Why I will never get a PhD in English Lit

[raisa_maximovna]

So here I am, innocently reading a really fabulous Viking Critical Edition of "The Quiet American" and ploughing through some fairly standard, unobjectionable criticism of the book, dealing with themes of truth, religion, salvation, betrayal. Good stuff. Feeling pretty happy

Comments

[swilkesse]

OK, I feel better now about not reading any lit crit beyond the New York Review of Books.

I read a snippet of Spivak for my Insurgencies class last semester. It wasn't all that terrible, but I did find myself wondering: once the subaltern get a voice, they're no longer subaltern! Leaving aside the logical conclusion that once everyone is heard, nobody's subaltern and poof goes "subaltern studies"; um, if a "subaltern" *is* heard, say in the form of a memoir a la Menchu, or in an interview in Progressive Populist, but their "voice" doesn't actually effectively change anything, um, are they still "subaltern"? I mean, does "subaltern" apply to voice, or power? I suppose the litcritters get out of it by applying the slash: "voice/power," but I don't happen to believe that the two are identical.

"negotiate a discursive relation"! oh god no.

[raisa_maximovna]

You're dead right about the slash: they would do that. The nice thing about it, of course, is that it doesn't imply that they are identical-- it lets you, the reader, grapple with the question yourself. My sense of it, though, is that "subaltern" applies mainly to voice: this ensures the perpetuation of "subaltern studies" by saying that well, yes, the subaltern has spoken, but as of yet has no power, and therefore paradoxically his/her voice/narrative is even more important for us to listen to.

What are these people going to do if there is ever a situation in which a white middle class male is effectively a subaltern? I'm sure such situations arise in small circles, and I'd love to see what happens. Actually my father was very much a subaltern in the UW English Dept, which was filled primarily with cross Marxists and swelled Spivak-adherents.