Ethical Openness in the Work of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Jana Mcauliffe

doi:10.5206/fpq/2020.2.7574

Abstract

This paper explores the problem of racial privilege in US American feminist thought. Drawing on Gayatri Spivak’s analysis of ethics, particularly her ideas of epistemic discontinuity and teleopoietic reading, I argue that a specific kind of ethical openness can help feminist social-political philosophy better negotiate the legacy of white privilege. Spivak’s work calls for a reconsideration and reworking of the subject who theorizes. Her analysis of ethics suggests that racially privileged feminists must be able to confront their own complicity in order to engage in political critique less likely to recreate historical patterns of racial domination and exclusion.

Highlights

This paper explores the problem of racial privilege in US American feminist thought
I suggest that ethical openness and ethical connections are an integral aspect of feminist philosophy, and that the constitutive structure of privileged subjectivity is one way that predictable patterns of exclusion are recreated
The term “feminist thought” is admittedly broad and clunky; I use it here to refer to US American feminist work that is primarily political, academic, or both, if it has been represented in a text and so can constitute a discursive resource for contemporary feminist philosophy

Summary

Introduction

This paper explores the problem of racial privilege in US American feminist thought. Drawing on Gayatri Spivak’s analysis of ethics, her ideas of epistemic discontinuity and teleopoietic reading, I argue that a specific kind of ethical openness can help feminist social-political philosophy better negotiate the legacy of white privilege. By engaging Spivak’s work, I argue that a specific kind of ethical openness renders feminist political critique less vulnerable to recreating historical patterns of racist exclusion.

Results

Conclusion