Why Spivak?

Eagleton is gesturing toward Gayatri Spivak, whose deconstructive project is a critique of postcolonialism. Spivak goes on to write that what are being reclaimed are “regulative political concepts” that have been inherited from Western Europe; thus, she rejects postcolonialism as an adequate referent for the times because decolonization has not happened. In some feminist literature (e.g., bell hooks, Audre Lorde), the margin is positioned as a radical space separate from the center; the margin is a positive, creative site of resistance that minoritized individuals can inhabit to secure their difference. Spivak relies on Foucault’s concept of puissance/connaissance (power/knowledge) to position the teaching machine (the academy) as a vehicle of power/knowledge that seeks to locate and define what counts as authentic inhabitants of the margin.

Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Contemporary Cultural and Social Studies · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology