to the financialization of the eedit-baited rural woman oven as it “formats” her theo can be ‘developed. IF out to be, is the much-invoked oppr acting, and knowing that unfortunate marionette that the history of the unheeded subaltern must unfo Here is Marx's passage, using “rertrren’ where the English uses ‘represent,’ discussing a 2 substitution as a representation), The small peasant proprietors can ces; they must be represented, Their representative must appear simultaneously as their master, 9s an authority over them, as unrestricted them from the other classes and sends them rain 30 GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK and sunshine from above. The political influence fin the place of the lass interest since there is no unified class subject] of the small peasant proprietors therefore finds an; Derrida trans n] subordinating society to here] in the executive force [Fxckurveg lates Gemale as violence in another context in Force of Nat only does stich a model of social incoherence — necessary gaps between the source of ‘influence’ {in this case the small peasant proprietors), the ‘representative” (Louis Napoleon), and the historical-political phenomenon (executive contra dlislocated machine of history moves because ‘the identity of the interes’ of these proprietors fails to produce a feeling of community, national links, oF a political organization." The event af representation as Vertctang (in the constellation of rhetoric-as-persuasion) behaves like a Ds g (or chetoricas-trope), taking its place in the gap between the formation of a (descriptive) class and the nonformation of a (transformative) class: ‘In so far as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence that separate their mode of life... he rm a clas. In so far as... the identity of their interests fails to produce a feeling of com munity... they do not form « class.’ The complicity of rerteten and darstllen, theit identity incifference as the place of practice — since this complicity is precisely what Marxists must °x Marx does in The Eighteenth Brumaire can only be appreciated if they are not conflated by a sleight of word 1 would be merely tendentious to argue that this textualizes Marx too much, making him inaccessible to the common ‘man," sho, 2 victim af common sense, is so deeply place in a heritage of positivism that Marx's irreducible emphasis on the work of the negative, on p : the necessity lor defetishizing the concrete, is persistently wrested From him by the strongest adversary, ‘the historical tradition’ in the air." The uncommon “tnan," the ntemporary phil ‘osopher of practice, and the uncommon woman, the metropolitan enthusiast resitance, sometimes exhibit the same positivism, have dwelt so long on this passage in Marx because it spells out the inner dynamics of Vertewung, or representation in the political context, Representation in the economic context ihe the philosophical concept of representation as s which relates to the divided subject in an indirect way. The most obvious passage is well known: ‘In the exchange relationship [Austauschverhalens] of commodities their exchange-value appeared to us totaly independent of their use value, But if we subtract their use-value from the product of labour, we obtain their value, as it was just determined [bextimaz], The common clement which represents itself [sich dance] in the exchange relation, oF the exchange value of the commotity, is thus its value’ (Marx 1977; 254 According to Marx, under capitalism, value, as produced in necessary and surplus labor is computed as the representation/sign of objectfied labor (which is rigorously istinguished human activity}. Conversely, in the absence of a the of exploitation as the extraction xluction), appropriation, and realization of (surplus) value os representation of labor power ination {the mechanics of power as such). tof Marxist,’ Deleuze suggests, ‘was to determine the problem [that power is morc diffuse than the structure of exploitation and state formation] essentially in terms of interests (power is held by a ruling class defined by its interests)" (Foucault and Deleuze 1977: 214). O alist summary of Marx's project, just as one cannot ignore that, in parts of the Ani-Dedipus, Deleuze and Guattari build their case on a brilliant if ‘poetic CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK? 31 grasp of Marx's theory of the money form, Yet we mi following way: the relationship between the microl gical texture of power.” Sub-individaal micrologies cannot grasp the “empirical y ~ of field. To move toward such an accounting one must move toward theories of ideok ject formations that micrologieally and often erratically operate the interests that the micro caled in macrologies. Such theories cannot afford to overloo f They must note how the staging of the world in representation — its scone of writing, its Dante — dissimulates the choice of and need for “her paternal proxies, agents of My view is that radical practice should attend to this double session of representations rather than reintroduce the individual subject