This presentation focuses on the ethical dilemmas of representing the ‘disenfranchised’, or the ‘subaltern’ from the other side of Europe. In doing this, it locates Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s work within certain major themes of feminism, such as ‘body’, ‘representation’ and ‘subjectivity’. Spivak’s self-description as a ‘feminist, Marxist, deconstructivist’ expresses the difficult location of her engagements. Peeling through these three formidable sites, Marxism, feminism, and deconstruction, all of which stage a tension between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’, Spivak is able to think of an ethical feminism which is both attentive to the ‘agency’ of the woman, and to the need to critique any essentialised idea of the subject. This presentation takes the case of ‘sati’ or ‘widow immolation’, legally abolished in colonial India in 1829, and the focus of Spivak’s major text ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ as a point of departure to argue its case. 

Postdoc Sourav Kargupta, School of Culture and Society, AU