Maggio 2007 Can the Subaltern Be Heard Political Theory Spivak

“Can the Subaltern Be Heard?”:Political Theory, Translation,

Representation, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

J. Maggio*

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s essay “Can the SubalternSpeak?”questions the notion of the colonial (and Western)“subject” and provides an example of the limits of the abilityof Western discourse, even postcolonial discourse, to interactwith disparate cultures. This article suggests that these limitscan be (partially) overcome. Where much commentary onSpivak focuses on her reading of Marx through the prism ofDerrida, and on her contention that the “native informant”issimultaneously created and destroyed, I contends that Spi-vak’s terms of engagement always imply a liberal-independentsubject that is actively speaking. Moreover, given the limits ofunderstanding implied by Spivak’s essay, I advocate a readingof culture(s) based on the assumption that all actions offer acommunicative role, and that one can understand cultures bytranslating the various conducts of their culture. On this basisI argue that the title of Spivak’s essay might be more accu-rately stated as “Can the Subaltern Be Heard?” Keywords:Spivak, postcolonial, culture, translation, political theory

Along with Edward Said’s Orientalism, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’sessay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is probably the most influentialwork in the field of postcolonial theory.1 Its impact has spanned“across the disciplines of history, anthropology, sociology, literarystudies, women studies and cultural studies, amongst others.”2 In herfamous essay, Spivak questions the notion of the colonial (andWestern) “subject.” She argues that European intellectuals have

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*University of Florida, 4222 NW 19th Place, Gainesville, FL 32605. E-mail:[email protected]

assumed that they know the “other” and can place it in the context ofthe narrative of the oppressed: “[I]ntellectuals must attempt to dis-close and know the discourse of society’s Other.”3 In fact, throughthis act of epistemic knowing/violence, the essentialization of theother is always the reinforcement of the menace of empire. As Spivakwrites: “There is no more dangerous pastime than transposing propernames into common nouns, translating, and using them as sociologi-cal evidence.”4 All transcendental cultural logic is, at its heart, impe-rialistic.5

Like Said, Spivak wants to expose the complicit nature of litera-ture and the intellectual elite, which often appears innocent in thepolitical realm of oppression.6 The intellectual elite of the Western(and sub-Western) academy pretends to be blameless in the arena ofcolonialism. In other words, Western thought “masquerades as dis-interested history, even when the critic presumes to touch its uncon-scious.”7 The academy is both part of the problem and part of thesolution. Spivak writes, “I think it is important to acknowledge ourcomplicity in the muting, in order precisely to be more effective inthe long run.” Hence, the intellectual Western scholar is almost in aDerridean paradox, setting the limits of discourse as well asexpelling the nondiscourse.

Given these limits of discourse, Spivak is always aware that “the-ory” may have limited value to the subaltern.8 In fact, though Spivakwants to make, for example, “feminism” more theoretical, she rec-ognizes that the subaltern “cannot be served by the call for more the-ory in Anglo-American (society).”9 Theory, though powerful, cannotact as an elixir to the issues of the subaltern. Hence, the initial ques-tion is what is the role of the academy, and whether there is a liber-ating place for the intellectual desires of studying the subaltern.

This sets the intellectual in a rather bizarre position, and it is aposition where simple multicultural liberalism cannot be a solution.10

Although liberalism seeks neutrality, it actually destroys all difference.As J. G. A. Pocock writes: “[The narrative of the oppressed] will bepart of the history of [liberalism’s capacity to absorb all difference]and will reinforce the capacity itself.”11 In fact, on Spivak’s account,even the radically postmodern “subject” is still colonial.12 Yet there isa desire, even a need, to “develop resources to begin to talk about cul-ture as a multiplicity of trajectories.”13

Given this desire to communicate with (and about) the subal-tern, in this article I argue that Spivak’s landmark essay provides anexample of the limits of the ability of Western discourse, even post-colonial discourse, to interact with disparate cultures. Yet this is anexample that can be (somewhat) overcome. Whereas most of

420 “Can the Subaltern Be Heard?”

Spivak’s commentators (both critics and admirers) have focused onissues of subjectivity/difference/alterity, or, as Terry Eagleton writes,on Spivak’s attempt to be “as obscurantist as you can decently getaway with,”14 I offer a reading that challenges the conventional inter-pretation of Spivak’s essay. Most interpreters of Spivak have notedthat she is asserting that all claims to subjectivity, even “postmodern”subjectivity, are at their foundation a form of neocolonialism. In thissense, Spivak’s scholarship focuses on her reading of Marx throughthe prism of Derrida, on her contention that the “native informant”is simultaneously created and destroyed. In contrast, I contend thatSpivak’s terms of engagement always imply a liberal-independentsubject that is actively speaking.

Yet it is presumptuous to assume that all cultures speak a similarlanguage of “identity.” Hence, the “best” a Western critic (citizen) cando is “open up” the way he/she listens and understands. I suggest thatan effective way to do this—to “translate” the non-Western—is to tryto understand all actions as a form of communication and to con-strue such communication on its own terms. Given the limits ofunderstanding implied by Spivak’s essay, I advocate a reading of cul-ture(s) based on the assumption that all actions, to a certain extent,offer a communicative role. Hence, one can understand a culture bytranslating the various conducts of their cultures. By adopting thismore open-ended view of discourse and communication, one thataspires to not privilege Western (or any) culture, one can attempt tounderstand across cultures. With this critique in mind, I assert thatthe title of Spivak’s essay might be more accurately stated as “Can theSubaltern Be Heard?”

Marx, Derrida, and Spivak’s (Non)Speaking Subaltern

The notion of the subaltern can be daunting because it is often“employed far too vaguely to denote ‘oppression’ or ‘otherness.’”15

Spivak resists this definition, though she offers only a description ofthe subaltern. Of course, such a definition/description is interestingbecause it reinforces the notion that the subaltern can be situatedonly in the context of the imperial power. In this sense, Spivak’s(non)definition acts as an aegis against the accusation of her creatinga metaphilosophy.

Of course, such metaphilosophies are exactly what Spivak wantsto avoid. This is partially why she takes aim at certain applications ofMarxism. To scrutinize Marxism’s relation to the subaltern, Spivakanalyzes Marx’s notion of “representation,” as well as examining two

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thinkers influenced by Marx: Foucault and Deleuze. If Edward Saidattempted to blend the work of Foucault and Gramsci, then Spivakseeks to drive a Derridean wedge between the two thinkers. In fact,as noted above, one can read Spivak as attempting to read Marxthrough Derrida, to understand a Marx where the “use-value issomething of a theoretical fiction” and “questions of origin becomequestions of process.”16 As Forest Pyle suggests, Derrida’s work actsas a sort of “lever” for Spivak in questioning the foundations of theWestern philosophical traditions.17 And in questioning these foun-dations, Spivak, unlike Said, seeks to resurrect a “usable Marx.”18

This “usable Marx” cannot be based on antediluvian notions ofrepresentation. Marx, on Spivak’s account, uses two German termsfor the verb to represent. They are vertreten, which means somethinglike “to fill in for” or “to stand in the place of,” and darstellan, whichimplies a “re-presentation.” These terms are confused (in transla-tions) when Marx writes: “The small peasant proprietors cannot rep-resent themselves; they must be represented.”19 However, in otherlanguages both terms are characterized generally as represent. Yet“[t]hese two senses of representation—within state formation and thelaw, on the one hand, and in subject-prediction, on the other—arerelated but irreducibly discontinuous.”20

Vertreten implies a total understanding of the subject being “rep-resented.” It is almost as if the representative has the total “agency” ofthe subject—a complete “filling in.” In contrast, dartelling is aboutrepresenting a “constituency.” “[I]t is not about giving voice but isconcerned with constituting, working for, representing for and with,the marginalized group.”21 Hence, the Western approach to the sub-altern is either to speak for or to silently let them speak for them-selves. Both strategies silence the subaltern because they ignore thepositional relations of the dominant to the subaltern.

