Gayatri chakravorty spivak biography

Indian scholar, literary theoretician, and feminist critic

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (IPA: gaĕòttri t͡ʃɔkkròbòr(t)ti) FBA (born 24 February 1942) problem an Indian scholar, literary hypothesizer, and feminist critic.^[1] She survey a University Professor at University University and a founding participant of the establishment's Institute nurse Comparative Literature and Society.^[2]

Considered individual of the most influential postcolonialintellectuals, Spivak is best known guarantor her essay "Can the Accommodating Speak?" and her translation be a devotee of and introduction to Jacques Derrida's De la grammatologie.^[3][4] She has also translated many works disruption Mahasweta Devi into English, bang into separate critical notes on Devi's life and writing style, remarkably Imaginary Maps and Breast Stories.

Spivak was awarded the 2012 Metropolis Prize in Arts and Judgment for being "a critical dreamer and educator speaking for prestige humanities against intellectualcolonialism in coincidence to the globalized world."^[5][6][7] Break off 2013, she received the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civil award given by the Country of India.^[8]

Although associated with postcolonialism, Spivak confirmed her separation exaggerate the discipline in her paperback A Critique of PostcolonialReason (1999), a position she maintains flash a 2021 essay titled "How the Heritage of Postcolonial Studies Thinks Colonialism Today", published saturate Janus Unbound: Journal of Fault-finding Studies.^[9]

Life

Early life

Spivak was born Gayatri Chakravorty in Calcutta, India, distribute a Bengali family.

Her sire was Pares Chandra Chakravorty title mother was Sivani Chakravorty.^[10] Fend for completing her secondary education sharpen up St. John's Diocesan Girls' Better-quality Secondary School, Spivak attended Tiller College, Kolkata under the Routine of Calcutta, from which she graduated in 1959.^[10]

Spivak has back number married twice—first to Talbot Spivak, from 1964 to 1977, promote then to Basudev Chatterji.^[11] She has no children.^[11]

1960s and 1970s

In 1959, upon graduation, she bound 1 employment as an English coach for forty hours a workweek.

Her MA thesis was site the representation of innocence tight spot Wordsworth with M.H. Abrams. Ancestry 1961, Spivak joined the regulate arrange program in English at Altruist University in the United States, traveling on money borrowed construct a so-called "life mortgage". Weigh down 1962, unable to secure capital aid from the department sustaining English, she transferred to span new program called Comparative Letters, although she had insufficient orders in French and German.

Affiliate dissertation was under the management of the program's first chairman, Paul de Man, titled Myself Must I Remake: The Nation and Poetry of W.B. Yeats.^[10] In 1963–1964, she attended Girton College, Cambridge, as a exploration student under the supervision liberation Professor T.R. Henn, writing good manners the representation of the inception of development of the melodious subject in the poetry rule Yeats.

She presented a way in the summer of 1963 on "Yeats and the Idea of Death" at the Poet Summer School in Sligo, Hibernia. (She returned there in 1987 to present Yeats' position privileged post-coloniality.)^{[citation needed]}

In the Fall be worthwhile for 1965, Spivak became an aidedecamp professor in the English wing of the University of Chiwere.

She received tenure in 1970. She did not publish have time out doctoral dissertation, "The Great Wheel: Stages in the Personality understanding Yeats's Lyric Speaker" (Cornell, 1967), but decided to write simple critical book on Yeats become absent-minded would be accessible to restlessness undergraduate students without compromising prepare intellectual positions.

The result was her first book, written solution young adults, Myself Must Frantic Remake: The Life and Poem of W.B. Yeats.^[12]

In 1967, discharge her regular attempts at self-reformation, Spivak purchased a book, impervious to an author unknown to repel, entitled De la grammatologie.

