cialismo y antiesencialismo a partir de la reconsideración de diferentes marcos teóricos con los ... more cialismo y antiesencialismo a partir de la reconsideración de diferentes marcos teóricos con los que trabajó a lo largo de su trayectoria intelectual, como los de la deconstrucción, el marxismo y los feminismos, además de considerar el lugar de la filoso a. De toda esta reflexión resulta muy relevante la revisión del concepto de esencialismo estratégico para pensar los movimientos sociales, dado que se aleja de planteamientos anteriores de la autora. Spivak sugiere entenderlo como una crítica constante al modo en que se es esencialista, señalando que este gesto permite guardar lo crítico, lo estratégico y lo necesario de una esencia minimizable. También, reafirma la importancia del posicionamiento en la autoría y de esbozar la propia biogra a, lo que la lleva a explayarse sobre lecciones aprendidas durante la niñez. Evalúa la enseñanza como una práctica en la que, en vez de abordar el debate teórico, es posible proponer la experiencia de la imposibilidad de las esencias. Por otro lado, analiza su propio lugar dentro del Grupo de Estudios Subalternos y la idea de "tercer mundo" en su sentido político más estricto. Hacia el final, examina el vínculo entre la perspectiva práctica de las esencias con respecto a lo empírico, y la relación entre la persona que investiga con su audiencia. Abstract | In this interview, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak revisits the debate between essentialism and anti-essentialism by reconsidering various theoretical frameworks she has engaged with over her intellectual journey. These frameworks include deconstruction, Marxism, and feminisms, alongside reflections on the role of philosophy. One key focus of her reflection is the concept of strategic essentialism in understanding social movements, diverging from her previous stances. Spivak suggests viewing it as an ongoing critique of essentialist approaches, emphasizing the importance of maintaining critical, strategic, and indispensable elements within a minimalizable essence. She also stresses the significance of authorial positioning and autobiographical narratives, drawing on childhood lessons. She explores teaching as a practice that can convey the impossibility of fixed essences rather than engaging in theoretical debates. She examines
This book has been a long time in the making, and I owe debts of every order to the many people w... more This book has been a long time in the making, and I owe debts of every order to the many people who helped make it possible. To begin at the beginning, Wesleyan University's English De partment and its Center for the Humanities provided me with an environment both tolerant and stimulating and introduced me to the pleasures of theory. Karen Boklund first showed me the possibilities of a marxist semiotics; James Kavanagh pointed me in the direction of Althusser; Hayden White gave me the benefit of his liberating irony and read my first effort to assess Marx's suspicions about the rhetoric of persuasion; I remain grateful to each of them. I have since been most fortunate in all my readers. I particularly thank Stanley Fish, who read the manuscript in its earliest form and projected a future for it, which is the first, best gift of any reader, and Neil Hertz, who gave me the benefit of his scrupulous critical attention, shared his questions, and, on a few points, extended me the benefit of his doubts as well.
The greatest difficulties, theoretical or otherwise, which are obstacles to an easy reading of Ca... more The greatest difficulties, theoretical or otherwise, which are obstacles to an easy reading of Capital Volume One are unfortunately (or fortunately) concentrated at the very beginning of Volume One, to be precise, in its first Part, which deals with "Commodities and Money." I therefore give the following advice: put THE WHOLE PART ONE ASIDE FOR THE TIME BEING amd BEGIN YOUR READING WITH PART TWO: "The Transformation of Money into Capital." In my opinion it is impossible to begin (even to begin) to understand Part I until you have read and re-read the whole of Volume One, starting with Part II. This advice is more than advice: it is a recommendation that, notwithstanding all the respect I owe my readers, I am prepared to present as an imperative. Everyone can try it out in practice for himself. If you begin Volume One at the beginning, ie. with Part I, either you do not understand it, and give up; or you think you understand it, but that is even more serious, for there is every chance that you will have understood something quite different from what was there to be understood. -ALTHUSSER, Preface to Capital, Volume One. You cannot just write the truth; you have to write it for somebody and to somebody; somebody who can do something with it. -BRECHT, "Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties" The "baffling figure" who both grounds and troubles de Man's rhetoric of general persuasion reappears in a most un-' '
Yet, with the critical cat now so far out of [the] bag that one can no longer ignore its existenc... more Yet, with the critical cat now so far out of [the] bag that one can no longer ignore its existence, those who refuse the crime of theoretical ruthlessness can no longer hope to gain a good conscience. Neither, of course, can the terrorists-but then, they never laid claim to it in the first place. -PAUL DE MAN, "The Return to Philology"*
PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 2008
scholars alive to the nuanced complexities of african languages and scholars better prepared to g... more scholars alive to the nuanced complexities of african languages and scholars better prepared to generate theories as yet unformed that come out of the literarylanguage interface with the rest of culture. This mode of language acqui sition and literary study is ambitious, career building, and, most of all, collaborative. It pro vides a terrain on which people with different knowledge formations come together to work ambitiously as well as collectively. That’s the utopian side of my exploration. area studies must indeed be in dialogue with postcolonial studies. In this respect, spivak the orizes what most of us in african literature have practiced, those of us who had or have institu tional connections to area studies, in the form of black studies, wherein we might help move american african studies out of the parochial or the national into the global.
This book has been a long time in the making, and I owe debts of every order to the many people w... more This book has been a long time in the making, and I owe debts of every order to the many people who helped make it possible. To begin at the beginning, Wesleyan University's English De partment and its Center for the Humanities provided me with an environment both tolerant and stimulating and introduced me to the pleasures of theory. Karen Boklund first showed me the possibilities of a marxist semiotics; James Kavanagh pointed me in the direction of Althusser; Hayden White gave me the benefit of his liberating irony and read my first effort to assess Marx's suspicions about the rhetoric of persuasion; I remain grateful to each of them. I have since been most fortunate in all my readers. I particularly thank Stanley Fish, who read the manuscript in its earliest form and projected a future for it, which is the first, best gift of any reader, and Neil Hertz, who gave me the benefit of his scrupulous critical attention, shared his questions, and, on a few points, extended me the benefit of his doubts as well.
cialismo y antiesencialismo a partir de la reconsideración de diferentes marcos teóricos con los ... more cialismo y antiesencialismo a partir de la reconsideración de diferentes marcos teóricos con los que trabajó a lo largo de su trayectoria intelectual, como los de la deconstrucción, el marxismo y los feminismos, además de considerar el lugar de la filoso a. De toda esta reflexión resulta muy relevante la revisión del concepto de esencialismo estratégico para pensar los movimientos sociales, dado que se aleja de planteamientos anteriores de la autora. Spivak sugiere entenderlo como una crítica constante al modo en que se es esencialista, señalando que este gesto permite guardar lo crítico, lo estratégico y lo necesario de una esencia minimizable. También, reafirma la importancia del posicionamiento en la autoría y de esbozar la propia biogra a, lo que la lleva a explayarse sobre lecciones aprendidas durante la niñez. Evalúa la enseñanza como una práctica en la que, en vez de abordar el debate teórico, es posible proponer la experiencia de la imposibilidad de las esencias. Por otro lado, analiza su propio lugar dentro del Grupo de Estudios Subalternos y la idea de "tercer mundo" en su sentido político más estricto. Hacia el final, examina el vínculo entre la perspectiva práctica de las esencias con respecto a lo empírico, y la relación entre la persona que investiga con su audiencia. Abstract | In this interview, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak revisits the debate between essentialism and anti-essentialism by reconsidering various theoretical frameworks she has engaged with over her intellectual journey. These frameworks include deconstruction, Marxism, and feminisms, alongside reflections on the role of philosophy. One key focus of her reflection is the concept of strategic essentialism in understanding social movements, diverging from her previous stances. Spivak suggests viewing it as an ongoing critique of essentialist approaches, emphasizing the importance of maintaining critical, strategic, and indispensable elements within a minimalizable essence. She also stresses the significance of authorial positioning and autobiographical narratives, drawing on childhood lessons. She explores teaching as a practice that can convey the impossibility of fixed essences rather than engaging in theoretical debates. She examines
This book has been a long time in the making, and I owe debts of every order to the many people w... more This book has been a long time in the making, and I owe debts of every order to the many people who helped make it possible. To begin at the beginning, Wesleyan University's English De partment and its Center for the Humanities provided me with an environment both tolerant and stimulating and introduced me to the pleasures of theory. Karen Boklund first showed me the possibilities of a marxist semiotics; James Kavanagh pointed me in the direction of Althusser; Hayden White gave me the benefit of his liberating irony and read my first effort to assess Marx's suspicions about the rhetoric of persuasion; I remain grateful to each of them. I have since been most fortunate in all my readers. I particularly thank Stanley Fish, who read the manuscript in its earliest form and projected a future for it, which is the first, best gift of any reader, and Neil Hertz, who gave me the benefit of his scrupulous critical attention, shared his questions, and, on a few points, extended me the benefit of his doubts as well.
