Spivak or the voice of the subaltern

A heterogeneous and fragmentary work
For this Indian author based in the United States, the postcolonial issue is in many ways heterogeneous but, it is in all cases a category that is run through by gender. Indeed, this is a crucial question which can be seen throughout her career: interrogating, searching, building the place of the gendered
postcolonial subject. Although her readings and interpretations of literary texts have often taken the stance of feminist theory, Spivak has gone to great lengths to stress the dangers of a feminist individualism that repeats and even exacerbates the postcolonial discourse without managing to escape the effects of its power.
In one of her most famous articles «Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism», she re-interprets Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre in the light of a new interpretation of the role of Rochester’s first wife, the Creole Bertha Mason, in opposition to the canonical teachings of feminist criticism. Instead of seeing Bertha Mason as Jane’s alter ego, Spivak argues that she cannot be understood outside the «epistemic violence» of the discourse of nineteenth-century imperialism. The necessary counterpoint to Jane’s supposed liberation is the «animalisation» of the «native» subject.