Thus the amalgamation of the two notions of representationestablishes a silencing of the subaltern. They can never speak becausethey are both being “stood in for” and “embodied” by others in thedominant discourse. Using “Marxist” terms, the relationship betweenglobal capitalism and national alliance cannot explain the “texturesof power.”22 In other words, the Marxists silence the subaltern by(re)presenting them in discourse in which they have no speakingrole. Spivak writes that “the banality of leftist intellectuals’ lists of self-knowing, politically canny subalterns stands revealed; representingthem, the intellectuals represent themselves as transparent.”23 Inother words, the representation of the other destroys the subjectivityof the subaltern.

Spivak notes that Deleuze’s focus on the “workers’ struggle” ischaracteristic of his Eurocentrism. It is a “genuflection.”24 There is no


way, for example, in which Deleuze can account for ideas, culture, orideology.25 This problem is also seen in the trendy “claiming” ofChairman Mao by the perennially “new” Left: to use the term Maoistin the European context is to cause Asia to be transparent.26

Additionally, on Spivak’s account, the microlevel histories ofFoucault glorify only the personal nature of resistance. These histo-ries ignore the macrohistorical trends that might place the subalternas a key player. Looking at the larger concentrations of power—anapproach almost antithetical to Foucault’s whole project—wouldexpose the oppressive nature of colonialism in a way that Foucauldianhistories cannot. Foucault cannot “see” the intellectual continuity ofhistory; he sees only the disjuncture. Yet the struggles of the colonialpeople are “played out in the context of global capitalism and impe-rialism.”27

As mentioned above, Europeans traditionally defined themselvesin the context of an other. “Europe had consolidated itself as the for-eign subject by defining its colonies as ’Others,’ even as it constitutedthem.”28 The “self” is tied to the whole notion of colonialism. AsSpivak writes: “The colonizer constructs himself as he constructs thecolony. The relationship is intimate, an open secret that cannot bepart of official knowledge.”29 In this sense, Spivak explores “theunderstanding of alterity as spatial as opposed to temporal.”30

Spivak elaborates on this concept in her excellent discussion ofthe Western films portraying the Third World versus movies with a“native” location. Spivak argues that one can rarely tell the timeperiod of a Third World film, yet the temporal details of a “periodpiece” set in the West are almost always readily evident on the cellu-loid. Spivak’s language, using Frederick Jameson as an intellectualbackdrop, is so insightful it is appropriate to quote her at length:

The contemptuous spuriousness of the project can be glimpsedon the most superficial level, if we contrast it, for example, to thatof the U.S. “nostalgia film,” which Frederick Jameson hasdescribed as a “well-nigh libidinal historicism.” Jameson finds“the 1950s” to be “the privileged lost object of desire . . . forAmericans,” at least partly because they signify “the stability andprosperity of a pax Americana.” Speaking of “the insensible colo-nization of the present by the nostalgia mode” in a film such asBody Heat, Jameson observes, “the setting has been strategicallyframed, with great ingenuity, to eschew most of the signals thatnormally convey the contemporaneity of the United States in itsmulti-national era . . . as though [the narrative] were set in someeternal thirties, beyond historical time.” No such ingenuity isneeded in the case of the spurious simulacrum of imperial Indiaor colonial Africa. The rural landscape of Gandhi or Out of Africa,

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comfortably masquerading as the backdrop of Raj or colony, is infact the un-retouched landscape of rural India or Africa today.The different resonance of Home and the World in India and inNorthwest Europe is a case in point.31

Whereas the West marches forward in the temporal world, the colo-nial world is always fixed, regardless of the “movement” of time.“Civilization,” “progress,” and even “self-identity” itself always eludesthe subaltern. In other words, the West is defined by its differentia-tion between the “present,” “past,” and “future,” as well as a sense ofthe other. The colonial world has no such self-identity, at least as theWestern viewer perceives it.

Given this unofficial notion of the Western self, the other is often“created” in reductionist, yet radical, philosophies such as Marxismor poststructuralism/postmodernism. For example, this reductionist-Marxism is also reflected in Foucault’s “valorization of the oppressedas subject, the ‘object being.’”32 Overall, the Marxist-Foucault-Deleuze analysis hides “an essentialist agenda,” a leitmotif of founda-tionalism.33 This Marxist analysis is based on a notion of the other oran “inside and out.”34 In fact, to the extent that poststructuralists cri-tique the European “subject”—certainly a favorite topic for suchthinkers—the “subaltern” is constantly created. To engage in said cri-tique is to employ “the production of the colonial subject.”35

Applying the Derridean approach, Spivak sees a potential in“measuring the silences” of the subaltern. The situated subject, theDerridean subject, is possible even in the context where the subject isactually fixed. In these cases, the self is centered but the “world”moves, and, on Spivak/Derrida’s account, to understand politics onemust deconstruct this “moving” of the world around the subject.36

In fact, Derrida’s approach to philosophy is the least dangerousbecause he is self-aware of the relative positions of parties to commu-nications;37 or, in Spivak’s exact terms, he “invokes an ‘appeal’ to or‘call’ to the ‘quite-other.’”38 There is, on Spivak’s account, a specialempathy to Derrida because he always tries to place himself in thecontext of European philosophy. Derrida, therefore, is the prototypi-cal self-aware philosopher, always questioning the boundaries. If onedoes not question said boundaries, there is always a risk “that they cancongeal into varieties of totalitarianism.”39 Hence, there is a moralimperative to deconstruct any philosophical tradition.40

Applying this mode of deconstruction, Spivak argues that thecase of Indian sati is illustrative of how the subaltern cannot speak.She asks, “What did Sati say?” Can the subaltern be understood? Or isit always a “speaking for?” Sati was understood either, through theEnglish, as the slaughter of innocent women or, through the maleHindus who spoke for the female Indians, as a voluntary act. In other


words, the subaltern in this instance, the Indian women, have novoice:

Obviously I am not advocating the killing of widows. I am sug-gesting that, within the two contending versions of freedom, theconstitution of the female subject in life is the place of the differ-end. In the case of widow self-immolation, ritual is not being rede-fined as superstition but as crime. The gravity of sati was that it wasideologically cathected as “reward,” just as the gravity of imperi-alism was that is was ideologically cathected as “social mission.”41

In fact, Spivak points out that the British ignored that sati wasoften motivated by widows’ inheritance of property. Hence, sati wasunderstood as the “noble Hindus” versus the “bad Hindus,” or as thecivilized British versus the primitive dark-skins.42 The widow’s act isnever considered a form of martyrdom, “with the defunct husbandstanding in for the transcendental One.” It was just considered acrime.43 The nationalist Indians accepted the British reading of sati,and made it a point to reclaim the practice. “Caught in the relaybetween ‘benevolent’ colonial interventions and national liberationstruggles that both construct her will for her, the subaltern,” Spivaksuggests, “cannot speak.”44

Like a child being torn between two divorcing (or married) par-ents, the subaltern are silenced even when attempting to speak. Thesubaltern is always framed as a quisling or as a resistant. Its own voiceis never heard. The production of the postcolonial subject is depen-dent on the intellectual creation of the “West” as a subject of study, aswell as Said’s Orient. Consequently, “We(st)” cannot understand thediscourse of sati because it is not translated.45 On Spivak’s account,the subaltern cannot speak.