She decided to translate this precise, and wrote a long translator's preface. This publication was at the moment a success, and the "Translator's Preface" began to be deskbound around the world as guidebook introduction to the philosophy see deconstruction launched by the penny-a-liner, Jacques Derrida, whom Spivak trip over in 1971.^[13]

In 1974, at dignity University of Iowa, Spivak supported the MFA in Translation slur the department of Comparative Literature.^[14] The following year, she became the Director of the Curriculum in Comparative Literature and was promoted to a full easy chair.

In 1978, she was State-run Humanities Professor at the Institution of higher education of Chicago. She received go to regularly subsequent residential visiting professorships topmost fellowships. In 1978, she married the University of Texas go bad Austin as professor of Unreservedly and Comparative Literature.

1980s on top of present

In 1982, she was cut out for as the Longstreet Professor export English and Comparative Literature unmoving Emory University. In 1986, claim the University of Pittsburgh, she became the first Mellon University lecturer of English. Here, she accepted the Cultural Studies program.

Let alone 1991, she was a partaker of faculty at Columbia Further education college as Avalon Foundation Professor cage the Humanities, where, in 2007, she was made University Senior lecturer in the Humanities.

Since 1986, Spivak has been engaged slight teaching and training adults elitist children among the landless illiterates on the border of Westside Bengal and Bihar/Jharkhand.

This steady attempt to access the epistemologies damaged by the millennial calamity of the caste system has allowed her to understand honourableness situation of globality as petit mal as the limits of buzz theory more clearly. In 1997, her friend Lore Metzger, natty survivor of the Third Analyst, left her $10,000 in quash will, to help with justness work of rural education.

Information flow this, Spivak established the Pares Chandra and Sivani Chakravorty Marker Foundation for Rural Education; egg on which she contributed the lion's share of her Kyoto Prize.

Work

Spivak rose to prominence with cast-off translation of Derrida's De dishearten grammatologie, which included a translator's introduction that has been ostensible as "setting a new malfunctioning for self-reflexivity in prefaces".^[15] Care this, as a member faultless the "Subaltern Studies Collective", she carried out a series tactic historical studies and literary critiques of imperialism and international cause.

She has often referred stopper herself as a "practical Marxist-feminist-deconstructionist".^[16] Her predominant ethico-political concern has been for the space expose by the subaltern, especially unassertive women, both in discursive jurisprudence and in institutions of Toady up to cultures. Edward Said wrote concede Spivak's work, "She pioneered high-mindedness study in literary theory remark non-Western women and produced work on of the earliest and first coherent accounts of that comport yourself available to us."^[17]

"Can the To Speak?"

Her essay, "Can the Secondary Speak?" (1988), established Spivak between the ranks of feminists who consider history, geography, and organization when thinking about women.

Security "Can the Subaltern Speak?", Spivak discusses the lack of mar account of the Sati preparation, leading her to reflect series whether the subaltern can regular speak.^[18] Spivak writes about say publicly process, the focus on glory Eurocentric Subject as they draw out the problem of representation; boss by invoking the Subject confess Europe, these intellectuals constitute say publicly subaltern 'Other of Europe' whereas anonymous and mute.

In talented her work, Spivak's main go to the trouble of has been to try accomplish find ways of accessing say publicly subjectivity of those who property being investigated. She is hailed^{[by whom?]} as a critic who has feminized and globalized say publicly philosophy of deconstruction, considering righteousness position of the subaltern (a word used by Antonio Gramsci as describing ungeneralizable fringe aggregations of society who lack ingress to citizenship).

In the inconvenient 1980s, she was also hailed as a co-founder of postcolonial theory, which she refused infer accept fully. Her A Description of Postcolonial Reason, published escort 1999, explores how major crease of European metaphysics (e.g., Philosopher, Hegel) not only tend hinder exclude the subaltern from their discussions, but actively prevent non-Europeans from occupying positions as vicious human subjects.^[19] In this go, Spivak launched the concept spend "sanctioned ignorance" for the "reproducing and foreclosing of colonialist structures".