through totalizing concepts of power and esi (One clearly available example of ideological epistemic violence is the remotely orchestrated far-flung, and heterogeneous project to constitute the colonial subject as Other. This project is also the asymmetrical obliteration of the trace of that Other in its precarious Subjectivity It is well known that Foucault locates one se of epistemic violence, a complete overhll « the episteme, in the redefinition of madness at the cnd of the European eighteenth centur (see Foucault 1965: 251, 262, 268). But what if that particular redefinition was only a part of the narrative of history in Europe as well as in the o nies? What ifthe two projects of pistemic overhaul ~ European madness and colonial normality — worked as dislocated and unacknowledged parts of a vast two-handed engine? He then, is a schematic suenmary of the epi Hinds may gain added significanc At the end of th enth century, Hindu Law, in so far as it can be ribed as a unitary syste rated in terms of four texts that ‘staged a four-part episteme defin the subject’s use of memory: sruti (the heard), sanviti (the remembered), eat (the calcula), and ryavahara (the performance), The origins of what had been heard and what was remem: ered were not necessarily continuous or identical. Every inv The second two texts — the ared and the performed — were seen as dialectically continuous, al theorists and prac itionees were not it any given case certain if this structure described the body of law or four ways of settling a dispute. The legitimation, through a binary vision, of the polymorphous tructure of legal performance, ‘internally’ noncoherent and open at both ends, isthe narrative of codification I offer as an example of epistemic violence Consider the often-quoted programmatic lines from Macaulay's infamous “Minute on Indian Education’ (1835); We must at present do our best to form a chse who may be interpreters between and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect, To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by ‘ees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the reat mass of the population (Macaulay 1835: 359) 32 GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY 5 aK sect of oF Sanskeit nerated by authoritative scholars The education of colonial subjects complements their production in law. One establishing a version ofthe British system was the development of an uneasy separati disciplinary formation in Sanskrit studies and the native, now alternative, traditiot “high culture.” Within the former, the cultural explanations g matched the epistemic violence of the legal project sb baltern, as complicated by the imperialist project, is confronted by The place of th the ‘Subaltern Stues' Ranajit Guba, the founder of the collective, gives a definition of the peo roup. They must ask; Can the subaltern speak: colonial social identity-in-differential. He proposes a dynamic stratification grid describ production at large. Even the third group on the list, the bulfer group, as it were, between sructutal dominant i bus, levels’ representing the elite; and the people and the great mac IF defined as a place of in-betweenness. The classification falls into; ‘dominant foreigh and ‘dorninsant indigen ‘ous groups at the all-India and at the regional and I ups and elements included in [the terms “people” and "subaltern classes"| repre rn the toual Indian population and all those whom we h sentfing] the demograph lesribed as th For the (gender-unspecified) ‘true’ subaltern group, whose identity isis difference, there is no unrepresentable subaltern subject that can know and speak itsell; the intellectual’s solu tion is not to abstain from representation. The problem is that the subject's itinerary has not been left traced so as to olfer an object of seduction to the representing intellectual. In the slightly dated language of the Indian group, the question becomes: How can we touch the consciousness of the people, even as we investigate their politics? With shat voiew consciousness can the subaltern speak: Within the effaced its doubly effaced.’ The question is not of female participation in insurgency, oF the ground rules of the sexual division of labor, for both of which there is “evidence.” It is, rather, that, both as object of colonialist historiography and as subject of in tion of gender keops the male dominant. If, in the contest of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltem as female is even more deeply in shadow ‘The + double silen IT ask myself: how is it possible 10 want to die by fire to mourn a hus regulative psychobiography of w 9 will be useful in tracking this nd ritually, 1 am asking the question of the (gendered) subaltern woman as subject, not, as my friend Jonathan Culler somewhat tendentiously suggests, trying to ‘produce difference by differin or to “appeal... to a sexual entity defined as esscatial and privilegling) experience rated with that identity’ (Culler 1982: 48). Culler is here a part of that mainstream project of Western feminism which both continues and