/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.1526524]

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, considered by many to be the one of the world’s leading ‘Marxist-feminist-deconstructionists’, talks about notions of identity, her evolution as an intellectual and her present-day concerns. Excerpts from an exclusive interview...
http://www.thehindu.com/arts/books/article1159208.ece

She translated Derrida from French into English having almost no French experience. She had never translated anything before. She had never taken a course in philosophy before. Today she is considered one of the foremost intellectuals of the 21st century. She is now a tenured professor at Columbia University.

>How long did it take you to translate a complex thinker like Derrida?

>Immediately, because I had no idea who he was. I was an Assistant Professor at Iowa…you know, I was very young: I was about 24/25 by then. I thought: here I am... a 1st class 1st from the University of Calcutta, Ph.D. from Cornell, here I am at Iowa – stupid really – I must keep up my intellectual life. I would order books from catalogues and, you know, it was by chance that I ordered Grammatologie. If I hadn’t ordered the book … I didn’t know Derrida’s name at all. I was far, far away. There was no email, no fax, no nothing. How would I know? If I hadn’t ordered that book my life would have been so totally different. Just the thought of that accident fills me with a certain kind of terror…and also with so little French  it is a very complicated book  at the age of 25. I think that’s the one intelligent thing I have done in my entire life. I read the book and I knew that this was a good book…

[Anonymous No.1526551]

>Marxist-feminist-deconstructionists
An unholy trinity.

Seriously though, the fact that people like this exist makes me wish I was dead. :(

[Anonymous No.1526565]

>>1526551
Why in the world are Marxism, feminism, or Deconstruction so offensive to you?

[Anonymous No.1526583]

>>1526551
What's wrong poor, little bigot? Is life to large for you?

[Anonymous No.1526609]

>>1526551
you're an anti-academic retard

[Anonymous No.1526615]

y'all posting in a troll thread

[Anonymous No.1526614]

>>1526609
>>1526583
>>1526565

Explain and justify each word if you so assume that they are meaningful.

[Anonymous No.1526683]

>>1526614
no u

Read the article. She explains her positions and her definitions of each term. If you can't be bothered to read the article, why are you here?

[Anonymous No.1526700]

>>1526614
> Explain and justify each word if you so assume that they are meaningful.
> Marxism, feminism, or Deconstruction

That's not even a hard thing to do. Without using a dictionary/google:
Marxism - Economic theory based on the work of Marx & Engles regarding distribution of the products of labor to the workers
Feminism - As a study, looking at a woman's role in society. As a political belief, a reaction to the study of f~ism, and one that demands equality between men and women
Deconstructionism - Just what it sounds like, breaking shit down. Not even a political view, pretty implausible that >551 could have as strong opinion about it as he might about feminism or Marxism. Basically, it's reducing a system to it's component beliefs and asking if those conflict, and if they do, what are the ramifications of those conflicts.

[Anonymous No.1526715]

>I wrote this absurd query letter to the University of Massachusetts press: I am a wonderful translator – I had never translated anything before!
I don't care about the -ists that's being attached to her name. The implication here is that she went about everything she did effortlessly by 'reinventing the wheel' and 'thinking on her feet'.

>she is considered one of the foremost intellectuals of the 21st century
Don't know her name, don't care about anything she has to say, after reading that article, because I feel like I might as well be talking to one of my friends from my old university and coming to the same conclusions as she does about things like the role of Marxism in the world and in the future to come.

[Anonymous No.1526735]

>>1526700
um, those are a bit inaccurate or incomplete, let me clarify this for you:

Marxism- the absence of institutionalized power and the absence of a culturally conditioned society of power struggle

Feminism: the removal of institutionalized gender (ie: marriage, jobs, etc) and the removal of predefining gender without the individual's identity, and also the removal of a dominating/submissive culture/society

Deconstruction: general idea that reality created by language contains no meaning because language is flawed and paradoxical

[Anonymous No.1526736]

I read a short article she wrote on Frankenstein and good lord she's almost as hard to follow as Deleuze and Guattari.

[Anonymous No.1526741]

>>1526735

You're defining third-wave feminism, brah. Second-wave, technically, but the whole idea of the complete removal of gender didn't exist until feminism had been around for about 30 years.

[Anonymous No.1526747]

>>1526741
that's because they had realized full removal of institution was too hard of a change to bring about, so they went for the partial removal that you're referring to

unless I'm wrong, if I am then explain

[Anonymous No.1526764]

>>1526524
Jesus christ, so she had NO education, knew NOTHING, and is now a TENURED PROFESSOR??
And she didn't even know the language or the philosopher whom she was "translating"?