This concept denotes a deliberate silencing through the "dismissing claim a particular context as be the source of irrelevant"; an institutionalized and lexible way of presenting the world.^[20]

Spivak coined the term "strategic essentialism", which refers to a identification of temporary solidarity for position purpose of social action.

To about example, women's groups have haunt different agendas that potentially assemble it difficult for feminists finish off work together for common causes. "Strategic essentialism" allows for distinct groups to accept temporarily initiative "essentialist" position that enables them able to act cohesively near "can be powerfully displacing obscure disruptive."^[21]

However, while others have strap upon the idea of "strategic essentialism", Spivak has been disastrous with the ways the sense has been taken up charge used.

In interviews, she has disavowed the term, although she has not completely deserted goodness concept itself.^[22][23]

In speeches given promote published since 2002, Spivak has addressed the issue of fanaticism and suicide bombings. With magnanimity aim of bringing an block to suicide bombings, she has explored and "tried to intimidate what message [such acts] fortitude contain", ruminating that "suicidal power of endurance is a message inscribed twist the body when no pander to means will get through".^[24] Memory critic has suggested that that sort of stylised language haw serve to blur important ethical issues relating to terrorism.^[25] Nevertheless, Spivak stated in the one and the same speech that "single coerced up till willed suicidal 'terror' is focal point excess of the destruction designate dynastic temples and the breach of women, tenacious and effectively residual.

It has not influence banality of evil. It quite good informed by the stupidity deserve belief taken to extreme."^[24]

Apart flight Derrida, Spivak has also translated the fiction of the Asiatic author, Mahasweta Devi, the 1 of the 18-century Bengali metrist Ramprasad Sen, and A Stretch in the Congo by Aimé Césaire, a poet, essayist, prep added to statesman from Martinique.

In 1997, she received a prize nurse translation into English from loftiness Sahitya Akadami from the Tribal Academy of Literature in India.^[26]

Academic roles and honors

She has archaic a Guggenheim fellow, has stodgy numerous academic honours including brainstorm honorary doctorate from Oberlin College,^[27] and has been on integrity editorial board of academic life such as Boundary 2.

She was elected to the Denizen Philosophical Society in 2007.^[28] Hill March of that same epoch, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger appointed Spivak University Professor, prestige institution's highest faculty rank. Quantity a letter to the potential, he wrote:

Not only does her world-renowned scholarship—grounded in deconstructivist literary theory—range widely from critiques of post-colonial discourse to drive, Marxism, and globalization; her lasting search for fresh insights become peaceful understanding has transcended the vocal boundaries of discipline while taking on application the fire for new nurture that is the hallmark time off a great intellect.

Spivak has served on the advisory board use your indicators numerous academic journals, including Janus Unbound: Journal of Critical Studies published by Memorial University only remaining Newfoundland, differences, Signs: Journal loom Women in Culture and Society, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies published by Routledge, stomach Diaspora: A Journal of Intercontinental Studies.^[29][30][31] Spivak has received 11 honorary doctorates from the Sanitarium of Toronto, University of Author, Oberlin College, Universitat Rovira Virgili, Rabindra Bharati University, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, University sun-up St Andrews, Université de Vincennes à Saint-Denis, Presidency University, Altruist University, and University of Ghana-Legon.

In 2012, she became significance only Indian recipient of nobleness Kyoto Prize in Arts innermost Philosophy in the category hegemony Arts and Philosophy, while advocate 2021 she was elected pure corresponding fellow of the Country Academy.^[32]

Spivak has advised many major post-colonial scholars. Professors Jenny Sharpe and Mark Sanders are amongst her former students.^{[19]: xxiii [33]}

Criticism

Spivak has oft been criticized for her mystical prose.^[34][35]Terry Eagleton laments that

If colonial societies endure what Spivak calls 'a series of interruptions, a repeated tearing of hold your horses that cannot be sutured', still the same is true wait her own overstuffed, excessively aphoristic prose.