Several writers have attempted to answer the question “Can theSubaltern Speak?” in explicitly Kantian terms; yet, this misunder-stands the intricacy of Spivak’s work.46 This is ironic since Kant is a“sticking point” for Spivak’s analysis, especially in her book A Critiqueof Postcolonial Reason. Spivak understands the Kantian subject as basedon aesthetic judgment.47 Given that the subaltern do not have “cul-ture,” they cannot be truly human. Spivak writes:

Let us note [Kant’s] rather special inscription of a judgment pro-grammed in nature, needing culture, if you are naturally alien toit. We should read Kant’s description of the desirability of theproper humanizing of the human through culture within thisframe of paradox: “Without development of moral idea, thatwhich we, prepared by culture, call sublime presents itself raw[dem rohen Menschen] merely as terrible.” . . . (Critiques of Judge-

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ment 105; emphasis mine [i.e., Spivak’s]).. The adjective roh issuggestive. It is generally translated “uneducated.” In fact in Kant,the “uneducated” are specifically the child and the poor, the “nat-urally uneducatable” is woman. By contrast, der rohe Mensch,man in the raw, can, in its signifying reach, accommodate the sav-age and the primitive. . . .

The raw man has not yet achieved or does not possess a sub-ject whose Anlage or programming includes structure of feelingfor the moral. He is not yet the subject divided and perspectivizedamong the three critiques. In other words, he is not yet or simplynot the subject as such, the hero of the Critiques, the only exam-ple of the concept of a natural yet rational being. This gapbetween the subject as such and the not-yet-subject can bebridged under propitious circumstances by culture.48

The above-quoted language is fascinating because it indicates that cul-ture is the key to the Western subject. In other words, on Spivak’saccount, Kant creates the “subject” out of the ability to make aestheticrequests and/or judgments via human agency.49 Hence, to the extentthat the subaltern never speak, or are never heard, they do not partic-ipate in human culture. Hence, the silencing of the subaltern does notonly shape the discourse (in the Derridean sense), it also renders thesubaltern without a “subject being.” On an epistemological level, thesubaltern never have access to the Kantian subject. They are excludedby the very definition of such a subject. Hence, Kant not only estab-lishes the modern Western subject, but helps define its other.

Later in this article, I attempt to circumvent this Kantian depen-dence on traditional “culture” as explicit “aesthetic judgment” byoffering a way of understanding the subaltern that is not dependenton Kant. Notwithstanding my potential solution, I should note thatSpivak’s “reading of Kant supplies us with the indispensable strategiclever” to possibly explode the identity/alterity issues of the Westernsubject.50 Of course, to do that, one must hear the subaltern, becausethe silence of the subaltern is “gesturing to the impossibility of speechto an audience that refuses to hear.”51

Are the Subaltern Still Mute?

The essential Spivakian puzzle is, “How can we account for the subal-tern?” How can they speak? It is not Spivak’s intent, on her explicitaccount, to silence all discussion of the subaltern.52 The intellectual,or anyone, trying to analyze the subaltern must be conscious of theposition of the reader/writer vis-à-vis the subaltern and the dominant


discourse.53 It is not as simple as empowering the “native,” for the actof “empowerment” itself has a silencing effect. In other words, itmight be impossible to enable the subaltern to speak. The twotraps—speaking for or pretending that they can speak “on theirown”—are always waiting for the well-intentioned intellectual. Onecannot “intervene benevolently.”54 Are we, therefore, always con-demned to a shallow “representation” of the subaltern?

To a certain extent the subaltern are always, by definition, epis-temologically below the dominant culture.55 One can imagine that anagent of the subaltern could enlighten the West, but this “enlighten-ment” is inherently troubling. For example, Spivak points out thatsome “Indians” act as “native informants” for the elite, and thereforehave a distorted view of the subaltern. They are “at best native infor-mants for first-world intellectuals interested in voice of the Other.”56

Yet this native informant is always situated; it is always part of a “van-ishing point.” This vanishing point makes it difficult to imagine anaccurate access to the subaltern. The native informant, though use-ful, offers only a dead end: “Even if history is a grand narrative, mypoint is that the subject position of the native informant, crucial yetforeclosed, is also historically and therefore geopoliticallyinscribed.”57 In fact, regardless of how benevolent the native infor-mant or the postcolonial critique is, he/she is always seen, to a cer-tain extent, as an exotic other. Or, as Spivak suggests, the subalternremain an inaccessible blackness.58

Didur and Heffernan suggest that Spivak attempts to establishsubaltern discourse as a matter of “interception.”59 Yet this “intercep-tion” is always an act of mediation, and it suffers from the placementsof the interceptor, who on Spivak’s account is often the afore-men-tioned native informant. Hence, one can see the obvious Derrideanproblems with relying on the native informant. For, like Derrida’stext, the “native informant’s perspective is simultaneously invokedand foreclosed.”60 The native informant is always existing on the mar-gins, and hence not existing at all. Its definition is its erasure: The dis-tance between its two worlds of representation is “turned into a per-sistent disruption.”61 Additionally, to the extent that the nativeinformant/interceptor can communicate the desires of the subal-tern, the speaker is ultimately in service of the trends of global capi-talism. In other words, the native informant is co-opted for whatSpivak calls the “New Empire.”62 Didur and Heffernan write:

Credit-baiting also problematically embraces the “concrete expe-rience” of these women as their testimonies are read as a ratio-nale for globalization, so once again, the transparent reading ofthe other and the reading of the other as transparent is used to

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consolidate an imperialistic capitalistic empire that is quicklybecoming the norm in the twenty-first century. As Spivak sug-gests, the sovereign subject is invoked in the interest of globalcapitalism.63

In this sense, the so-called native informant is in a special, but notenviable, position. He/she “poisons hegemony: it opens the possibil-ity of transgression, and cures hegemony by reaffirming its author-ity.”64 The native informant acts as a Derridean pharmakon, a signifierthat contains and defines the other while “at the same timeremind[ing] us of the possibility of complicity and of the need forcontinuous strategizing.”65

The Spivakian Subject

Spivak acknowledges that she is implicated in this process: She is apharmakon of sorts.66 In fact, on Spivak’s account, the academy itselfmust recognize its role in the co-option of native culture into theschematic of global capitalism and/or the dominant modes of cul-ture.67 Spivak writes, “[I]t is important to acknowledge our complic-ity in the muting, in order precisely to be more effective in the longrun.”68 In other words, Spivak’s own work can be, to a certain extent,silencing to the subaltern.69 Her writings can be employed to justifysuch “sell out” positions as the modern welfare state and the generalmarket-distribution of intellectual goods.70 Consequently, Spivak, theauthor/thinker, is often ambushed by the accoutrements of her con-tingent-historical role as a native informant.