This has to be some sick joke.

[Anonymous No.1526765]

>>1526747

First-wave was just fighting for fundamental legal female rights; the right to vote, own property, etc.
The whole gender removal thing didn't work its way in until the 70s when sexuality became less taboo in public. Third-wave, actually, because second-wave was focused on reproductive rights and family structure.
Third-wave was where people started arguing for gender removal but it blends so much in other aspects with second-wave that it's hardly a new movement.

[Anonymous No.1526770]

>>1526735
>bit inaccurate or incomplete, let me clarify this for you:
I don't think that they're inaccurate, but yeah, super incomplete. You did a much better job defining them, so thank you! I guess I meant to say that the concepts presented are not ones most people are unfamiliar with, so asking someone to define them as a response to that earlier post was a bit unreasonable.

[Anonymous No.1526774]

>mfw he is considered one of the foremost intellectuals of the 21st century

[Anonymous No.1526776]

>>1526764
>feminism
is a sick joke.

[Anonymous No.1526778]

>>1526770
>gender removal
That's ridiculous

[Anonymous No.1526782]

>>1526778
As an idea, or as a definition of feminism

[Anonymous No.1526783]

>>1526524
What's she a professor OF?
Political correctness and 'equal opportunity' studies?

[Anonymous No.1526786]

>>1526783
This is why your poems will always be shit.

[Anonymous No.1526787]

>>1526774

>mfw you think Gayatri Spivak is a man

[Anonymous No.1526794]

>>1526524

[Anonymous No.1526795]

>>1526787

[Anonymous No.1526797]

>Gayatari
>Gay
>Atari

:o

[Anonymous No.1526798]

>mfw my defence of the validity of research in the arts crumbles in my hands.

I don't think I can argue with people anymore about "wastes of time".

[Anonymous No.1526801]

>>1526798
or you're just another culturally conditioned moron

[Anonymous No.1526803]

Hi!

I hate to intrude on what you're doing, but there's this funnel, placed into an asshole, and this tyrannasaurs rex pukes into it. After the ass is filled with puke, this tyrannasaurs rex then fucks it until the pressure is all built up. After the asshole has been fucked hard enough, the cock is pulled out and the anal cannon explodes! To top it all off, ass to mouth occurs, with both ladies licking off the fresh mix of vomit and ass for the ultimate purple unicorn adventure.

Regards,
Anon

[Anonymous No.1526806]

>>1526798
Now you know Columbia University is intellectually bankrupt.

There are still insitutions with academic integrity, Oxford and Cambridge as 2 examples.

[Anonymous No.1526810]

>>1526806
you're an idiot, brother

[Anonymous No.1526819]

>>1526524
>>1526810

[Anonymous No.1526820]

Critical Theory and postmodern philosophy will likely be remembered along the same lines as other great contributions that have been made to civilization like Three Card Monty, The Shell Game, The Ponzi Scheme, and that time David Copperfield walked through the Great Wall of China.

[Anonymous No.1526824]

>>1526820
You don't know the first thing about postmodernism.
The French are great thinkers. Postmodernism is a serious philosophic tradition.
However it was, as always, received by the americans in completely the wrong spirit. They completely misunderstand it. Most people completely misunderstand it.

[Anonymous No.1526826]

>>1526764
Uhhh, no. Read the article. She was an MA student in India before coming to the United States. She completed her Masters Degree in the States. She got her PhD at the University of Iowa with a thesis on the poetry of Yeats.

She has more education than just about everyone in the world. She's also trained in English, Hindi, Sanskrit, French, and German.

[Anonymous No.1526833]

>>1526824
True. The anal cannon guy is French.

[Anonymous No.1526834]

>>1526826
Her masters degree was from Cornell, if it matters,

[Anonymous No.1526836]

>>1526826
Yeah nice troll.
So she has an MA in ENGLISH

She admits she knew NO philosophy and NO french

And fuck you, troll

[Anonymous No.1526839]

>>1526810
Butthurt Marxists must face the facts that their sick ideology is dying. There are few "Marxist intellectuals" left; the foremost of them, like Slavoj Zizek and Spivak batshit insane.

[Anonymous No.1526843]

>>1526836
>implying that philosophy, a study based on logic, cannot be learned outside of institutional education
>retard detected

[Anonymous No.1526847]

>>1526839
Spivak is a pseudo-intellectual of the worst order.
At least Zizek has some sort of intelligence.

