Can the Subaltern Speak?

- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

 Discussion Outline:

I. Preliminary points
II. Four Part Summary of
“Can the Subaltern Speak?”
III. Implications of the Essay
Preliminary Points:

What is hegemony?
- Refers to hegemonic power or dominant discourse is predominantly
that of a white male.
Preliminary Points:

What is a subaltern?
-The individual that is oppressed has limited hegemonic power or
accessibility to the notion of hegemony/power.
Preliminary Points:
What was Spivak’s intention of using the term?

-Firstly, to denote rank. In the context of Spivak’s essay,

we refer to subalterns as belonging to the lower ranks, or
even, in the lowest ranks in the social, political, or other
hierarchy.

- Secondly, to emphasize distinction. The subaltern and

oppressed are not interchangeable terms. All subaltern is
oppressed but not all oppressed are subaltern.
Part I:

Spivak begins her argument by criticizing French post-

structuralists. Foucault and Deleuze to name a few.
Part I:

Foucault asserts that “We never

desire against our interests, because
interest always follows and finds
itself where desire has placed it.”
Part I:
This implies that
people
consent to oppression!
Part I:

“. . . the masses know perfectly

well, clearly . . . they know far
better than the intellectual and they
certainly say it very well.”
Part I:
Thus, for Foucault and Deleuze the
sub-proletariat can speak for
themselves, and the subaltern do
have a voice and access to hegemonic
voices of power!
Part I:

Spivak disagrees with this. To

respond, she
draws on Marxism.
Part I:
“The small peasant proprietors are
therefore incapable of making their class
interest valid in their proper name whether
through a parliament or through a
convention.”
-Karl Marx
Part I:
This implies that people do not
consent to oppression, but are coerced
or deceived into oppression. This is the
basic premise by which Spivak
expounds her argument.
Part II:

Epistemic Violence.
Part II:
“epistemic violence”- violence
inflicted through thought,
speech, and writing, rather than
actual physical harm..
Part II:

A good example of epistemic

violence is when accounts of
history leave out subalterns.
Part II:
When oppressed people are not
allowed to speak for themselves,
or to have their contributions
recognized, they are in effect
erased from their place in the
world.
Part III:
Focuses on whether
deconstruction could be a
possible framework to expound
or portray the plight of
the sub-alterns.
Part III:
Part III:

A defense of Derrida.
Part IV Can the Subaltern speak?
• In general, the term "subaltern" refers to the poor & the
marginalized people in any society. However, the term here
refers to the colonized women in India.
• . Spivak chooses the "sati" women in India as a subaltern
who cannot speak.
• According to Spivak the word "sati" means a good wife and
the Hindu female woman will not be good & loyal until she
burns herself with her dead husband. This practice was
common among the Hindu minorities in India.
Part IV Can the Subaltern speak?
• Spivak argues that Sati is an Indian ritual, but according to
the Colonizer it's a crime! The colonizers claim that it is the
social duty of the "white men" to save the "brown women
from brown men."
• Spivak asserts that the ideology behind the British failed
attempts to stop this practice in India is to justify their
imperialism!
• Thompson & many others consider the imperialism as a
civilizing mission!
Part IV Can the Subaltern speak?
• Therefore, the subaltern woman cannot speak! Her voice is lost
between ideologies. First, the ideology of the Indian culture
(tradition) and the ideology of the social mission of the colonizer
(modernization) that consider sati as a crime or a suicide!
• Towards the latter part of the essay, Spivak brings to light the
suicide of an ordinary woman to explain how outside effects the
subaltern. According to her, Bhubaneswari Bhaduri ended her
life because she did not want to participate in an association
that she was assigned to commit.
Part IV Can the Subaltern speak?
• However, after her death, her suicide was misinterpreted and
her story was written by her family in a different way. They
considered her suicide as an outcome of a failed love affair
rather than a protest.
• Thus, Spivak infers that it is impossible to reclaim and rewrite
history in the Western framework as they construct truth for
us as Bhubaneshwari’s family constructed for her and hence
Subaltern cannot speak.
Part IV Can the Subaltern speak?

• “The subaltern cannot speak.”

• This is because they are always spoken for by
those in positions of power, and are never able
to represent themselves.
• Further, if they do speak, they are not heard.
Part IV Can the Subaltern speak?

• Spivak understands speaking as a transaction

between a listener and a speaker, writing: “When
you say cannot speak, it means that if speaking
involves speaking and listening, this possibility of
response, responsibility, does not exist in the
subaltern’s sphere.”
Part IV Can the Subaltern speak?

• A poor peasant can say: “No matter how hard I work,

my family does not have enough to eat.” But will this
be heard in a way that can begin to effect change? For
speech to be successful, it must transmit its message.
For Spivak, subaltern speech does not achieve this.
Part IV Can the Subaltern speak?

3 reasons why not:

• The Subaltern cannot speak because no one is
listening to them.
• Because they are always spoken for by those in power.
• Because the truths are constructed for them.
Implications:
Her essay offers a perspective on many key postcolonial
concerns:
• The dangers of believing that Western thinking can be used
in non-Western contexts without causing problems.
• The ethical issues that arise when representing and speaking
for others.
• How to restore indigenous (so-called “native”) cultures that
were systematically pushed down under colonialism.
Implications:
Her essay offers a perspective on many key postcolonial
concerns:
• How history might be told from the point of view of the
colonized, rather than the colonizer.
• The relationship between colonialism and other systems of
oppression, including patriarchy and, to her mind,
capitalism*(a social and economic system in which trade and
industry are exercised for the sake of private profit)
END