Gayatri Spivak(1942 —)
Gayatri Spivak
Inde
8 min read
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak est une philosophe et critique littéraire indienne, figure fondatrice des études postcoloniales. Connue pour son essai « Can the Subaltern Speak ? » (1988), elle interroge la capacité des dominés à se faire entendre dans les discours occidentaux. Elle est également la traductrice en anglais de « De la grammatologie » de Derrida.
Frequently asked questions
Famous Quotes
« Le subalterne ne peut pas parler. »
Key Facts
- 1942 : Naissance à Calcutta, dans l'Inde britannique, un an avant la grande famine du Bengale
- 1976 : Publication de sa traduction anglaise de « De la grammatologie » de Jacques Derrida, avec une préface critique devenue référence
- 1988 : Publication de l'essai « Can the Subaltern Speak ? », texte fondateur des études postcoloniales
- Depuis 1991 : Professeure à l'Université Columbia (New York), l'une des plus influentes de sa discipline
- 2012 : Reçoit le Kyoto Prize en arts et philosophie pour l'ensemble de son œuvre
Works & Achievements
First English translation of Derrida's foundational work. Spivak's lengthy preface became a standalone introduction to deconstruction, read by generations of anglophone students.
Founding essay of postcolonial and feminist studies, translated into some twenty languages. Spivak demonstrates that the subaltern woman is doubly erased: by colonialism and by the representations made of her even by progressive intellectuals.
Collection of essays blending feminism, Marxism, and deconstruction. Spivak establishes her original critical method, which refuses to choose between these theoretical traditions.
Collection of interviews in which Spivak presents her thought in a more accessible manner. These dialogues offer insight into the intellectual journey of an unclassifiable thinker.
A major, synthetic work that revisits Kant, Hegel, and Marx through a postcolonial lens. Spivak shows how the great Western philosophical texts systematically erase the colonized subject.
Essay on the future of comparative literary studies. Spivak advocates for a renewed discipline that integrates literatures from around the world, beyond the European canon.
Wide-ranging collection of essays on humanistic education in a globalized era. Spivak defends literary training as a tool of resistance against the commodification of knowledge.
Anecdotes
In 1976, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak translated Jacques Derrida's 'Of Grammatology' into English, a philosophical text considered virtually untranslatable. Her 80-page preface exceeded the original introduction in length and became a landmark reference text in its own right. This translation launched her international career and proved that an Indian woman could establish herself at the heart of Western philosophical debate.
Her essay 'Can the Subaltern Speak?' (1988) opens with a deceptively simple question: can dominated and marginalized people truly make their voices heard? Spivak demonstrates that not only is their speech suppressed, but that even progressive Western intellectuals sometimes contribute to that silence without realizing it. This text of a few dozen pages transformed postcolonial studies and continues to be read in universities around the world.
Born in Calcutta in 1942, Spivak grew up in an educated Bengali middle-class family. She studied at the University of Calcutta before receiving a scholarship to Cornell University in the United States, where she wrote her thesis on the Irish poet Yeats. This trajectory between East and West shaped her entire intellectual outlook: she belonged fully to neither, which allowed her to critique both.
Spivak co-founded the Subaltern Studies group with Ranajit Guha, a collective of historians and theorists who rewrote the history of India 'from below', from the perspective of peasants, women, and the voiceless. She nonetheless introduced a critical nuance: even this project risked speaking 'for' the subaltern rather than letting them speak. This constant self-critique is a defining mark of her work.
In 1997, Spivak established a foundation to fund rural schools in the poorest regions of West Bengal. She devoted a portion of her earnings as a celebrated academic to this cause, arguing that a postcolonial intellectual bears a concrete responsibility toward the populations she writes about. This commitment illustrates her refusal to separate abstract theory from practical engagement.
Primary Sources
The subaltern cannot speak. There is no virtue in global laundry lists with 'woman' as a pious item. Representation has not withered away.
I must here acknowledge my debt to Paul de Man, who first suggested this translation to me and whose painstaking reading of the manuscript has greatly aided me.
Like the 'native informant' in anthropology, the subaltern woman is the object, not the subject, of the postcolonial discourse.
I am not trying to find an authentic voice. I am trying to question the authority of the investigating subject without paralyzing that subject.
Comparative literature as a discipline has always had a strong implicit politics: the 'great' languages of Europe were the object of its attention.
Key Places
Spivak's birthplace, the intellectual and cultural capital of Bengal. It is here that she receives her first literary education and develops a keen awareness of the social inequalities inherited from colonization.
American university where Spivak prepares her doctoral thesis on Yeats under the supervision of Paul de Man. It is here that she discovers deconstruction and begins her translation of Derrida.
Institution where Spivak has taught since the 1990s as University Professor, the most prestigious title at the university. Her seminar is attended by doctoral students from around the world.
A poor rural district where Spivak funds and oversees primary schools through her Pares Chandra and Sivani Chakravorty foundation. This place embodies her concrete commitment to the subaltern populations whose condition she theorizes.
The city where Derrida taught and where deconstruction developed during the 1960s–1970s. Spivak maintains close ties with this Parisian intellectual milieu, which has profoundly influenced her thinking.
Liens externes & ressources
Références
Œuvres
Traduction de 'De la grammatologie' de Derrida
1976
Can the Subaltern Speak?
1988
In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics
1987
The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues
1990
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present
1999
Death of a Discipline
2003
An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization
2012
