As for Spivak, here she is on this very issue. My comments are interspersed in her b/c it's from a comment discussion at the blog which erupted over the charge of Orientalism in the white mainstream feminist blogosphere:
Once we have established the story of the straight, white, Judao-Christian, heterosexual man of property as the ethical universal, we must not replicate (it).
We have limits; we cannot even learn many languages. This idea of a global fun-fair is a lousy teaching idea.
(She's speaking here of the widespread popularity of multi-culturalism which actually was coming under attack as a tool of oppression.)
One of the first things to think through is the limits of one's power. One must ruthlessly undermine the story of the ethical universal (of the straight white middle-class male). But the alternative is not constantly to evoke multiplicity; the alternative is to know
that this is a limited sample because of one's own inclinations and capacities to learn enough to take a larger sample since this is the kind of work that should be a collective enterprise. Other people will do some other work. This is how I think one should proceed, rather than make each (of us) into a ground of multiplicity.
(She is saying: We can't all know everything. We can try our damnedest to have a breadth of knowledge. We, as individuals cannot be "the ground of multiplicity" by ourselves.)
(the individual as ground of multiplicity) That leads to pluralism. I ask, "What do you think
allows you to think the world without any preparation? What sort of coding has produced (you)?" I think it's hard for (people) to know this, but we have a responsibility to make this lesson palliative rather than destructive. This is not paralyzing thing to teach. In fact, when (people are) told that responsibility means proceeding from an awareness of the limits of one's power, they understand it quite differently from being told, "Look, you can't do all of this." I will share with you what I have learned about knowing.
(W)hat I have learned is that these are the limitations of what I undertake, looking to others to teach me. I think that's what one should do rather than invoke multiplicity
I don't think any of this, whether justin's or ravi's, was Eric's point. He never suggested any particular person can't write, but that the demand for "clear" writing may well carry with it norms and standards of writing that were crafted by and for people who historically had power. Spivak and Butler are constantly brought up as THe example of poor writing. He didn't bring Spivak up because she is somehow "Indian" and incapable of writing clearly. She most certainly is capable, but other parts of her work require an intimate familiarity with Das Kapital, particularly some of the more technical aspects. If you don't understand it, and the analogies she's making, then you're lost.
In general, I don't think people really understand what white feminists and women of color mean when they criticize "norms" as Eric mentioned. It has nothing to do with the notion that a certain ethnic heritage (or whatever) doesn't have the capacity for reason and rational thought.
To quote as an example:
"We cannot talk to you in our language because you do not understand it. . . . The power of white Anglo women vis-a-vis Hispanas and Black women is in inverse proportion to their working knowledge of each other. . . . Because of their ignorance, white Anglo women who try to do theory with women of color inevitably disrupt the dialogue. Before they can contribute to collective dialogue, they need to 'know the text,' to have become familiar with an alternative way of viewing the world . You need to learn to become unintrusive, unimportant, patient to the point of tears, while at the same time open to learning any possible lessons. You will have to come to terms with the sense of alienation, of not belonging, of having your world thoroughly disrupted, having it critcized and scrutinized from the oint of view of those who have been harmed by it, having important concepts central to it dismissed, being viewed with mistrust."
http://blog.pulpculture.org/2006/11/01/bridge-called/ (the rest of the essay, a rumination on the African American feminist anthology, The Bridge Called My Back, is at the site.
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