Gayatri C. Spivak

Gayatri C. Spivak

See also Wikipedia's article about "Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak".

See also Gayatri C. Spivak's entry in Columbia's directory.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is a vociferous literary critic who was named a University Professor in March 2007. She is also a founder of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, a participant in elementary and intermediate Chinese classes, and an occasional instructor, on leave in Spring 2008.

She is a noted scholar on the ideas of Jacques Derrida, and is known for helping found the discipline of Postcolonialism altogether, particularly the concept of the subaltern.

Criticism

She has been criticised for using "unreadable jargon" and forcing a false dichotomy between "white, Western, imperialist males" and "designated, politically correct victims" on her opponents to bludgeon them into submission.

It is now 50 years since I graduated from Columbia College, when Lionel Trilling, Mark Van Doren, Fred Dupee, Jacques Barzun, and countless other exemplars of scholarly life taught there. I suppose change is inevitable and sometimes desirable, but when did the University change its mission from education to indoctrination, from cultivation of critical thinking to dissemination of mindless cant? The appointment of Gayatri Spivak — Marxist, feminist, deconstructionist, grievance collector — as University Professor is, I believe, the last nail driven into the coffin of Columbia as an independent truth-seeking university.

This is the same Spivak who employs unreadable jargon to “deconstruct” Western literature, exposing its role in the oppression of noble third world poor peoples. Her deconstructive work seeks to blur and erase all distinctions, not just between the sexes, but between good and bad, truth and falsehood, success and failure. One distinction remains: that between the capitalist oppressors — white, Western, imperialist males — and the designated, politically correct victims. Her greatest success at erasing distinctions, however, may be in helping to transform a liberal arts university into a politically correct reeducation camp. Shame on Columbia.

• Stephen Rittenberg ’57CC, ’63PS, Larchmont, NY

External links

• Gayatri C. Spivak - Faculty Profile, Comparative Literature and Society department
• Press release announcing Gayatri Spivak's appointment as University Professor