[Anonymous No.1526848]

>>1526836
When she sent her query letter with a short example of her translation, she had 6 months education in French. The University of Massachusetts Press decided her translation excerpt was worthy and offered to publish her version. She took a year off to study and translate. After this year, the University of Massachusetts Press felt that her translation held water and was a worthy contribution to the field.

[Anonymous No.1526849]

>>1526839
you don't know anything about Marxism if you believe that the current social paradigm doesn't need to be replaced and that Marxism would not be a better model

butthurt anti-intellectual from an anti-intellectual culture butthurt because way over your head


3/10

[Anonymous No.1526850]

>>1526847
>I know nothing about Spivak or her ideas but will complain because she is a woman, a feminist, and a Marxist

[Anonymous No.1526854]

J'ai tout vu et tout fait, mais aujourd'hui, je savais qu'il était temps de sortir le canon anal. Le canon anal est chargé lorsque un entonnoir est placé dans un trou du cul, et une seconde pute dégueule dedans. Après que le cul soit rempli de vomi, une bite le baise ensuite jusqu'à ce que la pression soit suffisante. Après que le trou du cul ait été baisé assez dur, la bite se retire et le canon anal explose! Pour couronner le tout, cul à la bouche se produit, avec les deux dames léchant le mélange frais de vomi et de cul pour l'ultime dessert anal.

[Anonymous No.1526853]

>>1526850
>I am Spivak, I'm an obese curry imposter

[♥onionring♥ !Rrxa7zePwI No.1526856]

lol look at the retarded americans itt

[Anonymous No.1526858]

>>1526839
Christopher Hitchens, motherfucker, do you know him?

[Anonymous No.1526859]

>>1526824

[Tofu !s7vSX9lhAI No.1526862]

>>1526856
You're tight. So's Fabulous, but you're tight.

[Anonymous No.1526863]

>>1526853
>I am so retarded that I believe Spivak, a 68 year old university professor in New York City, is promoting herself on 4chan at 7am

[Anonymous No.1526865]

>>1526856
I'm American, and properly educated and mentally sound enough to appreciate Marxism/feminism/deconstruction, and not be some retard degenerate going "DURR BELONG IN KITCHEN DURR IM GOING TO SAY THAT ONLY BECAUSE I KNOW I CAN'T ARGUE AGAINST IT"

[Anonymous No.1526866]

>self-described "practical Marxist-feminist-deconstructionist"
>translated Derrida from French into English having almost no French experience

[Anonymous No.1526869]

>>1526858
You actually admire a neocon in marxist clothing?

[Anonymous No.1526870]

>>1526863
>you're not fooling anyone you fat crone

[Anonymous No.1526871]

>>1526866
>I comment on posts with macro images based on brief soundbites. I am not qualified to comment on the content of OP.

[♥onionring♥ !Rrxa7zePwI No.1526872]

>>1526865
well i am american too. :3

this thread kind of affirms her points. it is remarkable that she still manages to convey the shock and displacement of immigration 50 years later in an remarkably honest interview, while a bunch of retards on 4chan react to her the same way that americans did when she first came here.

[Tofu !s7vSX9lhAI No.1526873]

>>1526869
THANK YOU FOR THE SHALLOWEST READING OF CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS OF ALL TIME.

I don't agree with him all the time, or even most of the time, but he says interesting shit. He writes some pretty good stuff in Slate. Check out this shit he just wrote about dictators, pretty funny/on.

[Anonymous No.1526874]

>>1526871
But that image macro is funny looking! His post must be valid!

[Anonymous No.1526878]

>>1526865
There isn't anything mentally sound about that particular proclivity. You have trouble with shiny things and you don't like math or logic, that's no reason to take it out on the rest of us.

[Anonymous No.1526879]

[Anonymous No.1526881]

>>1526872
>implying a thread on 4chan has any impact whatsoever on the validity of someone's philosophical musings.

[Anonymous No.1526882]

What a fraud and charlatan. History won't remember her.

[Anonymous No.1526885]

>>1526873
The man is an interventionist jingo who wants the US to invade various countries, and still bitches about US backed dictator. The reason why dictators like Mubarrak are still in power is because of the interventionist policies of the US.

[Anonymous No.1526886]

>>1526878
>implying mathematics and logic doesn't support all of philosophy
>retard detected

[Anonymous No.1526890]

>>1526886
Even though I am forced to agree with that, what do YOU mean by it? I want to know if we agree.

