The question of representation

Spivak/Devi

Representation and its meanings

• a) to re-present, as in the work of imagination that re-presents reality in literature;

• b) to represent, as in to stand in for, to speak for, to speak as, in the realm of politics.

Gayatri Spivak

• Feminism, Marxism, deconstruction, Subaltern Studies (radical historiography)

• Translated Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology

Spivak’s approach

• Marxism, feminism, deconstruction• Translated Jacques Derrida’s Of

Grammatology into English (1967)• An Aesthetic Education in the Age of

Globalization (2012)• http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=YBzCwzvudv0

Key themes

• Authenticity and Identity• “Can the Subaltern Speak?”• The gendered subaltern

Subaltern Studies• a collective of Left-leaning historians of India, formed in the late

1970s• From the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, SS historians took the

term subaltern, referring to masses and the people. Gramsci had used the term to refer to those classes in society that were left out of the historic transformation of the Italian state in the 1870s. Subalterns are therefore not a proper class as such and are marked by heterogeneity.

• produced a radical rethinking of historical representation (the limits of the archive; universal history versus local history), and of the relationship between historical and literary representation (writing and power)

Elite and subaltern: two domains• Domain of the elite: privileged by dominant discourse to

deal with the rulers on behalf of all colonized• Presence of the subaltern domain, left out through oversight

or design; inaccessible to the operations of the Raj/colonial state

• Similarly, the Indian nationalist movement and the postcolonial state also tended to ignore this domain

• The failure of the Indian bourgeoisies to speak for the nation; not representative

• Vast areas of people’s consciousness and life that were never integrated into bourgeois hegemony

Central thesis

• the actuality of the lives and forms of consciousness of the disenfranchised masses of colonial/postcolonial society (whether peasantry or urban working class) cannot find adequate representation in elite modes of representation (textualisation)

Questioning the position of the investigator

• --Construction of the subaltern—a subject position indicating powerlessness (tribals; subsistence farmers, unorganised peasant labour…)

• -- epistemic violence: project to constitute the colonized subject as other, and by doing so, obliterating her subjectivity

• --“To confront them is not to represent (vertreten) them but to learn to represent (darstellen) ourselves” (84)

• --need to question position of investigator (the assumed subject); FW intellectual valorizing the concrete experience of the oppressed, but uncritical about their own positions as intellectuals

Limits of the archive• knowledge and power: production of history as narrative of

truth• problem of the archive—police records, east india co.

records• Subaltern history: fragmented; no records• Impossibility of historians to get at subaltern consciousness • Subaltern history—an impossibility, a theoretical fiction?—

utopian dream• question of silence: what the text does not say. Cannot say

(peasant insurgency); dismantling the colonial archive

The work of criticism

• The work of criticism must be to problematize this and to theorize subaltern consciousness--agency, action, change/event, historical consciousness as subject of history

• what does this mean?• --speaking to as opposed to speaking for• --unlearning of privilege

Gendered subaltern• Cannot be understood through bourgeois democratic

individualism of mainstream Western feminism• not a search for origins or purity (essentialism: the

monolithic Third World woman)• Even in new fields of inquiry: dev studies, women’s studies,

multicultural studies—subaltern woman “mute as ever”• native woman caught b/w the imperial project of progress

and social benevolence and native reform and reaction• ideological battleground: no countersentence from the

women; impossible to put together a ‘voice”

Mahasweta Devi: storyteller of tribal life

• Tribals in India: 8-10% of India’s population• Among the most marginalised, along with lower

castes/previously untouchables• Long history from the colonial period: both exotic

and savage, unassimilable—British fascination• Postcolonial India: attempts to assimilate them in

the nation, while prejudices remain• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-Tf0oBlmEs•

Naxalite Movement

Naxalism

• Influenced by Maoism in China• Peasant/tribal rebellion of the late 1960s and

continuing until now against landlords, moneylenders, police, state, all exploiters. Seen to be stemming from the failures of Indian democracy, of the state’s representation of all Indians

• Found many sympathisers about urban elites—students, intellectuals, writers and journalists.

• Movement was crushed brutally, but there has been a widespread resurgence.

Draupadi/Dopdi• Draupadi• Character from the ancient

Indian epic Mahabharata• Married to the Pandavas (5

brothers) who stake her in a game of dice and lose her

• The opponents try to dishonour her by disrobing her in open court

• Her devotion to Lord Krishna saves her honour—it remains intact

• Dopdi• Modern tribal woman, a

militant• The postcolonial state

attempts to dishonour her—she is raped multiple times by policemen and state officials

• Dopdi reverses the stakes of the game—in looking back at the officer, she redirects shame in his direction, away from her mutilated body

The story continues

MOR: Unit Four• The politics of representation—who represents whom, from

where, and how• The power of discourse. Language makes meaning, brings

reality into effect• Identities are historically constituted—their meanings change

over time• Identities are always relational• The task of criticism, of literary criticism in particular, is to a)

persistently question the boundaries b/w the classroom and the real world, b/w scholarship and power; b) to rigorously investigate our own positions and assumptions.