Continental · born 1942 · living
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Indian-born theorist and translator of Derrida, at Columbia University
Spivak asked whether the subaltern, those shut out of power and representation, can speak: well-meaning intellectuals who claim to speak for them often silence them again.
Life and thought
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born 1942) grew up in Calcutta, graduated from Presidency College in 1959 and went to the United States to study comparative literature at Cornell, where she wrote her doctorate on W. B. Yeats under Paul de Man. Her translation of Derrida’s Of Grammatology (1976), with its long preface, introduced deconstruction to many English readers. She has taught at Columbia since 1991, became a University Professor there in 2007, and has long run rural schools in West Bengal; she received the Holberg Prize in 2025.
“Can the Subaltern Speak?” asks whether those at the bottom of colonial and postcolonial society, above all poor women, can make themselves heard. Her example is sati, widow-burning: British officials claimed to be saving women from their men, while Indian traditionalists claimed the widows chose to die, and in both stories the women’s own voices vanish. Her answer, that the subaltern cannot speak, means not that they are silent but that no structure exists to hear them, and that speaking for them can repeat the silencing.
Works
Shaped by
1930–2004Jacques DerridaShe translated Of Grammatology into English (1976).1891–1937Antonio GramsciShe took the term “subaltern” from Gramsci, via the Subaltern Studies historians.1818–1883Karl MarxGerman philosopher, economist and revolutionary in London exileArgued against
1926–1984Michel Foucault“Can the Subaltern Speak?” criticises a 1972 conversation between Foucault and Deleuze.1925–1995Gilles DeleuzeShe argued that Deleuze and Foucault let intellectuals speak for the oppressed while claiming not to.Meanwhile, in other traditions
1932–2025John SearleBerkeley philosopher of language and mind, author of the Chinese Roomborn 1937Thomas NagelNYU philosopher who asked what it is like to be a bat1938–2002Robert NozickHarvard libertarian who answered Rawls1942–2024Daniel DennettTufts philosopher who explained consciousness as the brain’s workborn 1946Peter SingerAustralian utilitarian of animal liberation and effective givingborn 1947Martha NussbaumChicago philosopher of the capabilities approach and the emotionsOn the record
Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is dated 1988.
The standard text appeared in 1988 in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (pp. 271–313). It is reported to have grown out of a 1983 talk, and Spivak revised it again in A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999).
Sources: Oxford University Press Learning Link, “Key Thinker: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak” · Wikipedia, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”