ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK This collection offers a broad range of Spivak’s recent essays, lectures, and other writings that speak to her groundbreaking work in feminism, deconstruction, Marxism, and subaltern studies.
The pieces collected in Spivak Moving touch on a variety of topics, including her crucial thinking on pan-Africanism and W. E. B. DuBois, reproductive heteronormativity, art and film, class apartheid in education, practices of institutional critique, and the training of imaginative activism through a sustained engagement with the humanities. She moves from a look at the unsystematized first languages of continental Africa into a broader consideration of human rights, international civil society practice, the question of terror, the “freedom” of the academic, and the place of the digital. About half the essays are collected here for the first time and are not found in Spivak’s several published essay collections.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is university professor in the humanities at Columbia University and the author of many books, including Nationalism and the Imagination, also published by Seagull Books. Mrinalini Chakravorty is on faculty in English at the University of Virginia. Surya Parekh is assistant professor in the Department of English at Binghamton University. Joe Parker is professor of critical global studies emeritus at Pitzer College, one of the Claremont Colleges. Herman Rapaport is the Reynolds Professor of English at Wake Forest University.
REVIEWS
Praise for Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
‘At a time when the humanities are expected to genuflect before the sciences and privatization and professionalization displace knowledge, Spivak urges us not only to stand tall but to insist that ethical solidarities are only possible through the rigorous training of the imagination.’—Angela Davis
‘Among the most coruscatingly intelligent of all contemporary theorists, whose insights can be idiosyncratic but rarely less than original.’—Terry Eagleton
‘[Spivak] pioneered the study in literary theory of non-Western women and produced one of the earliest and most coherent accounts of that role available to us.’—Edward Said
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface, Joe Parker
List of Figures
Introduction: Living with Contradictory Instructions, Surya Parekh
Spivak as Critical Theorist, Herman Rapaport
After the Subaltern: Spivak’s Most Enduring Lessons on the Politics of Representation, Mrinalini Chakravorty
Practicing the Impossible: Spivak’s Activism, Joe Parker
Part 1: Training the Imagination
The Letter as Cutting Edge (1977)
Explanation and Culture: Marginalia (1979)
Revolutions that as yet Have No Model: Derrida’s (1980)
Reading the World: Literary Study in the Eighties (1981)
Acting Bits/Identity Talk (1996 [1992])
Touched by Deconstruction (2005)
Righting Wrongs (2004 [2003])
Responsibility (2008 [1994])
Willing Suspension of Disbelief, Here, Now (2016)
Part 2: Subalternity and Globality
Margins and Marginal Communities: A Practical Keynote
The Rani of Sirmur (1985)
Nationalism and the Imagination (2012 [2007])
Imperative to Re-Imagine the Planet (1999)
Scattered Speculations on the Subaltern and the Popular (2005)
Scattered Speculations on the Question of Value (1985)
Global Marx? (2018)
Part 3: Resistance
Close Reading (2006)
Race Before Racism: The Disappearance of the American (1998 [1993[)
Preface [Concerning Violence: Fanon, Film, and Liberation in Africa] (2016)
Postcolonialism in France (2013)
From the Last Dancer (2015[2014])
NIETZSCHE/derrida BLOG (2017)
On Revolution (2017)
Learning from De Man: Looking Back (2005)
Sign and Trace” (2008)
Part 4: For the Future
Musings on the World-Island (2012)
Academic Freedom (1995)
1996: Foucault and Najibullah (2008 [1998])
Psychoanalysis and Decolonized Feminism: Notes Towards a Talk
Echo (1993)
Terror: A Speech After 9/11 (2004)
How Do We Write, Now? (2018)
Part 5: Interview
Interview
Part 6: Resources
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: A Checklist of Publications
Contributors
Index
This collection offers a broad range of Spivak’s recent essays, lectures, and other writings that speak to her groundbreaking work in feminism, deconstruction, Marxism, and subaltern studies.
The pieces collected in Spivak Moving touch on a variety of topics, including her crucial thinking on pan-Africanism and W. E. B. DuBois, reproductive heteronormativity, art and film, class apartheid in education, practices of institutional critique, and the training of imaginative activism through a sustained engagement with the humanities. She moves from a look at the unsystematized first languages of continental Africa into a broader consideration of human rights, international civil society practice, the question of terror, the “freedom” of the academic, and the place of the digital. About half the essays are collected here for the first time and are not found in Spivak’s several published essay collections.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is university professor in the humanities at Columbia University and the author of many books, including Nationalism and the Imagination, also published by Seagull Books. Mrinalini Chakravorty is on faculty in English at the University of Virginia. Surya Parekh is assistant professor in the Department of English at Binghamton University. Joe Parker is professor of critical global studies emeritus at Pitzer College, one of the Claremont Colleges. Herman Rapaport is the Reynolds Professor of English at Wake Forest University.
REVIEWS
Praise for Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
‘At a time when the humanities are expected to genuflect before the sciences and privatization and professionalization displace knowledge, Spivak urges us not only to stand tall but to insist that ethical solidarities are only possible through the rigorous training of the imagination.’—Angela Davis
‘Among the most coruscatingly intelligent of all contemporary theorists, whose insights can be idiosyncratic but rarely less than original.’—Terry Eagleton
‘[Spivak] pioneered the study in literary theory of non-Western women and produced one of the earliest and most coherent accounts of that role available to us.’—Edward Said
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface, Joe Parker
List of Figures
Introduction: Living with Contradictory Instructions, Surya Parekh
Spivak as Critical Theorist, Herman Rapaport
After the Subaltern: Spivak’s Most Enduring Lessons on the Politics of Representation, Mrinalini Chakravorty
Practicing the Impossible: Spivak’s Activism, Joe Parker
Part 1: Training the Imagination
The Letter as Cutting Edge (1977)
Explanation and Culture: Marginalia (1979)
Revolutions that as yet Have No Model: Derrida’s (1980)
Reading the World: Literary Study in the Eighties (1981)
Acting Bits/Identity Talk (1996 [1992])
Touched by Deconstruction (2005)
Righting Wrongs (2004 [2003])
Responsibility (2008 [1994])
Willing Suspension of Disbelief, Here, Now (2016)
Part 2: Subalternity and Globality
Margins and Marginal Communities: A Practical Keynote
The Rani of Sirmur (1985)
Nationalism and the Imagination (2012 [2007])
Imperative to Re-Imagine the Planet (1999)
Scattered Speculations on the Subaltern and the Popular (2005)
Scattered Speculations on the Question of Value (1985)
Global Marx? (2018)
Part 3: Resistance
Close Reading (2006)
Race Before Racism: The Disappearance of the American (1998 [1993[)
Preface [Concerning Violence: Fanon, Film, and Liberation in Africa] (2016)
Postcolonialism in France (2013)
From the Last Dancer (2015[2014])
NIETZSCHE/derrida BLOG (2017)
On Revolution (2017)
Learning from De Man: Looking Back (2005)
Sign and Trace” (2008)
Part 4: For the Future
Musings on the World-Island (2012)
Academic Freedom (1995)
1996: Foucault and Najibullah (2008 [1998])
Psychoanalysis and Decolonized Feminism: Notes Towards a Talk
Echo (1993)
Terror: A Speech After 9/11 (2004)
How Do We Write, Now? (2018)
Part 5: Interview
Interview
Part 6: Resources
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: A Checklist of Publications
Contributors
Index
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC