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within this siteEthical responsibility/Ethical singularity
Spivak's usage of "responsibility" (like her dialogic understanding of "speaking," noted above) is akin to Bakhtin's "answerability" (otvetstvennost: sometimes also translated as "responsibility"). It signifies not only the act of response which completes the transaction of speaker and listener, but also the ethical stance of making discursive room for the Other to exist. In other words, "ethics are not just a problem of knowledge but a call to a relationship" (Introduction to The Spivak Reader). The ideal relationship is individual and intimate. This is what she means by "ethical singularity," the engagement of the Other in non-essential, non-crisis terms.
We all know that when we engage profoundly with one person, the responses come from both sides: this is responsibility and accountability... The object of ethical action is not an object of benevolence, for here responses flow from both sides. (SR 269-270)
The ideal relation to the Other, then, is an "embrace, an act of love" (ibid.). Such an embrace may be unrequited, as the differences and distances are too great, but if we are ever to get beyond the vicious cycle of abuse, it is essential to remain open-hearted; not to attempt to recreate the Other narcissistically, in one's own image, but generously, with care and attention.
Margins/Outside
Spivak's work explores "the margins at which disciplinary discourses break down and enter the world of political agency" (SR). She interrogates the politics of culture from a marginal perspective ("outside") while maintaining the prerogatives of a professional position within the hegemony. Through deconstruction she turns hegemonic narratives inside out, and as a third world woman in a position of privilege in the American academy, she brings the outside in. (Hence Outside in the Teaching Machine [1993]). These contradictory positions have led her to develop the notion that the center is also a margin, more like the center line on a road than the center of town. "This is the classic deconstructive position, in the middle, but not on either side" (de Kock interview). This reconfiguring of the "center" (or re-centering, perhaps) also changes the position and status of the margins: no longer outside looking in, but an integral, if minor, language.
Strategic Essentialism
In the Boundary 2 interview, Spivak wistfully pronounces that, of the two things she is best known for, both are often misunderstood. The first was her answer to the question "Can the Subaltern Speak?" and the second is the notion of strategic essentialism.
Essentialism is bad, not in its essence -- which would be a tautology -- but only in its application. The goal of essentialist critique is not the exposure of error, but the interrogation of the essentialist terms. Uncritical deployment is dangerous. Critique is simply reading the instructions for use. Essentialism is like dynamite, or a powerful drug: judiciously applied, it can be effective in dismantling unwanted structures or alleviating suffering; uncritically employed, however, it is destructive and addictive.
Spivak's strategy is deconstructivist, like that of a good lawyer: when on defense, prod the prosecution's narrative until the cracks begin to appear and when prosecuting, piece together a case by understanding the criminal's motivation. "Strategic essentialism" is like role-playing, briefly inhabiting the criminal mind in order to understand what makes it tick. The Subaltern Studies group, for example, succeeds in unraveling official Indian history by particularizing its narrative: "a strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest"(The Spivak Reader 214). This is also the way Spivak uses deconstruction, for example, without fully subscribing to it as a viable philosophic system or practice, much less a political program. Or, as she puts it, "[Deconstruction] is not the exposure of error. It is constantly and persistently looking into how truths are produced." (Arteaga interview) "Although I make specific use of deconstruction, I'm not a Deconstructivist" (Post-Colonial Critic).
The misuse of the concept of "strategic essentialism" is that less "scrupulous" practitioners ignore the element of strategy, and treat it as simply "a union ticket for essentialism. As to what is meant by strategy , no-one wondered about that." She claims to have given up on the phrase, though not the concept (Danius and Jonsson interview).
Spivak achieved a certain degree of misplaced notoriety for her 1985 article "Can the Subaltern Speak?: Speculations on Widow Sacrifice" (Wedge 7/8 [Winter/Spring 1985]: 120-130). In it, she describes the circumstances surrounding the suicide of a young Bengali woman that indicates a failed attempt at self-representation. Because her attempt at "speaking" outside normal patriarchal channels was not understood or supported, Spivak concluded that "the subaltern cannot speak." Her extremely nuanced argument, admittedly confounded by her sometimes opaque style, led some incautious readers to accuse her of phallocentric complicity, of not recognizing or even not letting the subaltern speak. Some critics, missing the point, buttressed their arguments with anecdotal evidence of messages cried out by burning widows. Her point was not that the subaltern does not cry out in various ways, but that speaking is "a transaction between speaker and listener" (Landry and MacLean interview). Subaltern talk, in other words, does not achieve the dialogic level of utterance.
Beyond this specific misunderstanding (proof perhaps that Gayatri Spivak cannot speak? . . .) Spivak also objects to the sloppy use of the term and its appropriation by other marginalized, but not specifically "subaltern" groups. "Subaltern," Spivak insists, is not "just a classy word for oppressed, for Other, for somebody who's not getting a piece of the pie." She points out that in Gramsci's original covert usage (being obliged to encrypt his writing to get it past prison censors), it signified "proletarian," whose voice could not be heard, being structurally written out of the capitalist bourgeois narrative. In postcolonial terms, "everything that has limited or no access to the cultural imperialism is subaltern -- a space of difference. Now who would say that's just the oppressed? The working class is oppressed. It's not subaltern" (de Kock interview).
Another misreading of the concept is that, since the subaltern cannot speak, she needs an advocate to speak for her, a Horton to its Who -- affirmative action or special regulatory protection. Spivak objects, "Who the hell wants to protect subalternity? Only extremely reactionary, dubious anthropologistic museumizers. No activist wants to keep the subaltern in the space of difference . . . You don't give the subaltern voice. You work for the bloody subaltern, you work against subalternity" (ibid.). She cites the work of the Subaltern Studies group as an example of how this critical work can be practiced, not to give the subaltern voice, but to clear the space to allow it to speak.
Spivak is particularly leery of the misappropriation of the term by those who simply want to claim disenfranchisement within the system of hegemonic discourse, i.e. those who can speak, but feel they are not being given their turn. "Many people want to claim subalternity. They are the least interesting and the most dangerous. I mean, just by being a discriminated-against minority on the university campus, they don't need the word 'subaltern'. . . They should see what the mechanics of the discrimination are. They're within the hegemonic discourse wanting a piece of the pie and not being allowed, so let them speak, use the hegemonic discourse. They should not call themselves subaltern."
Unlearning one's privilege as one's loss
As Audrey Hepburn demonstrated in Roman Holiday, privilege is also a kind of insularity which cuts off the privileged from certain kinds of "other" knowledge. One should strive to recognize these limitations and overcome them, not as a magnanimous gesture of inclusion, but simply for the increase of knowledge. The way to do this is by working critically through one's beliefs, prejudices and assumptions and understanding how they arose and became naturalized. Any Zen master, chiropractor, or guitar teacher will tell you that real learning can only begin once years of mental habit, bad posture, and learning riffs the wrong way are undone, or unlearned.
What we are asking is that the holders of the hegemonic discourse should de-hegemonize their position and themselves learn how to occupy the subject position of the other rather than simply say, "OK, sorry, we are just very good white people, therefore we do not speak for the blacks." (Intervention interview)
Author: Michael Kilburn, Spring 1996
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