Can the Subaltern Speak?

Abstract

Gayatri Spivak’s essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” has influenced the ways feminists think of postcoloniality, state representation, and global capitalism. In asking the question, “Can the subaltern speak?” Spivak critiques French poststructuralist thought, notably Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, while also expanding the Marxist focus on workers’ struggle. In doing so, Spivak discusses how the silence of postcolonial women is maintained through structures of power embedded in the state, capitalism, and the academy. Rather than being heard, postcolonial women are articulated as the object of colonialism’s savior complex. Spivak writes about this set of relations and encounters as racialized, noting that colonialism structures thinking such that it can appear as if “White men are saving brown women from brown men.” Here, women’s imagined place is as objects and subjects of violence. Their own testimony is elided, rendering them incapable of speaking or being heard.