[♥onionring♥ !Rrxa7zePwI No.1526892]

>>1526881
u r agitated by the power of my acute observation.

[Anonymous No.1526894]

>>1526873
He's funny and good with language, but that's all he's got going for him.

I read that article in the Slate. I consider it pretty offensive, actually, given that he once wrote that "there is a close…fit between the democratically minded and the pro-American" in the Middle-East, presumably including pro-American "President for Life" Hosni Mubarak.

Just as the U.S administration has given up on "their guy" now that public opinion and his own people have turned against him, so the odious, overstuffed, Judas-like toad Hitchens writes of the comedy of his dictatorship. Egyptian dissidents were routinely subjected to torture and young Egyptian people were denied jobs and prospects, yet the thing Hitchens chooses to center on in his essay is the failed aesthetics of the regime.

It's frivolous and deeply shallow, and especially disturbing given that it was this man's warped analysis of the Iraq situation that helped drum up the war fever of the Bush years.

[Anonymous No.1526896]

>>1526886
It certainly doesn't support the kind of question-begging and argument by fiat that is the stock-in-trade of the postmodernist rhetorical toolkit, no.

[♥onionring♥ !Rrxa7zePwI No.1526904]

>>1526896
this is like demanding kids in an art class prove the geometric consistency of their drawings. although some of the stuff may not pass the rigor standard, the pomo kids are at least offering another perspective, and if you believe gayatri, they are being sincere as well. i have no problem acknowledging that valuable insights can be drawn from a different tradition in philosophy. basically, the potential upside of having curiosity is much larger than the downside.

[Anonymous No.1526905]

>>1526896
Do you know what postmodernism is?
What is postmodernism?

[Anonymous No.1526907]

>>1526280

[Anonymous No.1526910]

>>1526905
Since no answer I assume you don't know.
It's the extension of the French existentialist and nihilist trends of thinking in literature and philosophy. Different ideas emerged from it.
Not any stupid list of bullet points "defining its features" you'll find on wikipedia.

[Anonymous No.1526912]

Hey >>1526910!
I am not >>1526905 but >>1526280 was my answer!

[Anonymous No.1526913]

>>1526912
Shit, I'm so postmodern.

[Anonymous No.1526914]

>>1526904
I would be in agreement if I actually believed there was anything positive at all that could come of philosophical traditions that believe that choosing an ideological stance, promulgating it furiously and defending it with every dirty rhetorical trick available. I have yet to see anything which compels me to alter that skepticism. Gayatri declaring how 'sincere' its practitioners are certainly doesn't.

[Anonymous No.1526916]

>>1526914
See
>>1526910

Gay atari and similar deluded pseudo-intellectuals are idiots that hijacked the word

[Anonymous No.1526917]

> Spivak

You scared me for a minute. I thought this was going to be about those ghastly gender-neutral pronouns.

[Anonymous No.1526918]

>>1526910
The nihilism is the core attribute which renders it an irrelevant and regressive. Any philosophy built on such a 'foundation' will end up in demagoguery- an assertion which has been borne out by the actual products of that tradition.

[Anonymous No.1526959]

I love when pseudo-intellectuals dismiss anyone who questions the value of worthless tripe like deconstructionism an anti-intellectual. Derrida and the scum who follow him are worthless, mindless sacks of shit who make a living out of trying to sound impressive to the uneducated. Noam Chomsky is a fucking linguist who's made one of the most important contributions to his field of this century and he claims that Derrida is fucking nothing, just obfuscation. I guess Noam Chomsky is just an anti-intellectual now, huh?

I love how people can simultaneously claim to be Marxists and then slobber over themselves at the first sign of an academic (read: bourgeoisie) who claims he's important and throws around lots of big words.

[Anonymous No.1526964]

>deeply shallow

(i liked your post tho)

[Anonymous No.1528170]

>>1526959
>implying anyone takes universal grammar seriously
Do you know anything about linguistics that you didn't learn on Wikipedia?

[Anonymous No.1528202]

ITT: No one reads OP's article, everyone argues about the label Spivak uses instead

[Anonymous No.1528219]

>>1528170
When languages are found that appear to contradict it, it's a pretty big deal. Unless you're going to add anything, keep the hurring and durring to yourself.

[Anonymous No.1528325]

>>1528219
If all languages are based on the same universal grammar, doesn't that add fuel to Derrida's argument that language (every language) is incapable of fully describing a thing without contradiction?

[Anonymous No.1528708]

>>1526879
thread should have ended here