Session 10- Of Convoluted Sentences and Loopy Arguments

To pick what to speak of in Spivak's article is tough- mainly because there isn't really one argument or view that she's really proposing. For the first half of the essay at least, she poses the question "Can the Subaltern Speak" at several points, and then moves on to discuss a different point- not really attempting to answer the question. Not only could she have made the points in simpler ways, it was often not clear what her exact argument was. (Sentences like: "At a certain point in time, tat tva was interpreted as "that you," but even without that, tatva is thatness or quiddity") 

But her style aside, there were a few recurring questions and themes she talks about. 

In the beginning, she hints at the futility of "self-reflexivity", stating that one can never really remove or distance themselves easily from the text or work they are trying to produce. She speaks of the ideological inclinations in the works that are produced, even by authors who critique power and its role in discourse.

Her problem with Foccoult and Deleuze is on a similar bases. She argues that they do not acknowledge their own positions and power in what they produce. SHe states that they do not recognize how they too group together and homogenize the people they are trying to give subjectivity to ( "the workers" for instance)

One argument that did make sense was the one that discussed the essentialist aspects in some of the works of the Subaltern collective. This related to our critique of Guha and his statement in "Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency" which stated the false consciousness of the peasants, and how their interests must necessarily be the ones he had  laid out. In giving the subaltern a "consciousness" which it may or may not have had is an element of romanticization that the Subaltern collective claims to be arguing against.

She also problematizes the concept of representation. Representation as "speaking for" is different from "re-presenting" according to Spivak. From what I understood, this discussion was to complicate the idea of a historian speaking for, or writing histories of someone whose voice does not exist in historical archives.

What remains a confusion still is the concept of Subject as Self and the Other, and the entire question of desirability and interests which features in this discussion of the Subject. I don't really understand the point she is trying to make about its creation, or how that relates to the Subaltern.  

Spivak states that the Subaltern cannot speak- implying a certain fruitlessness to the project: for if every written piece is necessarily influenced by one's ideological positions, and self-reflexivity is limited- how does one write histories of those who have been left out?  This has been discussed a lot in the past classes, so I will not repeat the arguments. It is important to state that she does not really provide a solution. The closest to one is her discussion of "silences" and how they can be utilized. Unlike Trouillot, she is not speaking of silences in terms of what they can add to our understanding of power dynamics (at least not so far as I understood). She argues for making silence into a methodology, to "quantify" them. How this is to happen is unclear.