In her landmark essay Can the Subaltern Speak?, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak interrogates the mechanisms by which Western intellectual discourse claims to represent the Other, exposing how structures of power embedded in language and theory often reinforce the very silencing they purport to challenge. Spivak’s work is a cornerstone of postcolonial thought, operating at the intersection of deconstruction, Marxist critique, and feminist analysis, and foregrounds the subaltern—those excluded from hegemonic narratives not simply by geography or class, but by structural epistemic violence. She challenges Eurocentric epistemologies and critiques even well-meaning leftist or feminist projects for re-inscribing dominance when they speak "for" rather than with the marginalized. Her concept of strategic essentialism invites temporarily unified identity claims as tools of resistance, even while she warns against their totalizing tendencies. In translating and critically introducing Mahasweta Devi’s stories, Spivak demonstrates her theory in practice: the translator-scholar becomes a mediator, not a master. Her philosophical engagements, particularly with Derrida’s deconstruction, serve not as abstract exercises, but as rigorous tools to unearth how knowledge systems sustain oppression. Spivak's insistence that theory must grapple with the historical materialities of colonialism, gendered labor, and global capitalism challenges academia to remain ethically accountable. Her call is not merely to make space for the subaltern voice but to question the terms on which such space is granted, withheld, or fabricated, forcing us to confront the violent asymmetries of global discourse production and to reimagine solidarity beyond representation.
subalternity, postcolonial theory, strategic essentialism, deconstruction, feminist marxism, cultural hegemony, epistemic violence, colonial legacy, Eurocentrism, marginal voices, representation, translation, Derrida, Mahasweta Devi, voice and agency, critique of reason, transnational feminism