Gayatri Spivak in Our Conversation: Can the Subaltern Speak? || Azfar Hussain

A graduate student of English tries to read Gayatri Spivak’s by-now-famous essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’

One day that student approaches me and says, ‘I’ve read Spivak’s essay thrice. Fucking hard! I simply can’t figure out what Spivak is up to. Weird syntax, allusions to Foucault-Deleuze-Derrida, unpredictable leaps from ideas to ideas, all kinds of technical terms like ‘subject-effects’ and ‘epistemic violence’, convoluted arguments!’ The student thus goes on and on. And I cannot come up with any helpful suggestions, really, although I end up saying half-heartedly, ‘Maybe, read the essay again? Then see what happens.’

Of course, Spivak is notoriously inaccessible and incomprehensible or even simply unreadable to many. But Spivak’s own arguments have already been circulated: that style itself is political; that her own style challenges our conventional habits of reading and writing; that her style resists the Western politics of accessibility and easy appropriation. Oh well, that’s Spivak — one who resists, as she says, conceptual and linguistic spoon-feeding.

The student disappears. But I see him at a restaurant after a couple of months, and I ask, ‘Are you still battling with Spivakese?’ He answers, ‘The battle is over. I think I’ve thoroughly understood Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?”’

‘Really?’ I ask. ‘Oh yes,’ asserts the student with utmost enthusiasm, with a sparkle in his eyes.The student continues, ‘I can give you even a summary of that essay in a single sentence, trust me!’

‘Summary in a single sentence? Wow!’ Thus I respond.

‘Okay, then,’ says the student, ‘here is my summary: No, the subaltern cannot speak, simply because Spivak keeps speaking all the time.’