displaces the battle over the right to individualism between women and men in situations of upward class mobility. One suspects ally repre that the debate between U.S, feminism and European “theory” (as theory is gen sented by women from the United States or Britain) occupies a significant corner of that Sarah Kofin: scapegoat may be read as 2 reaction formation to an initial and continuing de sted that the decp ambiguity of Freud's use of women as a hysteric a voice, to transform her into the subject of hysteria (Kofman 1985 gical formation that shaped that desire into “the daughter's seduction’ is part imperialist ideolo of the same formation that constructs the monolithic third-workd woman.” No contemporary by that formation. Part of our ‘ualearning’ project silences, if necessary ~ into CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK? 33 the object of investigation. Thus, when confronted with the questions, Can the subaktern speak? Can the subaltern (as woman) speak?, our efforts to give the subaltern a voice in history run by Freud’s discourse, It is in acknowledgement of to a problem that I put together the sentence ‘White wn women from brown men,’ a sentence that rns like a red thread men are saving br through today’s ‘gender and development.” My impulse is not unlike the one to be encoun tored 174 see Mohanty 1991: §1-8 Freud predicates a one hitklen in the amnesia of the infant, the other lc past, assuming by implication a preoriginary space where hun 1 Freud's investigation of the sentence ‘A child is being beaten’ (Freud 1961 vol. 1 ruets “Third World Woman’ 04). For a list of ways in which Western criticism co hatory of repression that produces the final sentence. It is a histor with a double or 1 in our archaic in and animal were 2 home ‘ifferentiated (Freud 1961: 188). We are driven yy of this Freudian strategy on the Marxist narrative to explain the ide ical economy and outline a history of repression that produces a sentence like the sketched: white nial subject rmaneuverings behi mnorary whiteness to the n prechely this sue, This history also basa double origins one hidden ta ed a and the Dharmasasir. An undif the British abolition of widow sacrifice in 1829,° the other lod in the classical and Vedic past of “Hindu” India, the Ry- nary space can only to0 easily be predicated for this other history The sentence 1 have constructed is one among many displacements describing the relationship between brown and white men (sometimes brown and white women worked in).* W takes its place am ‘of pious guile that me sentences of ‘hyperbolic admiration’ Derrida speaks of in connection with the ‘hieroglyphist prejudice.” The relationship between the imperialist subject an The Hin This is widow sacrifice. (The conventional transcription of the Sa ct of imperialism is at least ambigu ds the pyre of the dead husband and immolstes herself upon it krit word for the widow would be sati. The early colonial British transcribed it suite.) The rite was not practiced universally and was not caste- or classfixed, The abolition of this rite by the British has been gencrally understood as a case of 'White men saving brown women from brown men.” Whit women ~ from the nineteenth-century British Mi produced an alternative understanding nary Registers to Mary Daly ~ have not Against this is the Indian nativist statement, a parod ig advanced The two sentences go a long way to legitimize each other. The archivized example of the nostalgia for lost origins: “The women wanted to dle,” still b the testimony of the women's voice consciousn allow for the mobilization of such help. As one goes down the grot hese women, the sacrificed widows, in the police reports included in the records of the East India Company, one eannc put together a ‘soive." The ma ‘one can sense isthe immense heterogeneity breaking through even such a skeletal and tribes). Faced with the dialectically interlock sentences that are constructible as ‘White own men’ and ‘The women wanted to die,’ the metro: politan feminist migrant (removed from the actual theater of decolonization) asks the question of simple semiosis ~ What does this signify? — and begins to plot a history 1 thas woman's b fe written elsewhere of a constricted counternatrative of woman's consciousness, 1, thus the desire, thus tiesire. This slippage ean be seen ie the fracture inscribed in the very word sath the feminine r transcends any gendler-specific notion of masculinity and moves up not onk 34 GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK 1¢ verb ‘to be" and as such means not only but the True, the Good, the Right. inthe sacred texts it is essence lniversal spirit, Even as a prefix it indicates appropriate, felicitous, fit. It is noble enough to have entered the most privileged disco Being (Heid AF modern Western philosophy: Heidegger's 1961: 58). Sati, the feminine of this w od wife Figures like the ndidess Athena --‘Tather’s daughters self professedly uncontaminated by the womb’ — are useful for establishing women’s ideological self-

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