Gayatri Spivak

From Geography

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak calls herself a practical Marxist-feminist-deconstructionist. She is best known for her essay 'Can the subaltern speak?', in which she created the term subaltern. Subaltern refers to a group that cannot represent itself or is not put in a position where it may represent itself and therefore is put outside of the hegemonic discourse. Discussing essentialism, she argues there is a risk that the voices of the subaltern people will cause generalization of the group, creating a stereotype. Spivak argued that when you have a identity, you can speak for yourself, so ‘strategic essentialism’ could help representing the group, through a temporary use of the stereotype.

In postcolonial theory, the essay makes a clear distinction between two senses of representation: Depiction and delegation. She argues depiction means speaking as others and delegation means speaking for others.

References

Aitken S. and Valentine G., 2006, Approaches to Human Geography, p. 147-159