Subaltern Speak Research Articles

Can a Chinese Subaltern Speak? A Study on Writings About Female Aging in China

Can a Chinese Subaltern Speak? A Study on Writings About Female Aging in China

Can the subaltern speak? Contradictions in trophy hunting and wildlife conservation trajectory in Botswana

Botswana re-introduced trophy hunting in 2019. This generated a debate about the relevance of trophy hunting in achieving wildlife conservation and human well-being among wildlife stakeholders. The stakeholders include the Government of Botswana, local agro-pastoralists, photographic and trophy hunting tourism operators and anti-hunting groups. Stakeholders differ in opinion on the acceptability of trophy hunting as a socio-economic development and conservation tool. This paper, therefore, adopts the socio-ecological framework and uses Spivak’s rhetoric question: “Can the Subaltern Speak”, to analyse contradictions of trophy hunting, human well-being and wildlife conservation trajectory in Botswana. The study is qualitative and makes use of interviews and secondary data sources. The results indicate that the Government of Botswana and communities (agro-pastoralists) especially those residing in wildlife areas prefer both trophy hunting and photographic tourism as a strategy to derive tourism benefits and achieve wildlife conservation. Conversely, animal rights groups reject trophy hunting noting its failure to promote wildlife conservation. The paper concludes that the socio-ecological framework is the ideal guide for wildlife conservation and human well-being in wildlife areas. Both photographic tourism and trophy hunting are sustainable land use options with the potential to achieve wildlife conservation and human well-being in Botswana.

On Impossibility

Abstract Should critical traditions value transparency, surface effects, and a realist attitude? Does the frame of realism help us recognize, narrate, and understand histories marked by erasure? This article analyzes Denise Riley’s 1988 book “Am I That Name?” alongside Gayatri Spivak’s essay of the same year, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” and argues that a stubbornly realist gaze remains blind to the enduring questions of feminist and postcolonial thought.

Editorial Commentary

Editorial Commentary

20th Century Western Visayan Millenarian Representations: The Case of “Emperor” Flor Intrencherado in the Local Press, 1925-1929

20th Century Western Visayan Millenarian Representations: The Case of “Emperor” Flor Intrencherado in the Local Press, 1925-1929

Representation of The Other in Ghanaian Literary Texts: A Reading of Some Selected Works

Ghanaian literary texts have been greatly influenced by post-colonial theory which tends to depict and (expose) the inaccuracy of the duality embedded in western imperialism manifested in the concepts of the self and the other. With post-colonial theory as background and specifically the theoretical formulations from Said’s Orientalism (1978), Bhabha’s The location of Culture (1994), and Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (2001), this paper examines how Ghanaian written literature re-inscribes the concept of the Other with intent of justifying the existence of the advantageous self which apparently denigrates the other. Using textual analysis of some representative texts, I argue that Ghanaian literary artists portray the concepts of the self and the other with different connotations and permutations which reflect the ideals of the society within the geo-political space of world Literatures.

When the Subaltern Speaks: Race and Gender in Selected Works by ZadieSmith and LeilaAboulela

When the Subaltern Speaks: Race and Gender in Selected Works by ZadieSmith and LeilaAboulela

ENDURANCE OF THE SUBALTERN: A STUDY OF A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS BY KHALID HOSSEINI

Purpose of the study: The present research aims to explore the oppressed and marginalized Afghan women who are made subaltern socially and religiously. It further reveals the ability of women to endure the violence and to create the vision of women empowerment through their suppressed bodies.
 Methodology: The primary data of research relies upon the text of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini (2007). Further, it has also been collected from secondary sources like articles and reviews mentioned in the reference list. The selected text is analyzed under the theoretical framework of the theory of subaltern by Spivak (1988), utilizing the content analysis.
 Main findings: The study dismantles the struggles of marginalized women for their survival and to free them from the suffocating chains of repression and violence. Nana, Mariam, and Laila being the subaltern know the word ‘Endurance’ while living in dilapidated social conditions. They show the degree of resistance and then also unite to stand against societal prominence. Mariam- the harami, sacrifices her life for Laila and Laila becomes the voice of her coming generation who can challenge the subaltern attitude and will speak loudly.
 Application of this study: Utilizing the theory of subaltern by Spivak, this research answers the question “Can the subaltern speak?” as ‘Yes’. It brings a message if the subaltern group combines and stands against the unjust norms, they will no more remain a subaltern and will be applicable for academicians and researchers as well.
 Novelty/Originality of this study: The study is distinctive because it explores the literature that portrays the stories of almost every home and corner of the world. Despite passing phases of woman's rights, the female gender is still being suppressed. It also unveils how gender inequality, poor and gender-biased educational systems, the justice system, and constrained or child marriages are being practised.

Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question

Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question

Can the Women Speak?: A Symptomatic Reading of the Women’s Silence in the Markan Ending

Abstract Two prevalent interpretations of the women’s silence in the Markan ending—the silence as failure and as a religious response—share the assumption that the silence is the subjective action of the women. However, such interpretations fail to see the way in which the Markan women characters are constructed in the narrative, which is already colored by an androcentric and patriarchal lens. In this paper, I propose a symptomatic reading of the silence with a question “Can the women in Mark speak?” which is inspired by Spivak’s article “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1999). An analysis of women’s speech in Mark shows how their voices are silenced in/by narrative. The women’s silence symptomatically appears from the Markan contradiction. On the one hand, Mark portrays the women positively on the surface; but soon after, Mark unconsciously dismisses the women from the narrative because of internalized androcentrism on the other.

‘Can the subaltern speak?’: COVID-19 and decolonial pedagogy in Palestinian universities

ABSTRACT The online mode of education has created a space for a decolonial pedagogy that allows student liberation from in-class education which perpetuates students’ passivity. Drawing on Freire’s concepts of banking education, dialogue and democracy, Said’s various works and concepts, including ‘margins’ and ‘centres’, and students’ testimonies concerning online and in-class modes of education, we contend that online education shatters the hegemony of instructors over the process of education. While students air their proclivity for emancipation from the hegemonic intricacy of the traditional classroom, instructors also highlight the importance of dialogue, research and enriching discussions that subvert the teacher-student hierarchy. While some instructors used to follow research and dialogue in class, they encountered challenges in introducing topics related to sexuality, politics and religion. However, these issues have shored up during online education as the emphasis on the part of instructors and students has been on constructing arguments rather than memorising materials. Thus, the online education we have been forced to adopt is a call for a paradigm shift in the sense that the traditional mode of education perpetuates students’ passivity and suppression of their voices in ways that resonate with the suppression of Palestinian voices by the Israeli-settler colonialism.

Unveiling Women Marginalization in Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif

The present study pursues the primaeval customs of patriarchy and its tormenting effects happening in the lives of women in Pakistan. The purpose of this research is to explore how patriarchal traditions, class differences, and their triple marginalization in the novel played chaos in the lives of females. Though the existing status of women is traditionally much better than that of women in the West but still they are not empowered and are deprived of basic rights. GC Spivak provides the theoretical foundations for this research through her theory, can the subaltern speak (1988). This research is based on qualitative textual analysis. The present study explores the status of women in Pakistan through the characterization of various female characters in the novel. This study concludes that they are portrayed as compliant and deserted beings deprived of every kind of individualism.

Deconstruction and Epistemic Violence

AbstractWhile theorists of epistemic injustice often refer to Gayatri Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak” as an early articulation of the field’s concerns, they have stopped short of engaging deeply with Spivak’s deconstructive take on epistemic violence and her suggestion that this consists in an attribution of subjectivity to historically marginalized speakers. In redressing this oversight, this article makes a case for adopting a broader conception of epistemic harm and exclusion than has been acknowledged in the literature: I argue that the presumption that speakers are subjects can precipitate silencing. For in determining the other who speaks as a subject, one forecloses hospitality to an alterity not already understood according to the subject/object distinction central to Western metaphysics. This deconstructive intervention thus challenges one of the field’s key assumptions, namely, that epistemic harm consists in a failure to treat speakers as subjects, and consequently that generating a more inclusive dialogical climate depends on restoring marginalized individuals to subject status. Folding Spivak’s deconstructive insight into the remedial project of epistemic justice is therefore far from straightforward; nonetheless, I argue that it is consistent with the literature’s demand for a heightened sensitivity vis‐à‐vis the ways marginalized others are routinely harmed in epistemic practices.

When the subaltern speaks: solo narrative performance in Heather Raffo’s Nine Parts of Desire and Issam El-Yousfi’s Tears with Alcohol

Drawing on the critical framework of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s article “Can the Subaltern Speak?” and her book A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, this essay investigates the representation of Iraqi and Moroccan women in Heather Raffo’s Nine Parts of Desire and Issam El-Yousfi’s Tears with Alcohol. This investigation serves as a cultural comparative study by decoding the tropes, traces, and marginalizations to probe the protagonists’ subjectivities. It also aims to find the ways in which Iraqi and Moroccan women are subalterns. Furthermore, this essay attempts to find answers to these overriding questions: how does the solo narrative performance become a tool that breaks the silence of the subaltern? How does it pave the way for the rise of post-dramatic theatre? How do the boundaries dissolve between the dramatic and the post-dramatic theatre in the plays? How does the protagonists’ solo narrative performance bear a great resemblance to Scheherazade’s? How do costumes, role-reversal, and movement sequences of dancers free the protagonists from the shackles of patriarchy? This study provides insights into the female subalterns’ reactions to infidelity, religious fanaticism, and corruption.

Postcolonial and/or (De)colonial in France and the French Caribbean, Heuristic and Political Aims: Can the Subaltern Speak?

