Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

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                        Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born : 24 February 1942) is an Indian scholar , Literary theorist and feminist critic. She is a University professor at Columbia University and a founding member of the establishment's Institute for comparative literature and society .

                       Considered one of the most influential postcolonial intellectuals, Spivak is best known for her essay " Can the subaltern speak? " And for her translation of and introduction to Jacques Derrida's De la grammatologie .

                Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is the most important figure in postcolonial feminism, who examines the effect of political independence upon " subaltern" or subproletarian women in the third world . Spivak's subaltern studies reveal how female subjects are silenced by the dialogue between the male-dominated West and male-dominated East offering little hope for the subaltern woman's voice to rise up amidst the global social institutions that oppress her .

                    

♣️ Can The Subaltern speak ? 

              Can the subaltern speak ? (1988)  by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak relates to the manner in which western culture investigate other cultures . In this work Spivak introduce the question of gender and sexual difference . Spivak use the example of the Indian Sati practice of widow suicide , however the main significance of it is in its first part which presents the ethical problems of investigating a different culture base on "universal"  concepts and frameworks. Then it critically deals with an array of western writers starting from Marx to Faucault , Deleuze and Derrida . Subaltern according to Spivak is those who belong to the third world countries . It is impossible for them to speak up as they are divided by gender , region , religion and other narratives . These divisions do not allow them to stand up in unity . According to Spivak ,

" The Subaltern can not speak . There is no virtue in global laundry lists with ' woman' as a pious item . Representation has not withered away . The female intellectual as intellectual has a circumscribed task which the must not disown with a flourish."