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

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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In recent years, a growing body of literary and historical scholarship has explored the complex relationship of Western elite culture to the postcolonial societies of the Southern hemisphere. Spivak, a prominent literary theorist based at Columbia University, is widely known for her sophisticated deconstructive approach to questions of feminism, North-South relations, and the politics of subaltern studies. This book is based on a number of her published essays, including the influential 1988 article "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Spivak focuses on the relationship of debates in philosophy, history, and literature to the emergence of a postcolonial problematic. Overall, she seeks to distance herself from mainstream postcolonial literature and to reassert the value of earlier theorists such as Kant and Marx. Readers unfamiliar with recent trends in literary studies may find Spivak's deliberately elusive prose impenetrable. On the other hand, those already invested in the postmodern and postcolonial debates may find her style invigorating. Recommended for university libraries.AKent Worcester, Marymount Manhattan Coll., New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

A founder of postcolonial studies surveys the current state of the field and finds much to criticize. This is vintage Spivak--dazzling, often exasperating, but unfailingly powerful. -- Partha Chatterjee, author of The Nation and Its Fragments

Gayatri Spivak tells us that here she charts her progress from colonial discourse studies to transnational cutlural studies. She does so brilliantly. And she does so much more. She constructs this extraordinary progress through an intricate labyrinth, but one with blazing lights in every corner. -- Saskia Sassen, author of Globalization and its Discontents

Gayatri Spivak works with remarkable complexity and skill to evoke the local details of emergent agency in an international frame. Her extraordinary attention to the texts she reads and her ability to track the reach of global power make her one of the unparalleled intellectuals of our time. -- Judith Butler, author of The Psychic Life of Power

In these pages Gayatri Spivak performs what often seems either impossible or purely gestural--a critique of transnational globalization which manages to be equally attuned to its cultural and economic effects. This book deserves to be read for its modulated defense of Marxism and feminism alone. It will be welcomed as the clearest statement to date of Spivak's own relationship to the postcolonial theory with which she herself--wrongly, as she forcefully argues here--is so often identified. With a brilliance that is uniquely hers, Spivak issues a challenge which will be very hard to avoid to the limits of theory and of academic institutions alike. -- Jacqueline Rose, author of States of Fantasy --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; 1 edition (June 28, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674177649
• ISBN-13: 978-0674177642
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #62,452 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Sublime Fallacy, July 9, 2008

By	Luca Graziuso (NYC) - See all my reviews

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 epistemic violence of the narrative enterprise she disengages; finally when availing herself of the concept of culture she literally takes us to trace the paradigms heretofore formulated by way of Cartesian philosophy through the poststructuralists and contemporary postcolonial territory. The encyclopedic panorama of the intellectual discourses from Foucault to Lacan, Jameson to La Capra, Judith Butler to feminist gestures, Barthes to Derrida, with the outstanding explicating interludes that by way of close reading (sometimes specific to a word or translating mishap)illuminate Hindi or Buddhist texts and the formulations therein conferred. This is a nonpareil scholarly contribution that sets the standard, expatiates on the inadequacies of reason by having us charge full force into the vanishing point of an historical perspective that, while it proves necessary and vigilant, it undermines any notion that postcolonial theory may be a black hole with no place to go, for here we have a topography that by way of exhaustive coordinates draws those boundaries we had been alienating ourselves within. The aporetic exposition actually does what most thought unthinkable, rather it leads to a discourse beyond the intelligible, because it is there that we must venture if we wish to analyse the subaltern subject, the history of alterity and the culture of the marginalized. Indispensable, groundbreaking, unique, genius.
The gratitude history shall pay Dr. Spivak is going to be a barameter to our committment to the notions of love a more accessible contemporary writer such as Martha Naussbaum has defrayed thorugh her social engement with legal issues. Of note is the fact that Gayatri Spivak has contributed in undeniable, indissoluble and indelible ways to give a voice to scholars from across the globe, making of our academic universe gradually a more global one. Struggle through this if you care enough to withstand the perils of intellectual conformity.

30 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A landmark..., April 10, 2006

By	Danny (Aotearoa) - See all my reviews

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 on Kant and Hegel (I know some Hegel, only a little Kant). I'd read two pages and think "I'm not sure I get that, but I'll read it again tomorrow and move on to the next bit anyway." If you're a feminist philosopher I'm sure you'd be going much easier. But the point is, I didn't take it as a reason not to read it - it was a challenge for me to expand my understanding about stuff I thought I knew (e.g., Marx), that she has obviously thought a lot more about than me.

When it got to some things I do know something about (e.g. colonial rhetoric, technology and development), her insights were both revelatory and in accord with my experience at the same time. Anyone with a philosophical bent who has experience in the development field will be troubled by the very convincing case Spivak makes in chapter 4 for development as an instantiation of imperialism. As someone who reads the relevant journals from time to time I have yet to hear anyone with expertise in philosophy and cultural studies outline why Spivak doesn't know what she is talking about, as the Terry Eagleton fan suggets. She does all too well, in a way that intimidates those who made a living pretending they had the answers.

Spivak obviously knows that she's good and the suffer-no-fools tone - some have described it as elitist - might be irritiating for some. I prefer to see it as a persistent frustration with the limitations of language, and an attempt to convey that to the reader. This is not "bad writing". It is very carefully crafted (there are some fantastic, pithy sentences at times) to destabilise the assumptions she knows readers are going to make about the work. If you want to read someone who'll make it all easy, try Andrew Ross (one of my favourite authors, but completely different methodology as befits an American Studies prof).

If you've never read Spivak and aren't completely at home in philosophy and theory, this might not be the place to start. Maybe begin with Landry & Maclean's Spivak Reader and any of her interviews (there's a great one from the journal Signs which is available online). Outside in the Teaching Machinemight be easier after that. But if you are looking for big, challenging ideas that will shift your world-view, this will do it.

As you can tell, I love this book. I think it's a landmark work from someone who is trying to think the world with knowledge and experience of places that previously well-known "world thinkers" never had. It attempts to bring an incredible range of examples and texts into productive conversation. It kind of depresses me because I know I could never write it, yet even by reading it I am no longer as comfortable in subconscious generalisations that Euro-US culture relies on, and that this distances me from some ideas and people. But it has also sharpened my sense of what is important, of where I can make a difference, of what writing can do inside and outside of the academy. It's a great gift if you're prepared to receive it.

25 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book that weaves together past and present work, September 1, 1999

By A Customer

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'.