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Who’s the voice of the voiceless?

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Can the Subaltern Speak?

by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak 

Published by, Bill Ashcroft et al. 

Post-Colonial Studies Reader, Routledge, London and New York, (1995)

ISBN 0-203-73130-1 

By Eunice Masunungure

IN attempting to represent the people of low strata, Western discourse employs stereotypes that undermine, dehumanise and misrepresent all people non-Western, commonly referred to as the other, to the extent that Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak asks the crucial question: “Can the subaltern speak?”

Antonio Gramsci defines the subaltern as the colonial populations socially, politically and geographically outside the hierarchy of power — the West, that has been asserting itself globally as the leading and dominant force in all affairs. 

However, ‘to talk on behalf of’ someone obliterates the customs and traditions of the one represented. 

It also reduces the other’s traditions and customs.

History must be told from the perspective of the insider, Spivak argues.

Whenever, as things stand, the subaltern represents self, he or she does so from the fringes of Western society. 

“But self-definition makes a difference thus even from the outskirts, where she inhabits not by choice, she ought to create her own centre,” writes Spivak.

Of course, the question is: “Can the Subaltern Speak.”

Is she capable of revealing her aspirations or she has accepted being spoken for? 

Speaking for someone violates that person’s epistemologies by creating a supplementary text which is parallel to the person’s experiences.

Spivak goes on to ask whether these misrepresented people of low strata are capable of telling their stories? 

Colonial and subtle imperial narratives carefully “…obliterate the textual ingredients with which such a subject…” could be told because for them, sovereignty of the other is not important. 

To be narrated by someone who feels superior is to be concealed, Spivak says.

It is to lose an opportunity to tell one’s experiences of colonisation and it is muting.

The Western narratives create the ‘other’ who is devoid of originality.

Are the people of the fringes mute or those who attempt to speak for them mute them? 

Is there a possibility of self-definition for the people of low strata: “Can the subaltern speak?”

Since Western narratives fail to capture the experiences of the oppressed or speak about the critical issues pertaining to the livelihood of the lower class, the subaltern must make effort to speak.

Western viewpoints about Africans, for instance, only tell one side of the story, so they never capture what it is to be African.

For the Western intellectual, representing the subaltern as a complex being helps to glorify the self, writes Spivak.

The writer decries the misrepresentations in Western narratives which speak as the superior retelling the stories of the inferior:

“This is not to describe ‘the way things really were’ or to privilege the narrative of history as imperialism as the best version of history. It is, rather, to offer an account of how an explanation and narrative of reality was established as the normative one… Let us now move to consider the margins (one can just as well say the silent, silenced centre) of the circuit marked out by this epistemic violence, men and women among the illiterate peasantry, the tribals, the lowest strata of the urban sub proletariat.”

Spivak laments that the one-sided development of the subaltern is complicated by the imperialist project which has never ended but continue to today.

The question is: Can the ‘Third World’ people narrate their own stories?

Can the ‘colonised’ subaltern express their heterogeneity in the face of one-sided stories.

It is crucial to capture that not being white is also sophisticated.

It is crucial to note that our history matters. 

In subaltern studies, because of the violence of imperialist epistemic, social and disciplinary inscription, the subaltern is faced with the task of rewriting its own conditions.

Spivak asks about the possibility of correctly expressing what the other feels:

“How can we touch the consciousness of the people, even as we investigate their politics? With what voice-consciousness: “Can the subaltern speak?” 

Their project, after all, is to write the other but the other must speak itself into existence.

In this era where ideological imperialism is disseminated, the notion of cultural difference is often narrowly and erroneously construed. 

Spivak concludes that the protagonists in these texts are not only conscious of their oppressed condition but often adopt strategic agency to contest privileges that silence them.

Although Spivak bases her argument on the relations of power in a tribe in India, her rhetorical question: “Can the Subaltern Speak?” ought to be pondered on and be actively listened to in conjunction with voicing against imperialist misrepresentations.

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