Spivak or the voice of the subaltern. Neus Carbonell

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is considered to be one of the most influential theoreticians in contemporary thought. Born in Calcutta in 1942, she moved to the United States in the mid-1960s to take a PhD in Comparative Literature. Since then, a solid academic career has turned her into one of the bestknown critical voices of the moment. Her work displays a broad range of interests and influences, including deconstruction, Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis and education, though it is in the area of post-colonial studies that her influence is strongest. Her work has often been classed as heterogeneous and fragmentary: heterogeneous both in its interests and in its defense of a postcolonial reality which is in itself disparate and impossible to homogenise; fragmentary, because her work, which owes much to deconstruction and psychoanalysis, resists any total or totalising representation.