I am not a student of Spivak's work, though I would rather talk about her ideas than her biography and the psychology of those who read her. I did not understand her "Scattered Speculations on Value" despite having read widely in Marx's value theory. I don't understand any profound significance of the slippage in the meanings of representation at the heart of her famous subaltern study. She wrote an interesting essay "Who Claims Alterity" which seemed to me to be a good criticism of how priviliged third world people claim alterity or subalternity in the Western academy. It seemed to me that she had ex classmate Bharati Mukherjee in mind. I don't understand her criticism of Derrida on Marx.
Yet from what you have quoted, it seems to me that the review is pretty insubstantive or rather it is about her and her authorial intention, not the book she wrote. There is a lot of psycho biography of those in post colonial studies--as if the psychological type of the post colonial student is the most interesting problem-- and very little actual criticism of what Spivak has to say about the colonial representation of India in terms of Indian history itself. I still think one would have to have a better sense of India or the colonial world even if one is discussing Western or third world elite representations of it in novels, travel literature, philosophy, social science, etc.
>"This book takes a few well-deserved smacks at the wilder breed of
>post-colonialist critics, whose fascination for the Other is in part a
>demoralised yearning to be absolutely anyone but themselves."
But it is more complicated. Who for example is ourselves? I was raised by two Hindi speaking parents (and for two years by devout ascetic Jain grandparents who didn't speak a word of English and whose values were often at odds with my parents), but now I only speak English. I have not made good sense of my background and what is was like growing up different in culture and looks in mostly white suburbs in which I enjoyed friendship, success and insult (and a bullet shot). There are good reasons for many of us to be interested in post colonial studies. The confusion at times has put me among the wilder breed.
>and toward the end he writes:
>
>"Nobody would imagine that Stanley Fish was not up to his ears in
>capitalism, not least Stanley Fish; but there are a number of gullible
>souls in US graduate programmes who might just make the mistake of seeing
>Gayatri Spivak as some avatar of pure alterity. She herself is rightly out
>to scotch this sentimentalism, reminding these fans of the Black Female
>that she is also a highly-paid bourgeoise and the scion of a colonial
>élite. She would thus rather opt for the bad faith of refusing the system
>while proposing no general alternative to it, than the bad faith of denying
>her collusion with it."
Only racist idiots could think that Spivak is a representative of 1 billion people. Who has to be reminded of this? Why does she have to remind anyone of this? Why don't other academics have to remind people of the class position or academic histories of their families? Is this only something third world women have to disclose?
And is all this babble a review of a book about something as complicated as the representation of India? It seems like Eagleton never got past the concerns of the preface.
>eagleton's complaint is that she's a bit too meek about it. she staked her
>claim in p-c lit crit by objecting to the romanticization of the subaltern
>on the part of educated elites. again, eagleton writes of spivak:
>
>"She is the best-placed because as an immigrant in the West she can spot
>those conceptual limits which are less obvious to insiders. There is a
>great deal of timely good sense, if Spivak would forgive the phrase, in
>pointing out to the more idealist employees of the Western post-colonial
>industry that nativism is not to be romanticised
There has plenty of that in the case of the Chiapas rebellion, which despite all that I still take to be a blow for human dignity and freedom. We don't need romanticism indeed but too much cynicism is destroying the punch too. There is no worse thing than scorning a people as they begin to fight.
; that ethnic minorities
>within metropolitan countries are not the same as colonised peoples;
True in my case; I grew up in middle class suburbs and went to a very good public high school. My father reminds me how lucky I was to be raised in the US since half his 11 brothers and died in infancy. He has just made a lot of money from a microprocessor start up. But is this the kind of autobiographical detail I need to disclose or that will be discussed if I ever write a book (and my relationship to my parents is very strained--I worked most of the way through college and grad school, and couldn't pay my tuition for two years). Are the rest of you going to start talking about yourself?
And that distinction between the colonised and the immigrant is not so easy to hold in the case of the Guatemalan refugees/immigrants who seem to be holding this town together from the bottom up.
that
>there is nothing 'essentialist' about civic rights;
people in post colonial studies are perhaps the most likely to oppose the brutal repatriation by the US govt of 'criminal' Haitians or El Salvadorans in accordance with recent immigration acts. Who joins them in opposition? Again see Donna DeCesare's wonderful writings in recent NACLAS.
and that for subaltern
>groups to become institutionalised citizens is an undesirable goal only for
>card-carrying primitivists."
I suppose this is a criticism of Partha Chatterjee's anti national writings. It's a cheap shot; it means nothing. It's not substantive. He probably hasn't read Chatterjee, and developed a solid critique for which I do agree there is a real need.
>
>[...]
>
>Yet this withering criticism of the post-colonial Western liberals never
>quite comes to a head. If Spivak has an uncannily keen nose for Western
>cant, patronage and hypocrisy, she is notably reluctant to break ranks.
More personal psychobiography. Where does Eagleton think she got that last name if not by 'breaking ranks'?
It is also a brave acknowledgment of her own
>compromised condition, as an academic superstar who speaks of caste and
>clitoridectomy. But there is more to her reticence than that. This book
>takes a few well-deserved smacks at the wilder breed of post-colonialist
>critics, whose fascination for the Other is in part a demoralised yearning
>to be absolutely anyone but themselves"
It seems like she is being asked to be more aware of her contradictions than other academics. I sense sexism and racism here.
>moreover, he refers to "american students" as students/fans of p-c lit crit
>and does not specify anything in particular about their ethnicity/race:
>"American students who, through no fault of their own, would not recognise
>class-struggle if it perched on the tip of their skateboards, or who might
>not be so keen on the Third World if some of its inhabitants were killing
>their fathers and brothers in large numbers, can vicariously fulfill their
>generously radical impulses by displacing oppression elsewhere. This move
>leaves them plunged into fashionably Post-Modern gloom about the
>'monolithic' benightedness of their own social orders."
I would imagine that this benighted post colonial "they" are actually for the most part really pissed off by Clinton's welfare deform, the attack on single mothers. I agree that there is little concern with or interest in the working class, which is I why I never took up post colonial studies (though Sembene Ousmene's novels are quite Marxist in inspiration). I was quite influenced by Jairus Banaji's criticisms of third worldism. Yet Eagleton has here the ultimate in psycho biographical reductionism which has completely eclipsed substantive critique of Spivak's work for which I am sure there is a real need. And I simply expected more of that in what was to be a review of the book, not a disquisition on the personal contradictions of Spivak and those who are inspired by her. It really does strike me as criticism by ad hominem, and I must say that in the case of Spivak, I have heard too many Indian men do it as well.
Yours, Rakesh
>finally, i'll re-quote what i read as his biggest complaint, that spivak
>provides no alternative to capitalism. despite her scathing critique of
>the 'culturalism of post-c lit crit and her resolute commitment to
>socialism, spivak doesn't speak enough to alternatives, to political
>practice because, eagleton thinks, she worries that this is hypocrisy:
>"She would thus rather opt for the bad faith of refusing the system while
>proposing no general alternative to it, than the bad faith of denying her
>collusion with it."
Well Marx did not write cookbooks for the future either.