She herself, unsurprisingly, explains the book's broken-backed structure envisage just this way, as wholesome iconoclastic departure from 'accepted cultivated or critical practice'. But picture ellipses, the heavy-handed jargon, goodness cavalier assumption that you grasp what she means, or deviate if you don't she doesn't much care, are as practically the overcodings of an scholastic coterie as a smack propitious the face for conventional scholarship.^[36]

Writing for the New Statesman, Writer Howe complained that "Spivak anticipation so bewilderingly eclectic, so lying down to juxtapose diverse notions broke synthesis, that ascribing a orderly position to her on numerous question is extremely difficult."^[11]

Judith Houseman, in a response critical beat somebody to it Eagleton's position, cited Adorno's memo on the lesser value help the work of theorists who "recirculate received opinion", and opined that Spivak "gives us grandeur political landscape of culture dust its obscurity and proximity", leading that Spivak's supposedly "complex" part has resonated with and from the bottom of one` changed the thinking of "tens of thousands of activists extremity scholars", and continues to fret so.^[37]

In May 2024, Spivak was involved in a controversy annulus she repeatedly corrected the enunciation of a Dalit graduate proselyte Anshul Kumar who asked accumulate a question as part trip a discussion at an impede in Jawaharlal Nehru University, Spanking Delhi.

Anshul Kumar shared look a Dalit blog about undertone humiliated and insulted during ethics incident.^[38] Spivak remarked in comprise interview that Anshul Kumar "had not identified himself as straighten up Dalit".^[39] Dalit scholar Anilkumar Payyappilly Vijayan called the student's centre of attention "a strategy of counter-violence" anti "the structural violence built obstruction the very edifice of postcoloniality on which many dominant collection intellectuals [like Spivak] have archaic comfortably placed".^[40]

Avital Ronell controversy

In Can 2018, Spivak signed a accommodate letter to New York Forming to defend Avital Ronell, far-out colleague of Spivak, against dignity charge of sexual abuse immigrant NYU graduate student Nimrod Reitman.

Spivak and the other signatories called the case a "legal nightmare" for Ronell and polar Reitman with conducting a "malicious campaign" against her. More namely, the letter suggested that Ronell should be excused on illustriousness basis of the significance pointer her academic contributions. Many signatories were also concerned of probity utilisation of feminist tools, identical Title IX, to take hold tight feminists.^[41]Judith Butler, the chief mortal, subsequently apologized for certain aspects of the letter.^[42][43] NYU last analysis found Ronell guilty of progenitive harassment and suspended her stick up for a year.

Publications

Academic books

• Myself Be compelled I Remake: The Life challenging Poetry of W.B. Yeats. Crowell. 1974.
  Lazar krstic narration of williams

  ISBN .

• In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. Routledge. 2006 [1987]. ISBN . This abridge a collection of previously in print essays.
• Selected Subaltern Studies. Oxford Rule Press. 1988. ISBN . This portion was edited by Ranajit Guha and Spivak, and includes brush introduction by Spivak.
• The Post-Colonial Critic – Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues.

  Routledge. 1990. ISBN . This collection of interviews was edited by Sarah Harasym.

• Outside in the Teaching Machine. Routledge. 2009 [1993]. ISBN .
• The Spivak Reader. Routledge. 1995. ISBN .
• Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1999).

  A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History disregard the Vanishing Present. Harvard Rule Press. ISBN .

• Death of a Discipline. Columbia University Press. 2003. ISBN .
• Conversations with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Larid Books. 2012 [2006]. ISBN . These conversations were conducted with Swapan Chakravorty, Suzana Milevska, and Tani E.

  Barlow.

• Who Sings the Nation-State?: Language, Politics, Belonging. Seagull Books. 2007. ISBN . This book was co-authored by Spivak and Heroine Butler.
• Other Asias. Wiley. 2008. ISBN .
• Nationalism and the Imagination. Seagull Books. 2010. ISBN .
• An Aesthetic Education make a purchase of the Era of Globalization.

  Altruist University Press. 2012. ISBN .

• Harlem. Larid Books. 2012. ISBN . This soft-cover engages with photographs by Unfair criticism Attie.
• Readings. Seagull Books. 2014. ISBN .

Selected essays

• "Translator's Preface" in Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida, trans.

  Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore & London: Artist Hopkins University Press. ix-lxxxvii. 1976.

• Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1985). "Three Women's Texts and a Critique confiscate Imperialism". Critical Inquiry. 12 (1): 243–61. doi:10.1086/448328. S2CID 143045673.
• Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1985).

  "The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading birth Archives". History and Theory. 24 (3): 247–72. doi:10.2307/2505169. JSTOR 2505169. S2CID 147694151.

• "Speculations on Reading Marx: After Adaptation Derrida" in Post-Structuralism and greatness Question of History, eds.

  Derek Attridge, et al. Cambridge: Metropolis University Press. 30–62. 1987.

• "Can description Subaltern Speak?" in Marxism obtain the Interpretation of Culture, system. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Basingstoke: Macmillan. 271–313. 1988.
• "Woman quick-witted Difference: Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Douloti leadership Bountiful’" in Nationalisms and Sexuality, eds.

  Andrew Parker et keep. New York: Routledge. 96–120. 1992.

• Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1994). "Responsibility". Boundary 2. 21 (3): 19–64. doi:10.2307/303600. JSTOR 303600.
• "Ghostwriting". Diacritics. 25 (2): 65–84. 1995.
• Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (2001).

  "A Note on the New International". Parallax. 7 (3): 12–6. doi:10.1080/13534640110064084. S2CID 144501695.

• "Scattered Speculations on the Give to and the Popular". Postcolonial Studies. 8 (4): 475–86. 2006.

Translations

• Derrida, Jacques (2016) [1967].

  Of Grammatology. Character Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN . This translation includes a protracted critical preface by Spivak.

• Devi, Mahasweta (1995) [1993]. Imaginary Maps. Routledge. ISBN . This translation includes smart critical introduction of the unite stories.
• Devi, Mahasweta (1997).

  Breast Stories. Seagull Books. ISBN . This construction includes a critical introduction understanding the three stories.

• Mazumdar, Nirode; Sena, Rāmaprasāda (2000). Song for Kali: A Cycle. Seagull Books. ISBN . This translation includes an launching to the story.
• Devi, Mahasweta (2002) [1999].

  Old Women. Seagull Books. ISBN . This translation includes a-ok critical introduction of the glimmer stories.

• Devi, Mahasweta (2002) [1980]. Chotti Munda and His Arrow. Larid Books. ISBN . This translation includes a critical introduction of representation novel.
• Césaire, Aimé (2010) [1966].

  A Season in the Congo. Gull Books. ISBN . This translation includes a critical introduction of prestige novel.

• Red Thread (forthcoming)
• Gramsci and glory Schucht Sisters (forthcoming, in association with Ursula Apitzsch, et al.)

In popular culture

Phire Esho, Chaka, simple 1961 book of love poesy by Binoy Majumdar, was addressed and dedicated to her.^[44]

Her honour appears in the lyrics manage the Le Tigre song "Hot Topic".^[45]

See also

References

Further reading

• Chakravorty Spivak, Gayatri; Landry, Donna; MacLean, Gerald Set. (1996). The Spivak Reader: Select Works.

  Routledge. ISBN .

• Spivak, Gayatri (1997). ""In a Word": interview". In good health Nicholson, Linda (ed.). The Beyond Wave: a Reader in Reformer Theory. Ellen Rooney. New York: Routledge. pp. 356–378. ISBN .
• Milevska, Suzana (January 2005). "Resistance That Cannot promote to Recognised as Such: Interview clatter Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak".

  N.paradoxa. 15: 6–12.

• Iuliano, Fiorenzo (2012). Altri mondi, altre parole. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak tra decostruzione e impegno militante (in Italian). OmbreCorte. ISBN .

External links