"#Spivak is not saying that people in positions of privilege should never engage WITH marginalized voices, but first and foremost, we need to be wary of any privileged intellectual's claim to know or speak FOR the ‘Other’. Second, because of structural disadvantages, it’s extremely difficult to find instances where marginalized (subaltern) women can in fact insert themselves into public conversation authoritatively without mediation. The 'subaltern as woman' may literally be able to SPEAK, but those mediating factors -- institutional gatekeepers who police what is thinkable or sayable, privileged actors who are motivated by their own self-interest, and many others -- mean that we may not ever be able to HEAR her voice directly."

"Can the Subaltern Speak?" in Plain English: https://www.electrostani.com/2023/03/can-subaltern-speak-in-plain-english.html #decolonial #postColonial #book

Gayatri Chakravorty #Spivak gilt als Mitbegründerin der postkolonialen Theorie. Über ihren Text «Can the Subaltern speak?» & die symbolische Ordnung der globalen kapitalistischen Herrschaft sprechen wir im #tldrPodcast mit Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez. https://www.rosalux.de/theoriepodcast

🔊 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix

Spivak:
🎵 The Fucking Bed on the Floor

#Spivak

https://open.spotify.com/track/7G5jgY9GEtUW8vt3ZfKZAJ

Jonsson: ... But let me ask: Is liberal multiculturalism an instance of what you called "tokenization," of managing, or of what a friend of mine in Los Angeles called the creation of a minority elite that can man- age their masses in the same way that Macaulay suggested that the British should create a bourgeoisie in India, which would be English in everything but skin color?

Spivak: Yes. But you see that the program here is exactly the opposite: the British example-of course, one always quotes Macaulay saying "we will produce a people which will be English in everything but blood," whereas in the United States, what is happening is "we will produce a class that would think it has been multiculturally educated." So, you don't solve the problem by drawing the analogy, and I know you didn't draw it. It's not possible to dismiss liberal multiculturalism, because in some cases, it's the best one has. It's the alliance that one performs when one is trying to decolonize the canon at the university. One uses it in the way one uses most liberal institu- tions. What is on the other side? What would be the solution? My solution is the formula that I've used a lot: "persistent critique of what one cannot not want" from within the institution. It's hard to keep one's hands clean. ...

#spivak