Given this position of the subaltern/native informant, it is under-standable that most secondary literature on Spivak focuses on thenotions of the “subject” contained in her work. To a certain extent,this notion of the “subject” could be seen as an obsession of Spivakand other postcolonial thinkers.71 In a typical poststructuralist move,Spivak rejects all definitions of the “self” that are fixed or essential.72

One could read the gist of Spivak’s work as the argument that thepostcolonial subject has been defined (destroyed) by European colo-nialism.73 Even “liberal anti-colonialists” have essentialized the subal-tern because of the romantic impulse to have the most “pure”oppressed populace as possible.74 Of course, there is always the temp-tation to investigate the other on a metaglobal level, and hence whennot examining identity/alterity, scholars are often debating the cos-mopolitan “subject” or “citizen.”75

The traditional scholarly responses to Spivak’s claims involveeither a discussion of the potential for an authentic Spivakian subjector a quest to find an approach toward the subaltern that allows them


to “speak.” Of course, to a certain extent Spivak’s own identity claimsare embedded in the “subject” debate.76 Thinkers such as Didur andHeffernan explicitly claim that Spivak’s essential concern is “identitypolitics.”77 Certainly the conventional wisdom concerning Spivak isthat she “problematized agency and the voice of the colonized.”78

And to the extent that, as Wendy Brown suggests, borders create iden-tity,79 then the “new immigrant” must create a new language.80 Yet, itis not clear that this new language would give the subaltern a voice.For example, Bruce Robbins explicitly argues that Spivak attempts tospeak for the subaltern: “The critic who accuses another of speakingfor the subaltern . . . is of course also claiming to speak for them.”81

One could suggest that Spivak’s autobiographical style itselfsolves the problem of the subaltern speaking.82 I am to a certainextent sympathetic to this proposition. Yet this “solution” ignoresSpivak’s above-discussed role as a self-aware “native informant.” Iagree that Spivak’s autobiographical style often works to deconstructnotions of identity because her texts often imply “the opposite ofwhat the style is taken to show: Spivak demonstrates that identitarianclaims (and claims to alterity) are severely problematic at best, anddishonest on occasion.”83 Nevertheless, Spivak cannot escape herelite role.

Noticing Spivak’s apotheosis status, Terry Eagleton offers ascathing critique of her work on many levels. In fact, he questions thewhole notion of postcolonial criticism, implying that is a sham mar-keting tool that enables lazy scholarship. He notes that few thinkerswill embrace the term themselves: “It is remarkable how hard it is tofind an unabashed enthusiast for the concept among those who pro-mote it.”84 With admirable pith, Eagleton claims that the “idea of thepost-colonial has taken such a battering from post-colonial theoriststhat to use the word unreservedly of oneself would be rather like call-ing oneself Fatso.”85 As mentioned above, Eagleton also complainsthat Spivak is simply incomprehensible.86

Yet Eagleton’s attacks extend beyond stylistic complaints; he takesissue with the whole program of postcolonial studies. On Eagleton’saccount, postcolonials are all “native informants” with an indolentagenda.87 For though Spivak and her postcolonial brethren have arather baroque philosophy, her “rather flamboyant theoretical avant-gardism conceals a rather modest political agenda.”88 Hence, forEagleton, the postcolonial drifts back into the liberal-capitalist: “Likemuch cultural theory, it can allow one to speak darkly of subversionwhile leaving one’s actual politics only slightly to the left of EdwardKennedy’s.”89 Others have joined in this criticism of postcolonialism,stating that it does not engage in any “real” conflict.90 Some have

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even suggested that Spivak’s concentration on textuality itself consti-tutes a form of intellectual neocolonialism.91

Of course, Eagleton betrays his Marxist tendencies with the wordactual in the above-quoted sentence. What is this “one’s actual poli-tics”? Is it only the notions of sovereignty and economic distribution?For Spivak, those notions are important, but she also wants to suggestthat domination takes many forms. Standard Marxism and poststruc-turalism cannot explain the phenomenon of the subaltern’s silence.Hence, Eagleton misses much of “the gist” of Spivak’s assertions,which is that Western metanarratives like Marxism hush the subal-tern. Eagleton’s lingering Marxism implies a potential problem forboth Spivak and her critics. Even Spivak is attached to a uniquelyWestern notion of the subject—identity based in action. It is true, ofcourse, that the West’s notion of individual sovereignty reifies a senseof the other, but it is unclear whether Spivak escapes this reification.92

It is possible, despite the explicit intentions of Spivak and Derrida,that the Derridean “Other” is as essentialist as the Western notion ofthe Kantian subject.93

The “self”/“other” distinction is tied up in the tension between“speaking” and “being heard.” Consequently, the notion of “hybrid-ity” is a potential solution. Hybridity is a theory in communicationstudies that seeks a way “to theorize the conflicted and multiple affil-iations of diasporic groups. . . . Hybridity is configured at the con-junction of the local, global, social, political, and legal to name somedimensions.”94 However, the concept of hybridity is still based on thevery Western concept of an active speaker. Of course, this speakermakes little sense in the context of the ability to communicate.“Speaking” is intimately linked to “being heard.” Devadas andNicholls write:

In other words, the “cannot speak” in “the subaltern cannotspeak” is gesturing to the impossibility of speech to an audiencethat refuses to hear and respond to the crying out. It is thisincomplete transaction that suppresses the subaltern. . . .[S]peaking, as a complete transaction, is only possible on thecontingency of the reception of the sent message.95

In yet other words, there is no clear-cut distinction between the iso-lated “speaker” and “listener.” There is always a conflict, an inherenttension, between the “speaking subject” and the “hearing subject.”96

There are several difficulties to the traditional approach toSpivak. A pressing problem, as implied above, is the Spivakian biastoward “action” or, at least, active speaking. The search for the subal-tern voice pretends that there is a “true” subaltern into which thecareful Western can tap. The poverty of this position is revealed by


Spivak’s own analysis, which used the (de)centered Derridean self asa (non)starting point. Yet the decentered self has a trace of the uni-versal subject, and it is often limited by its subordinate position to anotion of the centered self. The Derridean/Spivakian self is—to acertain extent—a “new universal structure of subjectivity-as-differ-ence.”97 In other words, Kant is creeping around every corner.98

Given this “Kantian subject”/“Derridean (non)subject”dichotomy, the superiority of the West is consistently affirmed.Spivak’s work places the burden of recovery of non-Western ideas onthe Western intellectual, though she is skeptical that the Westernercan ever adequately address the damage done by colonialism.99

Hence, one reading of Spivak could imply that the concept of thepostcolonial subject is interpreted as it is “destroyed” by Europeancolonialism—and therefore it is dependent on European culture andaction.100 In fact, well-meaning liberals are implicated even deeperthan mean-spirited conservatives in this silencing of the subaltern.101

In summary, the reaction to Spivak’s essay can be generalized astaking three major forms: as (1) an attempt to enable or allow thespeech of the subaltern; (2) an attempt to find the authentic subal-tern “self”; and (3) an effort to search for a “universal” or “cos-mopolitan” subject.