The greatest difficulties, theoretical or otherwise, which are obstacles to an easy reading of Ca... more The greatest difficulties, theoretical or otherwise, which are obstacles to an easy reading of Capital Volume One are unfortunately (or fortunately) concentrated at the very beginning of Volume One, to be precise, in its first Part, which deals with "Commodities and Money." I therefore give the following advice: put THE WHOLE PART ONE ASIDE FOR THE TIME BEING amd BEGIN YOUR READING WITH PART TWO: "The Transformation of Money into Capital." In my opinion it is impossible to begin (even to begin) to understand Part I until you have read and re-read the whole of Volume One, starting with Part II. This advice is more than advice: it is a recommendation that, notwithstanding all the respect I owe my readers, I am prepared to present as an imperative. Everyone can try it out in practice for himself. If you begin Volume One at the beginning, ie. with Part I, either you do not understand it, and give up; or you think you understand it, but that is even more serious, for there is every chance that you will have understood something quite different from what was there to be understood. -ALTHUSSER, Preface to Capital, Volume One. You cannot just write the truth; you have to write it for somebody and to somebody; somebody who can do something with it. -BRECHT, "Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties" The "baffling figure" who both grounds and troubles de Man's rhetoric of general persuasion reappears in a most un-' '
Yet, with the critical cat now so far out of [the] bag that one can no longer ignore its existenc... more Yet, with the critical cat now so far out of [the] bag that one can no longer ignore its existence, those who refuse the crime of theoretical ruthlessness can no longer hope to gain a good conscience. Neither, of course, can the terrorists-but then, they never laid claim to it in the first place. -PAUL DE MAN, "The Return to Philology"*
PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 2008
scholars alive to the nuanced complexities of african languages and scholars better prepared to g... more scholars alive to the nuanced complexities of african languages and scholars better prepared to generate theories as yet unformed that come out of the literarylanguage interface with the rest of culture. This mode of language acqui sition and literary study is ambitious, career building, and, most of all, collaborative. It pro vides a terrain on which people with different knowledge formations come together to work ambitiously as well as collectively. That’s the utopian side of my exploration. area studies must indeed be in dialogue with postcolonial studies. In this respect, spivak the orizes what most of us in african literature have practiced, those of us who had or have institu tional connections to area studies, in the form of black studies, wherein we might help move american african studies out of the parochial or the national into the global.
This book has been a long time in the making, and I owe debts of every order to the many people w... more This book has been a long time in the making, and I owe debts of every order to the many people who helped make it possible. To begin at the beginning, Wesleyan University's English De partment and its Center for the Humanities provided me with an environment both tolerant and stimulating and introduced me to the pleasures of theory. Karen Boklund first showed me the possibilities of a marxist semiotics; James Kavanagh pointed me in the direction of Althusser; Hayden White gave me the benefit of his liberating irony and read my first effort to assess Marx's suspicions about the rhetoric of persuasion; I remain grateful to each of them. I have since been most fortunate in all my readers. I particularly thank Stanley Fish, who read the manuscript in its earliest form and projected a future for it, which is the first, best gift of any reader, and Neil Hertz, who gave me the benefit of his scrupulous critical attention, shared his questions, and, on a few points, extended me the benefit of his doubts as well.
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