Gayatri Spivak Article Index for
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Gayatri Spivak
  CATEGORIES ABOUT GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK
   
1942 births
   
spivak, gayatri chakravorty
   
bengali writers
   
columbia university faculty
   
spivak, gayarti chakravorty
   
cornell university alumni
   
deconstruction
   
feminism
   
indian women writers
   
indian american writers
   
living people
   
postmodern theory
   
poststructuralism
   
university of calcutta alumni
   
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Spivak was born Gayatri Chakravorty, in Calcutta , West Bengal, 24 February 1942 , to a middle class family. She received an undergraduate degree in English at the University Of Calcutta (1959), graduating with first class honours. After this, she completed her Master's in English from Cornell University and then pursued her Ph.D. while teaching at University Of Iowa . Her dissertation was on W.B. Yeats , directed by Paul De Man , titled ''Myself Must I Remake: The Life and Poetry of W.B. Yeats''.

It was her subsequent translation of Derrida's ''Of Grammatology'' which brought her to prominence, after which she carried out a series of historical studies (as a member of the "Subaltern Studies Collective") and literary critiques of imperialism and international feminism. She has often referred to herself as a "Marxist-feminist-deconstructionist", seeing each of these fields as necessary but insufficient by themselves, yet productive together. Her overriding ethico-political concern has been the tendency of institutional and cultural discourses/practices to exclude and marginalize the subaltern, especially subaltern women.

Her recent work, ''A Critique of Postcolonial Reason'', published in 1999 , explores how major works of European Metaphysics (e.g., Kant, Hegel) not only tend to exclude the Subaltern from their discussions, but actively prevent non-Europeans from occupying positions as fully human subjects.

Spivak coined the term " Strategic Essentialism ", which refers to a sort of temporary solidarity for the purpose of social action. For example, the attitude that women's groups have many different agendas makes it difficult for feminists to work for common causes. "Strategic essentialism" is about the need to temporarily accept an "essentialist" position in order to be able to act.


BOOKS


  • ''Myself, I Must Remake: The Life and Poetry of W.B. Yeats'' ( 1974 ).

  • ''In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics'' ( 1987 ).

  • ''The Post-Colonial Critic'' ( 1990 )

  • ''Outside in the Teaching Machine'' ( 1993 ).

  • ''The Spivak Reader'' ( 1995 ).

  • ''A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present'' ( 1999 ).

  • ''Death of a Discipline'' ( 2005 ).

  • ''Other Asias'' ( 2006 ).

  • ''Of Grammatology (translation with critical introduction of Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie'' (1976).

  • ''Selected Subaltern Studies'' (ed., 1988).

  • ''Thinking Academic Freedom in Gendered Post-Coloniality'' (1993).

    • Imaginary Maps (translation with critical introduction of three stories by Mahasweta Devi, 1994),

Breast Stories (translation with critical introduction of three stories by Mahasweta Devi, 1997),
Old Women (translation with critical introduction of two stories by Mahasweta Devi, 1999),
Imperatives to Re-Imagine the Planet / Imperative zur Neuerfindung des Planeten (ed. Willi Goetschel, 1999),
Song for Kali: A Cycle (translation with introduction of Ramproshad Sen, 2000),
Chotti Munda and His Arrow (translation with critical introduction of a novel by Mahasweta Devi, 2002),
Red Thread (forthcoming).


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