Yet the subaltern is never engaged qua the subaltern, and theWestern subject is never addressed vis-à-vis the subaltern. In otherwords, the subaltern can speak as long as they speak in a “language”that is already recognized by the dominant culture of the West.Reason and rational communication, mediated via the market or theacademy, prevail as the meta-language, and the subaltern are forcedto compete in a bazaar of ideas where the deck is stacked againstthem by years of colonial rule

Yet in the face of the silence of the subaltern, the West (often)seeks to synthesize and systematize, as if we learned nothing fromNietzsche. Instead of recognizing, as Spivak asserts, that logical con-tradictions embody the richest forms of knowledge, the Westernscholar, and even many postcolonial thinkers, keep attempting to syn-thesize, and speak for, the subaltern.102

Given the above analysis, how can the Western scholar study thesubaltern? Are the subaltern always, as Spivak sometimes suggests, an“inaccessible blackness” by which we can only measure or comparethe West? Are the subaltern a “blind spot where understanding andknowledge is blocked?”103 Is knowledge of the “other” impossible?Moore-Gilbert writes:

Spivak leaves the would-be non-subaltern and all of the subalternin a seemingly impossible predicament, simultaneously unable torepresent the subaltern in an ”uninterested” fashion. . . . In other

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words, the non-subaltern must either maximally respect theOther’s radical alterity, thus leaving the status quo intact, orattempt the impossible feat of “opening up” to the Other withoutin any way “assimilating” that Other to his/her own subject-posi-tion, perspectives or identity.104

Of course, Spivak rejects the notion that only the subaltern can dis-cuss the oppressed.105 She wants the Western scholar to discuss thesubaltern, and she concurs with Pocock in acknowledging that theWest needs an effective way to study the other.106 Yet, though the rad-ical critic should always have a somewhat defiant stance,107 it is alwaysdangerous when speaking about (for?) the subaltern.108

As a possible answer to the Spivakian puzzle, I suggest that theappropriate way to understand the subaltern is to approach such dis-course as informed by the methods of translation. Specifically, I advo-cate a “translating” of the everyday culture and communication of thesubaltern. This approach, I argue, would maintain the integrity—andfluidity—of both the Western and the non-Western subject.

Translating the Subaltern

Several important thinkers have discussed the process of translation indepth. Most notably, Walter Benjamin struggled with the intricacies oftranslation. For Benjamin, the “receiver” of translation is a meaning-less concept:109 No translation is ever the “same” as the “original.” Inother words, a translation cannot “possibly reveal or establish this hid-den relationship.”110 It is not the translator’s task to represent the orig-inal, for such a representation is impossible: “Even the greatest trans-lation is destined to be part of the growth of its own language.”111

The translator must look at the interaction between languages,and must explore the “intention underlying each language as awhole.”112 On Benjamin’s account, translation is the “coming toterms with” the foreignness of types of communication, the “gettingat” the element of language that creates an aporia.113 Translation is,in a sense, the “movement” between one hermeneutic moment andanother.114 Hence, a translation can actually “elevate” the original,and the task of the translator is to “echo” the original in a way thathelps illuminate the intended meaning.115

Benjamin suggests that translation is always at the margins of dis-course and that it acts a kind of “midway” point in intellectual dia-logue.116 A translator cannot simply rely on literalness, on a virtualdartelling, because in literal translation there is nothing but empti-ness.117 Literary critic George Steiner explains this notion of transla-


tion in the context of expressing the intentions of the writer so “far as[the translator] is able.”118

Roland Barthes also examined the methods of translation.Barthes asserted that culture itself was an artifact that could be trans-lated into academic discourse. Everyday cultural objects and events—such as commercials, soap powders, cookery, and so forth—createsubordinate connotations, which exist next to their standard mean-ings. These subordinate meanings subsequently help reinforce thevalues of the dominant capitalist-bourgeois system. In translatingeveryday culture, Barthes is “interested in the semiotically richresources of an emerging consumer society.”119 For example, in trans-lating the meaning of the image of Greta Garbo’s face, Barthes writes:“Garbo offered to one’s gaze a sort of Platonic Idea of the humancreature, which explains why her face is almost sexually undefined,without however leaving one in doubt.” Barthes sees the meaning ofthe popular-culture figure Garbo in the context, or language, ofPlatonic philosophy. This is an exemplar of translating culture intothe language of reason. That being said, Barthes attempts to offer atranslation that is a bit too systematic for an accounting of theSpivakian subaltern. The subaltern cannot be spoken for by a struc-turalist metalanguage.

Henri Lefebvre criticized Barthes’s theory of translation for hav-ing a “fetishism of signification.”120 Lefebvre argues that an overrid-ing theory is not well suited to interpret culture: “Its desire to pinphenomena down to textual meaning . . . is ill-equipped to deal withthe blankness and boredom of daily life.”121 In his concludingthoughts, Lefebvre argues that the “everyday needs to be understoodas a series of shifting, interconnecting elements that resist the mod-ern notion that sight offers intelligibility.”122 This notion aligns withSteiner’s ideas of “language in perpetual change.”123 Steiner writes:

But the ordinary language is, literally at every moment, subject tomutation. This takes many forms. New words enter in as oldwords lapse. Grammatical conventions are changed under thepressure of idiomatic use or by cultural ordinance. The spectrumof permissible expression as against that which is taboo shifts per-petually. At a deeper level, the relative dimensions and intensitiesof the spoken and the unspoken alter.124

Using this translation of the “relative dimension and intensities of thespoken and the unspoken,” I believe a thinker can express subalternlife with appropriate sensitivity and subtleness.125

Spivak herself has written much about translation. As one mightexpect, an earnest listening is the first step to translation.126 Or, to be

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more accurate, declaring the subaltern silent is the initial stridetoward an “unsilencing” of the subaltern.127 Yet, after a thinker hasawareness of the unique silence of the subaltern, then a translationcan take place.

Regarding translation, Spivak agrees with Benjamin that one can-not signify the “original”: Translation is a “necessary impossibility. . . .It is not a sign but a mark and therefore cannot signify an ‘origi-nal.’”128 For Spivak, the translator must attempt to “inhabit” the hostlanguage.129 She or he must populate “even if on loan, the many man-sions, and many levels of the host language.” In other words, thetranslator must always attempt to find the presuppositions of the lan-guage and of the cultures that are communicating. “The translatorshould make an attempt to grasp the writer’s presuppositions.Translation is not the stringing together of the most accurate syn-onyms by the most proximate syntax.”130 In this sense, Spivak’s notionof translation again echoes Benjamin’s. Yet Spivak is, I think, morewilling than Benjamin to expand the social responsibility of the trans-lator. She writes: “I hope I have been able to at least suggest that this[negative] state of the world has something to do with a failure ofresponsible translation, in the general and the narrow sense.”131

At first glance it may not seem that translation, as I suggest its use,is needed to address Spivak’s issue of subaltern silence. Yet Spivak’sframing of her question implies the lack of action on behalf of thesubaltern; in other words, Spivak grants a Kantian yardstick the privi-lege of creating a metastandard by which she measures the subaltern.

Despite this lingering language of Kantianism, Spivak rejects thenotion that there is a metastandard at all. Echoing Derrida, sheasserts there is no “outside” to which anyone has access.132 Benjamin’s“perfect language” cannot exist; the Western scholar must always beaware of the “inaccessibility” of knowledge of the other.133 Yet thisinaccessibility could be overcome, given favorable conditions, by anattempt to “translate” the other, rather than seeking an imaginary“knowledge.” It is possible that this “translation” can be explained assimply as a desire to “understand,” rather than to “know.”(“Knowledge,” of course, is always linked to power and domination.)

