A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present

by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Book Overview

Are the culture wars over? When did they begin? What is their relationship to gender struggle and the dynamics of class? In her first full treatment of postcolonial studies, a field that she helped define, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, one of the world's foremost literary theorists, poses these questions from within the postcolonial enclave.

We cannot merely continue to act out the part of Caliban, Spivak writes; and her book is an attempt...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674177649
• ISBN13: 9780674177642
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

still relevant!

I love Spivak and this book. I am glad to have my own copy now!!!

The Sublime Fallacy

There are no academics today living that can boast the expertise, eloquence, elegance and ethical engagement of a Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Having read the sparse comments and reviews on her masterpiece, Critique of Postcolonial Reason, I shall take it upon myself to redress some startling misreadings on her committment and scholarship. This is a book for academics, which has incensed some who've had to wade through the discourse feeling disoriented and led through a meandering labyrinth of presentations and materialism that, while seemingly disjointed and sophisticated beyond the everyday jargon, does reserve a pragmatic intention members of academia will not overlook. If we deny her an audience we would be dismissing the astonishing power of her words. The reinscription of Marxisim and postmodern prismatic perspectives retains a focus and an organization which attempts to defy the imposition of Western ideological mandates while it yet preserve the flexibility of undertaking a dialogue with the other it addresses. This is no easy task and one carrried out by Dr. Spivak in such an unaffected fashion that it is refreshing if bewildering. Adorno reminded us that intelligence and rational sophistication cannot be subdued to the temperate facile discourse of the usual rhetoric, for to do so would compromise the efficacy and purity of the arguments. True enough, one must be acquainted with Kant, Hegel, Derrida, and Marx, but the ideas promulgated are always distilled by a sense of committment and designated with the beauty of an ethical engagement which postmodern apathy has frequently cast as frustrating desultory shadow upon. The cultural critic here defines and traces the postcolonial cultural swamp while aready having absorbed the poetics of Franz Fanon, Homi Bhabha and Edward Said. She deftly wields wisdom that most may find accentuated by scholarly theoretical refinement, but to ask of her otherwise would be ludicrous. This work crosses borders and in a shot of hybrid perseverance raises us to culminating intellectual peaks that allow the attentive reader to survey the unheralded horizon from the heigths of a brilliance that may perhaps be the selfsame cause of occasional blindness, but which in due time, and with sedulous responsible insistence will open up views that range far beyond the common plains of petty or simplistic psychologizing agglamerates. When discussing history she introduces Deleuze's reformulation of desire in subjectivity; through her discussion of Wide Sargasso Sea she starkly renders accessible the nuances of the colonial subject; when formulating the philosophical enterprise she calls upon Hegel and Kant and Marx to map a topology that inscribes an involuted transcendental logic which we should be ready to become immersed with for it shall prove indispesable with the passage of time and the advancement of learning; when outlining history she takes us on a journey the geography of which is rapturous as she undresses the

A landmark...

As you can already tell by the comments, there is a "clash of cultures" in the academy. It's between: * People who think philosophy's job is to expand ideas and challenge, versus those who think it should make the present seem more comfortable and make you nod your head in recognition. * Those who think that gender is relatively unimportant and that work stands for itself; versus those who believe that "to introduce the question of woman changes everything". * Those who believe that the canon of Western philosophy is adequate to describe the world, and those who believe it has never described the world because it never took the time to understand those that never lived in "the west" * Those who believe the work of the intellectual should be to outline a philosophy of life to be taken up by others, versus those who believe that it is sometimes "more productive to sabotage what is inexorably to hand than to outline a novel concept that will never seriously be tested". You get the idea. If you are in the first category of these tensions then there's no point you reading this book. It will confirm all your prejudices. If the second half of the statements above sounds more like you, then you probably already know this book. But in case you "haven't quite got to it yet", as I hadn't for a while, I can say that this is a book that will reward many detailed readings. It's breadth and depth is breathtaking in an era where the very real problems of generalisation raised by gender/race/colonial analysis have caused many to back away from theorising world systems. As Spivak carefully shows, these systems ("the financialsiation of the globe" - who among the critics could elaborate with such detail on the distinctive impact of informational capital on the rural?) are very much in operation and urgently need to be thought - but never at the expense of forgetting those whose labour is appropriated by those systems. For all the dense theoretical language in the text, Spivak is obviously in a discussion with, for example, the indigenous activist, unlike many of her critics, who complain about her language yet never demonstrate their engagement with e.g. the rural poor. Let's talk about the language. Yes, it's intimidating. It's philosophy! She's a professional philosopher, that's her job! If you're going to understand the insights of a physicist you'd have to prepare yourself by doing a lot of reading (and experimenting). If you were going to understand a physicist who was pushing the boundaries of the discipline you are probably going to have to be a physicist yourself or be very, very, very interested in the field. As it should be - if I understood what physicists were really doing I'd be worried, given that they study for so long and get all that research money for labs when maybe I could do this in my garage. Despite 15 years of reading social theory (not all the time - I'm not an academic at the moment) I struggled heavily through the first chapter of

This book demands & rewards patience & receptivity to others

The indignant and arrogant demands for ease of understanding expressed by so many reviewers here exemplify the passive, anti-intellectual customer service-based epistemology that Spivak educates us against and that drives todays globalizing and enslaving culture. Her book is profound and urgent.

An excellent book that weaves together past and present work

Spivak's latest full length book includes new work on Derrida and deconstruction, culture studies, rhetoric, and history. Its discussion of colonialism, postcolonialism, and neocolonialism are valuable additions to the field of 'postcolonial theory'.