Synopses & Reviews
The Spivak Reader offers a careful selection of a major critic's work, making it accessible to as wide an audience as possible in literature, women's studies, cultural studies, philosophy, and sociology.
As a theorist, a feminist, and a cultural critic, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has rigorously expanded our understanding of some of the key issues of contemporary thought: from postcolonialism to textualtiy, from commodity fetishism to sexual difference, from Marx and Foucault to Derrida and the relevance of philosophy to literature. The Spivak Reader both introduces many of her most important works, while also making it possible for students of Spivak's work to view her project as a whole.
Headnotes and introductory material (including a new essay, Reading Spivak) by Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean provide a helpful guide to the selections. Many pieces in the Reader have not previously been published in Spivak's earlier books; the volume also includes a new interview on the question of the subaltern.
The Spivak Reader will be a welcome addition to the work of one of our major theorists.
Synopsis
Among the foremost feminist critics to have emerged to international eminence over the last fifteen years, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has relentlessly challenged the high ground of established theoretical discourse in literary and cultural studies. Although her rigorous reading of various authors has often rendered her work difficult terrain for those unfamiliar with poststructuralism, this collection makes significant strides in explicating Spivak's complicated theories of reading.
Table of Contents
Bonding in difference, interview with Alfred Arteaga -- Explanation and culture : marginalia -- Feminism and critical theory -- Revolutions that as yet have no model : Derrida's "Limited Inc." -- Scattered speculations on the question of value -- More on power/knowledge -- Echo -- Subaltern studies : deconstructing historiography -- How to teach a "culturally different" book -- Translator's preface and afterword to Mahasweta Devi, Imaginary maps -- Subaltern talk, interview with editors.