The controversy surrounding Gayatri Spivak’s public rebuke of a young Dalit scholar may not seem like much, but it has important social and political implications.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a prominent postcolonial scholar and global public intellectual, is perhaps best known for her essay, “Can the Subaltern Have a Speak?”, in which she argues that elite knowledge systems exclude the voices of subalterns, so that even if they do speak, their voices will not be heard. Now, in a recent lecture at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, Spivak’s reprimand of a young scholar for mispronouncing the name of African-American sociologist W.E.B. DuBois caused an uproar for silencing the very subaltern voices she claims to respect. But the matter is more complicated than that.
Spivak’s May 21 lecture on Du Bois’s “Vision of Democracy” aimed to highlight the necessary norms for a more just democracy, one that prioritizes the rights of “others,” especially those of the lower classes, over the interests of the individual (“my rights”). While Du Bois had in mind the oppressed and racially discriminated blacks of the early 1900s in the United States when he wrote, Spivak suggested that his concerns could be extended to all marginalized people in the present day: the poor, gender and sexual minorities, Dalits, the disabled, Palestinians, and so on.
Given Du Bois’s own status as a marginalized black American scholar of Haitian descent, Spivak’s lectures repeatedly emphasized the importance of pronouncing his name correctly, which Du Bois himself insisted on pronouncing as “Dew Boys” rather than “Dew Bois.”
But things got worse during the Q&A that followed Spivak’s lecture (a video of which has gone viral online). Graduate student Anshul Kumar tried to question Spivak about her own privileged position when talking about the subaltern, but he couldn’t finish his question as Spivak repeatedly interrupted him, first asking who he was (to which he replied, “I’m the founding professor of the Center for Brahmin Studies”), then correcting him three times for his persistent mispronunciation of Du Bois’ name and chastising him for being a Brahmin studies man who should know better.
When Kumar boldly accused Spivak of being a Brahmin (Spivak denied it) and asked, “After this boring talk, can we move on to questions?” Spivak responded, “I’m an 82-year-old woman in public in your institution. You’re being rude to me.” At the moderator’s signal, Spivak skipped Kumar’s question and began answering another audience member’s question.
The incident sparked an outrage online, with some siding with the bullied and silenced students and others siding with Spivak, who argued for the educational and political necessity of correct pronunciation. Kumar took out her anger on X, even resorting to (unforgivable) misogynistic insults, writing, “This motherfucker and motherfucker had the nerve to interrupt me three times to pronounce Dubois. Can you speak, underclassmen?”
Later, upon receiving news that Kumar was a Dalit, Spivak felt the need to defend himself, declaring, “Anshul Kumar does not identify himself as a Dalit.” [at the lecture]Therefore, since he had said that he was the founder of an institute of Brahmin studies, I assumed he was a Brahmin… as an old woman teacher confronting a male student… my hurtful remark that I did not want to hear his question was a gesture of protest.”
While this incident may seem inconsequential, I think it has broader social and political implications. In one sense, it seems like an illustration of the long-standing practice of “pronunciation politics,” in which the elite of society assert their superiority over the lower classes through language (the “correct” way to speak, the “polite” way to speak, the “proper” accent). But the twist in this case is that Spivak’s pronunciation politics in the lecture are aimed at legitimizing not the power of the elites, but Du Bois’s explicit desire to be recognized as a subaltern voice, that is, a black Haitian American. Intentionally or not, Kumar fails to grasp this important point, because it aligns well politically with his pro-subaltern, anti-Brahmin stance.
But while Spivak may make a good impression at the level of the explicit political content of her message, we cannot forget the implicit power dynamics at play here. As a well-known and influential intellectual whose work (and words) are the center of attention at the event, she is in a position of authority that she makes the most of to admonish Kumar, the young scholar. At this implicit level, Spivak sets her own trap, falling prey to the very danger of the “dialogue of the deaf” that she has been warning about: the danger of elites ignoring and silencing the voices of the lower classes.
Indeed, it may be debatable whether Kumar is as much of a subaltern as he claims to be. He is a Dalit, but he is also a graduate student at Janata Nunavut, a prestigious, elite university in India, a position only available to a very few. As Spivak said in a recent interview, “Subaltern and Dalit are not interchangeable terms. Dalit people who rise up the ranks, and universities are a means of class upward mobility, should use their newfound privileges to work for the Dalit community as a whole, especially the subaltern Dalits who cannot get into the elite universities.”
And yet, in the lecture, Kumar remained subordinate. Given Spivak’s extensive experience as a subaltern, university professor and primary school teacher trainer (she ran schools for indigenous and adivasi children in Bangladesh and India for almost 40 years), was it not her duty to engage with her audience with some respect and humility? Couldn’t she politely correct his pronunciation but listen to the substance of his question? Especially given the circumstances: she had just finished a lecture on Du Bois, how to be critically democratic, and how to be ethically open to others regardless of their identity or position (why did Kumar have to identify as Dalit in order for Spivak to listen to him?).
Indeed, to be faithful to Du Boisian democratic norms, the very fact that her (implicitly) subordinate audience was willing to challenge her (through their mispronunciations and questions) should be seen as a blessing, not an obstacle: a refusal from below, an expression of an anti-authoritarian ethic, precisely the kind of ethic we need to encourage and support if we are to work towards a just democracy today.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