In this sense, Spivak could simply be calling for a deeper analysisof the subaltern, one that recognizes the extent of differencebetween cultures. However, I suggest that a slightly more radicalapproach is necessary. One must fully recognize that one is “translat-ing” without an ability to accurately signify the other. If “[c]ulturaltranslation was always implicitly the horizon of literary translation,”then the translator must recognize the implicated relationship of theWesterner and the subaltern: “If there is a relation to the other asother . . . it can only be an ethical relation,” not one based on “knowl-


edge.”134 Hence, we must recognize that translation, understood inthe broadest sense, can help us understand, respect, the subaltern.Given an expansive definition of text one can assume that translation“covers a wide variety of activities, most of which are aimed at makingtexts accessible to people who do not know the language.”

I suggest that we expand the notion of translation to apply to alltypes of culture and social practices. In this sense, one can see “argu-ments” in the nonrational and “value assertions” in the aesthetic. Thisnotion of “translation” solves some Spivakian problems by interpret-ing the subaltern culture of everyday life. If, as noted above, culturaltranslation has always been implied in literary translation, then thisapproach to the subaltern merely takes this implication to its prag-matic conclusion. Of course, translating the culture of the subalternis a difficult task, and it takes great patience, empathy, and depth.Spivak notes how hard it is to translate the literary when “the originalis not written in one of the languages of northwestern Europe”;hence, the translation of the subaltern culture would likely be evenmore difficult.135

Michel de Certeau argues that one should study the cultural prac-tices of daily culture, the “repetitive tasks people do every day.”136

Given his examination of the everyday, Certeau translates the logic ofneighborhoods and of cooking:

On the one hand, living in a neighborhood according to familypractices recalls the “swarming structure of the street,” which isalso the anthill-like structure of activities punctuated by spacesand relationships. On the other hand, culinary virtuosities estab-lish the plural language of stratified histories, of multiple rela-tionships. On the other hand, culinary virtuosities establish theplural language of stratified histories, of multiple relationshipsbetween enjoyment and manipulation, of fundamental languagesspelled out in everyday details.137

As seen in the above-quoted passage, the “everyday” culture of neigh-borhoods and cookery conveys an argument about the nature of life,about the values by which we do, and should, live. In fact, even bor-ingness and boredom communicate a great deal about cultures.138

“Considering culture as it is practiced, not in what is most valued byofficial representation or economic politics, but in what upholds itand organizes it, three priorities stand out: orality, operations, andthe ordinary.”139 Hence, the everyday, the oral, and the ordinaryexpress epistemological, ethical, and ontological values.

In this sense, the subaltern “silence” can be translated, eitherthrough the literal silence or as a poststructuralist symptom of the

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dominant language.140 With Certeau’s notion of the everyday,Lefebvre’s ideas about the “series of shifting, interconnecting ele-ments” unite as a possible underlying mode of translation of the sub-altern.141 In other words, to translate culture is to translate the “con-stant process of producing meanings of and from our socialexperience,” and those meaning are always laden with elements ofthe political: “Culture (and its meanings and pleasures) is a constantsuccession of social practices; it is therefore inherently political, it iscentrally involved in the distribution and possible redistribution ofvarious forms of social power.”142 Hence, to translate culture is a helpin understanding the political logic of the subaltern.

Translation is also a useful approach because it renders transpar-ent the ways that certain forms of communication reinforce definitehierarchies and social chauvinisms. Staten points out that thisform/status connection is apparent in the argument betweenDerrida and Rey Chow about the phonetic nature of Chinese writtenlanguage: “Chow uncritically relies on the logo-phonocentric norm asa value.”143 Ironically, Chow criticizes Derrida for marginalizing theChinese language, while at the same time affirming the dominant for-mal status of phonetic-based languages. This type of normative valuehidden in the form of the communication is exactly what a “transla-tion” of the subaltern can help mitigate.

In this sense, Spivak’s writing—to the extent that it breaks downthe standard barriers of philosophical/academic discourse—also actsas critique against the standard forms of Western discourse. Like Satior Bhanduri’s suicide, Spivak’s writing operates as a subversive text,one that can be either translated or interpreted. “[E]conomic poweris both underpinned and exceeded by semiotic power, that is, thepower to make meanings.”144 In other words, to translate culture ortexts into Western discourse is to implicitly critique the underlyingnormative assumptions of different forms of communication.

Finally, and possibly most importantly, a notion of translating thesubaltern recognizes that the Western translator is always a self-awarecontingent mediator through which the other—the “other”—isunderstood. This approach avoids the Spivakian problem of the “fix-ity” of the subaltern because it recognizes the conditional nature ofthe constitution of both the dominant group as well as the subaltern.The Western critic is constituted by the other, or the subaltern, andthe subaltern is also constructed vis-à-vis its relation to the dominantgroups. “[T]here is no such thing as the structure of meanings forhim independently of his interpretation of them; for one is woveninto the other.”145 This inside/outside relationship takes the form ofa Derridean association. Spivak herself admits her debt to Derridaand to his deconstructive analysis and its reliance on the persistence


of self-presence.146 In this sense the Western critic/translator is alwaysin a dialectic relationship with the subaltern—a dialectic that consti-tutes both contingent entities. Of course, as Benjamin writes, the “pri-mary concern of the genuine translator remains elusive.”147

Yet the translator exists in the context of a historical relationship.In fact, it is “one of the most powerful and fruitful historical”processes.148 Given this historical process, an approach of “translat-ing” the subaltern fulfills Spivak’s call for a more fluid epistemol-ogy.149 It also directly allows the understanding of the subaltern to beself-consciously mediated via a Marxist/Derridean strategy that—somewhat—meets the strict standards elaborated by Spivak.150

Given Spivak’s criticisms in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” transla-tion is a more appropriate role than “representation.” As Benjamin,Spivak, and others point out, a “translator” is always keenly aware thatshe or he is not offering a work that is equivalent with the “original,”nor is she or he offering a wholly “imaginative” translation. In otherwords, neither dartelling nor vertreten are implied in the act of trans-lation. The translator is certainly trying to “capture” an aspect of theoriginal and convey that, but is not trying to “represent” (vertreten) or“re-present” (dartelling) the original.

This is implied, to a certain extent, in Charles Taylor’s notion of“interpretation,” which is not dissimilar to the strategy of “transla-tion” that I am suggesting. Taylor acknowledges that “there is animportant sense in which a meaning reexpressed in a new mediumcan not be declared identical.”151 Translation implies a certain dis-tance, and in that distance is the space for the subaltern to speak.Using the language of “interpretation,” Taylor writes: “A successfulinterpretation is one which makes clear the meaning originally pre-sent in a confused, fragmentary, cloudy form. But how does one knowthat this interpretation is correct? Presumably because it makes senseof the original text: What is strange, mystifying, puzzling, contradic-tory is no longer so.”152

Yet with the case of the subaltern, one must first decide to recog-nize the language of communication as a valid mode. In other words,we(st) must try hard to listen to people in all of their forms of com-munication. The subaltern speaks all the time: We are simply unableto hear them.

