SpivakSpivak SaidSaid

Edward Said – born Edward Wadi SaïdGayatri Spivak –born Gayatri Chakravorty

13 - APRIL - 2009 - ENGLISH 531

Lulú De Panbehchi

Tú eres la otra Españala que huele a caña, tabaco y breaeres la perezosala de piel dorada, la marineraah ah ah marinera, ah ah ah marinera.

You are the other Spainthe one that smells like sugar cane, tobacco, and taryou’re the lazy onethe one with golden skin, the (female) sailor... Mocedades (1975) Google video

The Other (of) Europe = The Colonial SubjectThe Colonial Subject as Other

Power is knowledge and vice versa.

Edward Said Gayatri Spivak

demographics

1935-2003 b. Jerusalemd. New York. Palestine-American.

1942- b. Calcutta, India. Indian-American.

studies

BA (English?), summa cum laude (1957) from Princeton, Master of Arts (1960) and a Ph.D. (1964) from Harvard University

BA in English from the University of Calcutta (1959), first class honors. MA in English from Cornell University, Ph.D. From the University of Iowa.

most important

teaching jobs

University Professor at Columbia University (1992), president of the MLA.

University Professor at Columbia University (March 2007)

languages English, French, Arabic English, French, Bengali

Similarities/Differences

Edward Said Gayatri Spivak

activism

(independent member) Palestinian National Council. Supported the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

Women, indigenous people

influenced by

Foucault, Benjamin and other German philosophers, Derrida, Bernard Lewis. (Marx)

Derrida, Foucault, Paul De Man, Deleuze, the Subaltern Group from India, Marx

most important

work/ keywords

Orientalism (1978) / orientalism, the other, the other Europe

Subaltern (1988) / subaltern, strategic essentialism, erasure, counter-questions

starting points

[Colonialism theory] The Enlightenment means education, and education means power. Europe had the power over its colonies because Europe knew more about the colonies than the colonies themselves. “The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences.”

[Derrida, Said] The Other Europe. “Although the history of Europe as Subject is narrativized by the law, political economy, and ideology of the West, this concealed Subject pretends it has ‘no geo-political determinations.’”

Similarities/Differences 2

Edward Said Gayatri Spivak

almost definitions

“Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient—and this applies whether the person is an anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philologist—either in its specific or its general aspects, is an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism.”

“According to Foucault and Deleuze the oppressed... if given the chance..., and on the way to solidarity through alliance politics... can speak and know their conditions... can the subaltern speak?” “In subaltern studies, because of the violence of imperialist epistemic, social, and disciplinary inscription, a project understood in essentialist terms must traffic in a radical textual practice of differences.”

Similarities/Differences 3

Edward Said Gayatri Spivak

two decades later...

“I should say again that I have no “real” Orient to argue for.” “What I do argue also is a difference between knowledge of other peoples and other times that is the result of understanding, compassion, careful study and analysis for their own sakes, and on the other hand, knowledge... that is part of an overall campaign of self-affirmation, belligerency, and outright war.” (p. xviii-xix, Preface of 25th ed. of Orientalism.

She’s accused of ruining “subaltern studies” by the SS from India. “No one can say ‘I’m a subaltern’ in any language.” “The word subaltern and the idea of the popular do not inhabit a continuos space at all.” “The relationship between ‘subaltern’ and ‘popular’ is like the relationship between ‘class’ and “poverty,” or ‘race’ and ‘color.’”

Similarities/Differences 4

Edward Said Gayatri Spivak

in literature / methodology

“[B]eginnings have to be made for each project in such a way as to enable what follows from them.” Define the body of texts, the period, etc. Intertextuality. (p. 17) Orientalism (book)

Find counter-questions in a text. Example: “What subject-

effects were systematically effaced and trained to efface themselves so that a canonic

norm might emerge?” (“Scattered Speculations”

Similarities/Differences 5