Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, the noted postcolonial scholar and global public intellectual, is perhaps best known for her piece, “Can the subaltern speak?,” in which she claims that elite systems of knowledge filter out subaltern voices so that even when the subaltern does speak, it’s not heard. Spivak’s May 21 lecture on Du Bois’s “vision of democracy” was aimed at underlining …
Disclaimer: In order to enable a free-wheeling conversation on the subject, the interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak was carried out with the understanding that she would get to approve the direct quotes that would be published. This led to other audience members breaking out in giggles, many who attended the talk said, adding that Ms. Spivak might have also had …