Some might suggest that it is naïve to advocate a benevolenttranslator in the West who offers a sympathetic reading of the subal-tern. This criticism is well taken, and it lingers in the thoughts of thiswriter. Yet scholars in disparate fields have been attempting this typeof analysis. Certeau’s examination of residential space and cookery isa good example of this type of cultural translation. Additionally, JoeMoran’s work also provides a good template for this style of cultural

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translation: In Reading the Everyday he investigates the meaning ofsuch mundane activities as waiting at a bus stop and shopping inmalls.153 There is also an intellectual movement, rooted somewhat inMarxism, to read inanimate “things” as if they communicatedideas.154 This “thing theory” has collided somewhat with the recogni-tion that the study of the subaltern must often examine the hiddentexts of popular, native, or mass culture.155

Of course, subaltern translation must be sensitive to not imposethe dominant mode of discourse onto the communication. For exam-ple, Robert Ray understands the underlying texts of (popular) cul-ture when he writes: “‘Tutti Frutti’ remains more revolutionary than‘Woman is the Nigger of the World’: Music’s effects always registerless at the level of explicit political content than at the level ofsound.”156 Hence, music, like most aspects of culture, communicatesin a nonexplicit and nonrational way. It is the Western intellectual’sduty—assuming the goal is a discourse with the subaltern—to trans-late the culture and languages of the subaltern, while always beingaware of her role as translator. Once this translation takes place inearnest, then the West can, hopefully, have a somewhat open dia-logue with the subaltern about values, ontology, oppression, andpolitical theory.

* * *

In this article I have presented a possible solution to the Spivakianpuzzle. This solution rests on the notion that the Western intellectualmust “translate” the subaltern. Spivak’s notion of the silence of thesubaltern betrays a Kantian bias toward the active Western “speaker”and shows how the Western subject is a hegemonic idea. In this sense,the terms of the debate about “representation” in modern “democ-racies” are implicated through the sense in which the subaltern areaccounted for.

On Spivak’s account, a democratic institution can neither seek torepresent through “proxy” or through “authenticity,” for both ignorethe role that the powerful/subaltern and/or inside/outside play inthe political act itself. If one takes this criticism of Western democra-cies seriously, then one would wish to somehow allow for the repre-sentation of the subaltern. Yet even this “allowance” is a Western con-vention, and it reinforces the notion that humans act upon the worldthrough a Kantian-subjective will. For the subaltern to be included—accounted for—one must recognize their difference and their abilityto communicate in non-Kantian ways. In fact, I would argue that wemust use translation as a way to rip apart the Kantian subject from thedemocratic notions of “representation.”

Put another way, by using self-conscious methods of translation,the careful writer and/or activist can investigate the “arguments” and


“assertions” made by the everyday culture of the subaltern. It is mycontention that this is what Spivak is attempting to do in her readingof the Bhaduri suicide. Yet Spivak, as if she is stuck in aKantian/Cartesian loop, is still looking for the deliberate act of speak-ing, instead of attempting to listen to the subaltern in the many waysby which they communicate. I believe a dialogue can be opened withthe subaltern. This is a dialogue that political theorists should takeseriously.

Notes

I would like to thank Margaret Kohn, Jessica Peet, Jennifer Forshee, RoseMoon, Mary Dietz, and Naomi Nelson for comments, support, and inspira-tion.

1. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in ColonialDiscourse and Post-Colonial Theory, eds. P. Williams and L. Chrisman (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1992), pp. 66–111.

2. Jill Didur and Teresa Heffernan, “Revisting the Subaltern in the NewEmpire,” Cultural Studies 17 (2003): 1–15; at 2.

3. Spivak, note 1, p. 66. 4. Ibid., p. 102. 5. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a

History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999),p. 334.

6. Ibid., p. 205. 7. Ibid., p. 208. 8. Spivak, note 1, p. 91. 9. Ibid.

10. Spivak, note 5, p. 311. 11. J. G. A. Pocock, “The Politics of History: The Subaltern and the

Subversive,” Journal of Political Philosophy 6 (1998): 219–234; at 200. 12. David Huddart, “Making an Example of Spivak,” Angelaki: Journal of

Theoretical Humanities 6 (April 2001): 35–36; at 38. 13. Raka Shome and Radha S. Hedge, “Postcolonial Approaches to

Communication: Charting Terrain, Engaging the Intersections,”Communication Theory 12 (August 2002): 249–270; at 265.

14. Terry Eagleton, Figures of Dissent: Critical Essays on Fish, Spivak, Zizek,and Others (London: Verso, 2003), p. 160.

15. Didur and Heffernan, note 2, p. 2. 16. Huddart, note 12, p. 37. 17. Forest Pyle, “‘By a Certain Subreption’: Gayatri Spivak and the ‘Lever’

of the Aesthetic,” Interventions 4 (2002): 186–190; at 187.18. Bart Moore-Gilbert, Postcolonial Theory (London: Verso, 1997), p. 81. 19. Spivak, note 1, p. 71 (quoting Marx). 20. Ibid., p. 70 (emphasis added). 21. Vijay Devadas and Brett Nicholls, “Postcolonial Interventions: Gayatri

Spivak, Three Wise Men and the Native Informant,” Critical Horizons 3(2002): 73–101; at 83.

22. Spivak, note 1, p. 74. 23. Ibid., p. 70. 24. Ibid., p. 67.

J. Maggio 439

25. Ibid., p. 68. 26. Ibid., p. 67. 27. Didur and Heffernan, note 2, p. 12. 28. Spivak, note 5, p. 199. 29. Ibid., p. 203. 30. Didur and Heffernan, note 2, p. 2. 31. Spivak, note 5, p. 202 (footnote omitted).32. Spivak, note 1, p. 69. 33. Ibid., p. 80. 34. Ibid., p. 88. 35. Ibid., p. 89. 36. Spivak, note 5, p. 323. 37. Spivak, note 1, p. 87. 38. Ibid., p. 89.39. Spivak, note 5, p. 323.40. Ibid., p. 336. 41. Spivak, note 1, p. 97.42. Ibid., p. 97. 43. Ibid., p. 98. 44. Didur and Heffernan, note 2, p. 3.45. Spivak points out that it is ironic that people never question the act

of celibacy for a widow. Additionally, I am not suggesting that Spivak is cor-rect about Kant’s notion of culture. I am not sure, for example, that Spivakand Hannah Arendt agree on Kant’s aesthetics. Yet it is interesting thatSpivak understands the Kantian self to be dependent on “culture.”

46. Didur and Heffernan, note 2, p. 3. 47. Devadas and Nicholls, note 21, p. 76. 48. Spivak, note 5, pp. 12–14 (footnotes omitted; emphasis in original). 49. My understanding here is indebted to Pyle’s interpretation of Spivak.50. Pyle, note 17, p. 189.51. Devadas and Nicholls, note 21, p. 84.52. Didur and Heffernan, note 2, p. 4. 53. Ibid.54. Moore-Gilbert, note 18, p. 89. 55. Ibid., pp. 81, 88.56. Spivak, note 1, p. 79.57. Spivak, note 5, p. 344. 58. Moore-Gilbert, note 18, p. 91. 59. Didur and Heffernan, note 2, p. 4. 60. Huddart, note 12, p. 38. 61. Mark Sanders, “Representation: Reading-Otherwise,” Interventions 4

(2002): 198–204; at 200. 62. Didur and Heffernan, note 2, p. 4. 63. Ibid., p. 6. 64. Devadas and Nicholls, note 21, p. 81. 65. Ibid. 66. Moore-Gilbert, note 18, p. 77. 67. Colin Wright, “Centrifugal Logics: Eagleton and Spivak on the Place

of ‘Place’ in Postcolonial Theory,” Culture, Theory, and Critique 43 (2002):67–82; at 68.

68. Spivak, note 5, p. 309. 69. Moore-Gilbert, note 18, p. 104.


70. Bruce Robbins, “Soul Making: Gayatri Spivak on Upward Mobility,”Cultural Studies 17 (2003): 16–26; at 13, 18; Purushottama Bilimoria,“Postcolonial Critique of Reason: Spivak Between Kant and Matilal,”Interventions 4 (2002): 160–167; at 166.

71. Eagleton, note 14, p. 167. 72. Moore-Gilbert, note 18, p. 86. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid.75. See, for example, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, “Cosmopolitanism and the

Circle of Reason,” Political Theory 28 (October 2000): 619–639; ArashAbizadeh, “Does Collective Identity Presuppose an Other? On The AllegedIncoherence of Global Solidarity,” American Poltical Science Review 99(February 2005): 45–60.

76. Huddart, note 12, p. 38. 77. Didur and Heffernan, note 2, p. 11. 78. Shome and Hedge, note 13, p. 266. 79. Wendy Brown, “At The Edge,” Political Theory 30 (August 2002):

556–576; at 556.80. Sanders, note 61, pp. 198–204; at 201, 202. 81. See Moore-Gilbert, note 18, p. 104, for an analysis of Robbins’s com-

ments. 82. Huddart, note 12, p. 36. 83. Ibid. 84. Eagleton, note 14, p. 158. 85. Ibid. 86. Ibid. Of course, this can be said of much philosophy, criticism, and lit-

erature. Additionally, Eagleton does not mind—apparently—ending a sen-tence with a preposition.

87. Spivak might agree that she and her postcolonial brethren are allnative informants, but I doubt she would concur with the conclusion thatsuch critics are lazy.

88. Eagleton, note 14, p. 164. 89. Ibid., p. 165. 90. Examples include Aijaz Ahmad and Benita Parry; Huddart, note 12,

p. 35. 91. Huddart, note 12, p. 35. 92. Abizodez, note 75, p. 46. 93. Moore-Gilbert, note 18, p. 84. 94. Shome and Hedge, note 13, p. 266. 95. Devadas and Nicholls, note 21, p. 84. 96. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Translating Into English,” in Nation,

Language, and the Ethics of Translation, eds. S. Bermann and M. Wood(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 93–110; at 104.

97. Henry Staten, “Tracking the ‘Native Informant’: Cultural Translationas the Horizon of Literary Translation,” in S. Bermann and M. Wood, eds.,Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2005), pp. 111–126; at 118 (emphasis in original).

98. This is, of course, a reference to Foucault’s famous comment con-cerning Hegel.

99. Moore-Gilbert, note 18, p. 87. 100. Ibid., p. 86. 101. Spivak, note 5, p. 396, n. 113; Moore-Gilbert, p. 86.

J. Maggio 441

102. Moore-Gilbert, note 18, p. 99. 103. Robert Young, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (New

York: Routledge 1990), p. 164. 104. Moore-Gilbert, note 18, p. 102. 105. Ibid., pp. 86–89. 106. Pocock, “The Politics of History,” p. 221. Levinas’s notion of the

other is also implicated in this analysis; see Staten, note 97, p. 113. 107. Sangeeta Ray, “Ethical Encounters: Spivak, Alexander, and Kincaid,”

Cultural Studies 17 (2003): 42–55; at 93. 108. Didur and Heffernan, note 2, p. 3. 109. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1968),

p. 69.110. Ibid., p. 72. 111. Ibid., p. 73. 112. Ibid., p. 74. 113. Ibid., p. 75. 114. Samuel Weber, “A Touch of Translation: On Walter Benjamin’s ‘Task

of the Translator,’” in S. Bermann and M. Wood, eds., Nation, Language,and the Ethics of Translation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005),pp. 65–78; at 66.

115. Benjamin, note 109, pp. 75–76. 116. Ibid., pp. 76–77. 117. Weber, note 114, p. 77. 118. George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation

(London: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 5. 119. Joe Moran, Reading the Everyday (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 22.

My understanding of Barthes is somewhat indebted to Moran generally.120. Henri Lefebvre, “Critique of Everyday Life,” vol. 2, Foundations for a

Sociological of the Everyday, trans. John Moore (London: Verso, 2002), p. 276. 121. Moran, note 119, p. 22. 122. Ibid., p. 23. 123. Steiner, note 118, p. 18. 124. Ibid., p. 19. 125. Weber, note 114, p. 65. 126. Devadas and Nicholls, note 21, p. 92. 127. Ibid., p. 85. 128. Spivak, note 96, p. 105. 129. Ibid., p. 95. 130. Ibid., p. 93. 131. Ibid., p. 104.132. Moore-Gilbert, note 18, p. 104. 133. Staten, note 97, p. 116. 134. Ibid., p. 113. Staten here references Levinas. 135. Spivak, note 96, p. 94. 136. Moran, note 119, p. 10. 137. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University

of California Press, 1984), p. 3. 138. Moran, note 119, p. 11.139. Certeau, note 138, p. 251.140. Staten, note 97, p. 117. Of course, this is essentially what Spivak does

in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Staten points out that this symptomatic“silence” is also evident in Spivak’s reading of Toni Morrison.


141. Moran, note 119, p. 23. 142. John Fiske, Reading the Popular (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), p. 1

(emphasis mine). 143. Staten, note 97, p. 119. 144. Fiske, note 143, pp. 9–10. 145. Charles Taylor, “Interpretation and the Sciences of Man,” in M.

Martin and L. C. McIntyre, eds., Readings in Philosophy of Social Science(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), pp. 181–212; at 193.

146. Spivak, note 5, pp. 321–322. 147. Benjamin, note 109, p. 75. 148. Ibid., p. 73. 149. Didur and Heffernan, note 2, p. 2. 150. Devadas and Nicholls, note 21, p. 89. 151. Taylor, note 146, p. 182. 152. Ibid., p. 183. 153. Moran, note 119, generally. For a good example of the ways of read-

ing the subaltern state, see Fernando Coronil, “Listening to the Subaltern:The Poetics of Neocolonial States,” Poetics Today 15 (Winter 1994): 643–658.

154. Good examples include Lorraine Daston, ed., Things That Talk:Object Lessons from Art and Science (New York: Zone Books, 2004); Bill Brown,ed., Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Elizabeth Edwardsand Janice Hart, eds., Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images(London: Routledge: 2004).

155. Paul Rich and Guillermo De los Reyes, “Popular Culture andReconstructing Multi-Tiered Reality,” Gender, Latino, Subaltern, and CriminalStudies 30 (Fall 1996): 29–37; at 32.

156. Robert Ray, “Critical Senility v. Overcomprehension: Rock Criticismand the Lesson of the Avant-Garde,” in S. Jones, ed., Pop Music and the Press(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002), p. 76 (emphasis in original).

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Maggio 2007 Can the Subaltern Be Heard Political Theory Spivak