Posthegemonic Comments
Good choice. I'm up for it.
Since I have no particular opinion, I'll just wait for others to suggest things.
I'll join in -- another excuse to read someone I've barely read.
Ditto.
Though I'd like to suggest her response to Derrida's _Specters_, in Diacritics, as another possible text. Which if no-one else wants to draw on it, suppose I will try.
We should find a way to make these all available online, of course.
I'm in. Anything of manageable length is fine with me. I'll second Matt on the idea of something that's available online. Should we do this after Easter?
After easter is good by me. And Craig has hitherto been the king of putting things online...
I'm up for this one. Haven't read more than ten pages of Spivak.
This time I will be the one scribbles in her margins. That'll teach her and her stupid BUT-THEY-MUST-BE-PINK-MILK-CRATES! to mess with me.
There's not much Spivak on-line, but I did find this video lecture where she discusses the trajectory of the subaltern in her work if anyone is interested:
http://www.uctv.tv/library-test....asp?
showID=8840
The Troll of Sorrow never ceases to amaze. He's somehow managing to troll a conversation which hasn't even started yet. Next thing you'll know, we'll start seeing his lame schtick written talmud-like on historical documents...
Is the proposed reading a chapter from Critique of Post-Colonial Reason? I'll see if (1) I can find it in the library tomorrow and (2) find a way to scan it and PDF-ify it. A cursory search in Google didn't turn up an already digitized copy of the text.
Craig, nope, "Scattered Speculations" is from In Other Worlds. ("Deconstructing Historiography" is there too, and also is the introduction to Selected Subaltern Studies.)
Meanwhile, on board we have: s0metim3s; John; Craig; Matt; Jodi; Keith; Scott. Well, that's seven days' posts already. I'm sure there'll be others. Plus I may seek out some further guest posters.
And it looks as though we're aiming for either the week of April 17th or (more likely) the week of the 24th.
Scott, we could perhaps swap Spivak anecdotes.
I'll pick them up at the library to try to make some PDFs.
Even better: "Scattered Speculations" is available through JStor in Diacritics 1985 (issue 4). Being unethical, I'll host the PDF of that version for those who do not otherwise have access to JStor.
Craig, good man!
I would be interested in taking this up with some the hint she makes towards the importance of self-sbstraction and a rethinking of the state as an abstract subject of redress along Kantian terms in the Trajectory speech. The differance question and the access question she claims were in her understanding of the Subaltern from the beginning seem to me to jar awfully.
There is always the Karatani comparison here too. Two Marxist (?) students of De Man, both looking to Kant.
Craig, do please make a copy of "Ghostwriting", in Diacritics, her response to Specters of Marx. Thx enormously.
hi Jon,
I'd like to participate. My contribution will be hasty and rushed, though, as my April shall be very hectic. I've not read Spivak. My first choice is the value one, but any of it sounds good to me as long as I can get an e-copy.
Best,
Nate
Per Matt's request: Ghostwriting (Diacritics 1995).
May I suggest a loose temporal frame. If people just resolve to sort of do it Aprilish then more people may do it in total. I'm beginning to think that 'events' that require everyone to post together tend to wear everyone out and actually dampen participation.
I'd be up for talking about Spivak, sometime in April. 'Scattered Speculations' seems a good essay to use, too: that precise eclecticism yields something new to think about every time I reread it.
I gotta say, I really like the compacted, week-long 'festival' approach myself -- even though it requires a bit of administrative work for hosters. Set deadlines and schedules are always better.
az, I agree.
This is an odd thing for me to be saying, as I will usually defend all-comers against anti-theory gripes about "bad" or "obscure" writing, but I find Spivak's written style gratingly idiosyncratic.
Partly it's the appearance of words like "deconstructivist", which is more or less guaranteed to set any Derridean's teeth on edge; partly it's a general question of tone. I guess she just mispronounces her schibboleths - boo to me for being so distracted by this.
I do wonder whether it's deliberate, though, a kind of emphatic discursive nonconformism...
Dominic, her writing's not always pretty, that's for sure.
And are you throwing your hat in here?
Yeah, go on. Although I'm no Marx specialist...
I like the concentrated week long event as well (agreeing with az and Jon).
Spivak anecdote (apocryphal?): at some crucial point while she was at Columbia she placed on her office door a list of everyone on the faculty with whom she'd had sex.
Now that's what I call eclecticism.
Throw me in there too.
There does seem to be a turning point with Eagleton, he will carefully wrestle with the excesses of Adorno, but Spivak! Nope, too eclectic.
I hadn't heard about the sex-list, fascinating! Apparently her seminars on Marx in translation are legendary...
I might recommend the section of CPCR that is a rewriting of 'Can the subaltern speak?' as that is both contemporary and foundational. What I liked about the Strategy of the refusal was that it turned out, after some sniffing around, to be one of the most central essays not only of Tronti's thought, but of the whole history of operasimo and autonomia, which gave folks a chance to engage either with his words and ideas, or with the tradition itself. To my mind, the Spivakian equivalent would be 'Can the subaltern speak,' no?
Though we would certainly would want to avoid turning this into a greatest hits collection, and lord knows where chapters from such books might be available online.
Jodi, I don't believe it.
I've switched to comment moderation for the time being. This means that your comment will not immediately appear. Please be patient and accept my apologies for the extra palaver.
Jodi,
I don't believe it either. More anecdotes here though:
http://boundary2.dukejournals.or...reprint/32/3/
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hi all,
I like the weeklong fest approach too, but it is tiring and I think JohnH is probably right about it turning some folks away (while for others of us the deadlines provoke us to work). Is there a synthesis possible? Like say there will be the weeklong thing but stuff outside that timeframe will also be welcome?
Best,
Nate
Nate, that sounds fine by me. No need to force anyone to a schedule. But as you say, it helps some of us concentrate our minds.
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