I was in a graduate methodologies seminar in which I was the only student of color and the topic for the week was post-colonial theories and writing. Following a summary on Spivak's "Can the subaltern speak," the entire class remained confused and unable to grasp the concept, until one student finally asked the professor: "I still don't get it, so what is a subaltern?"
Rather than address the question, the professor turns to ME and asks that I explain "the subaltern" to everyone. I was taken aback after being put on the spot and could not seem to utter a word. As I looked around at all the impatient white faces waiting for my response, the professor shakes her hand at me and says, "Come on, come one, you know, tell them about your life, about your family’s migration, your home in the inner city, your experiences, etc." (!)
Horrified, I looked around (in what seemed to be slow motion!) at all the white privileged students around me. My life literally flashed before my eyes and I wondered how I could possibly explain my struggles, my life, in less than minute, knowing they could care less. And I couldn’t. The subaltern could not speak!
This post comes in from somewhere in the United States.
ReplyDeleteCan the subaltern speak....can spivak communicate?
ReplyDeletewhy must white professors & students, no more how progressive their politics, reproduce the very violence they claim to disavow.
ReplyDeletesimilar thing happened to me when the theoretical "perspective" we were discussing that week was (black feminist) standpoint theory. the white students were paralyzed and stared at the women of color in the room with pale fear, convinced that they could never (and would never) understand what standpoint theory is... and were waiting for it to be explained by those of us who "had a standpoint". =/
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry but you can't equate that experience to the experience of the subaltern. My teachers have often tried to force me to speak for my 'people' so I understand how you feel. The subaltern Spivak speaks of isn't included in the dialogue at all. They have no voice. As people of color there is rampant oppression that exists but we have and still continue to force ourselves into the dialogue. The subaltern doesn't have that opportunity. To equate all oppression to the oppression faced by the subaltern is slightly unfair. The subaltern is the 4th world woman who is not listened to. The white colonialists view her as something that needs to be saved while the men who are above her refuse to respect her agency. SHE HAS NO VOICE. The fact that you can even recognize yourself as a subaltern and say it in public makes it impossible for you to be a subaltern.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWHat an awful situation! Even if the person who wrote the above is not the subaltern that Spivak talks about, it is incredibly - really incredibly -insensitive for the teacher to ask a student to talk about herself as an example of a supressed woman, and even without having made an agreement with the student before 'going public'. WOuld she do the same, if she or he needed an example of how it feels to be a victim of rape? It's shocking! And on top of that it is also stupid, because the student simply cannot be the subaltern women of the text, so she is a bad example, being asked in a incredibly insensitive way to victimize herself in front of the whole class. Goodness me!
ReplyDeleteCan the subaltern speak to any but the subaltern? We perpetuate the hegemonic paradigm by the very discussion within western academia.We continue to objectify through the application of methods and theory to those we define as subaltern. Any discussion or theorization comes out of a system that continues to "other" simply by proposing the idea of subaltern. The idea of the subaltern is paternalistic in its essence.
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