La « colonialité », née du colonialisme, de ses discours stéréotypés et de ses refus de considérer comme citoyen, humain jouissant de ses droits, toute personne étrangère à l’Europe, est pourtant apparue en même temps que la civilité et les lumières. Cette contradiction profonde a nourri la modernité ; et la colonialité demeure manifeste aujourd’hui. Malgré le développement du postcolonial et du décolonial qui repensent les rapports de l’Europe au monde antérieurement colonisé, la colonialité continue de corrompre dans les représentations populaires comme institutionnelles l’image de ceux qui ne sont pas de d’origine et de culture européennes. Par ailleurs, du fait même des ambigüités et des incohérences qui altèrent le fonctionnement de sociétés qui ont du mal à s’accepter comme multiculturelles, des affrontements intellectuels et théoriques s’installent dans les transferts de savoir, notamment sur les questions d’identité et d’héritage colonial. C’est ainsi que dans la sphère universitaire le postcolonial et le décolonial se heurtent. Il est donc intéressant aujourd’hui dans une réflexion sur le postcolonial et le décolonial de se poser les questions réelles sur les conceptions et réceptions de ces deux théories. Il est aussi crucial de se poser la question des visées heuristiques et politiques du postcolonial et du décolonial surtout lorsqu’il s’agit du rapport de la France avec ses anciennes colonies. Ce débat soulève également celui de la censure épistémologique ; et la question de Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, grande figure des postcolonial studies, Can the subaltern speak, prend ici une autre dimension, celle de la validité de la voix du chercheur venant d’une sphère autrefois ou encore coloniale et toujours considérée comme figée dans une colonialité.

Subaltern Aurality: Listening to Algerian Women’s Voices in Assia Djebar’s Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade

In her influential postcolonial text, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak critiques the tendency of some continental theory texts to disavow the voice of the (post-) colon...

Impostors: Literary Hoaxes and Cultural Authenticity

Impostors: Literary Hoaxes and Cultural Authenticity

Working the hyphens in contemporary China: reconsidering researcher-participant relationship in an authoritarian state

This article explores the methodological and ethical challenges of doing qualitative fieldwork in an authoritarian state. Drawing on a long-term project conducted in China, I discuss how my interaction with the participants was mediated by the pervasive state power. This phenomenon adds a new layer to the question “can the subaltern speak,” and calls for a refined understanding of the researcher-participant relationship. Borrowing insights from recent anthropological studies on the state and Abrams’s state effect theory, I propose to move away from a static, western centric, and territory-based conceptualization of the state, and treat it as a culturally and historically specific structuration, in which researchers and participants are engaged. In this way, researchers can intentionally work against the normalizing state power yet still work with their participants. This approach leads to a more deliberate understanding of the methodological and ethical responsibilities of researchers in the process of structuration.

Of Jane and Manche: Bodies and virginity as agency for narrative discourse

Spivak’s rhetorical question ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ finds true expression in the story of Jane Furse and similarly Manche Masemola dying at the same age as Jane. Two marginal girls are the subject of my discussion, namely Jane Furse and Manche Masemola. The two girls’ bodies are employed as agencies to (re)create a religious narrative of proselytising. Both girls do not speak in their voices, but through other bodies who reconstruct the narrative to achieve particular goals. The virgin body is essential to elevate the narrative to a myth. I will argue that the two girls’ virginal condition was necessary to construct a discourse that would shape Anglican historiography in the Northern Transvaal. Also, I argue that their marginal condition, subjects them to competing for hermeneutics: firstly, the power of virginity; secondly, the role of the young body to preserve sanctity and transmogrification; and lastly, to begin a debate on the role of young people, especially girls to construct alternative history. I invoke the question of subalternity whether these young people had the power to speak for themselves or they merely become agencies of discourse. I begin my discussion with the Anglican Church’s narrative of Jane and then proceed to the story of Manche Masemola to explain how her marginal body was a fit instrument of creating martyrdom and urgency. This discussion is a product of critical inquiry into an oral historical narratives that continues to shape feminine discourse in respect of power, race and inter-subjectivity.

Students’ Critical Commentaries: Unfettered Voices

Changes to educational practices have been proposed, with some being adopted globally, on a continuous basis. However, student opinions have seldom been invited into discussions. This article was written following an invitation from the Dialogic Pedagogy Journal “to write a critical response to” Eugene Matusov’s editorial “A student’s right to freedom of education”. The inclusion of student voices in educational forums is integral for a more complete understanding of the position of all participants and, whether one considers students to be representative of one of Gramsci’s subaltern classes, students as an active group have historically been denied “the basic rights of participation” (El, H., 2012), with their absence from educational discussions having become the status quo. The following article introduces the critical commentaries from seven students who were members of a university level Discussion and Debate class in Seoul, South Korea. Their views were shaped from their previous schooling experiences and their hopes for positive changes. The students’ commentaries are responded to by Eugene Matusov. It is the hope of this author that this classroom process may act as one potential model for further educators to invite student voices into academic discourse. In the spirit of Gayatri Spivak’s 1998 essay (Spivak and Riach, 2012), it is time to let the subaltern speak.