Postcolonialism and spectrality: Political deferral and ethical singularity in the writing of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Abstract

As the writing of Aijaz Ahmad and Arif Dirlik illustrates, the direction of postcolonial criticism has moved towards an interrogation of its location within contemporary geopolitical power relationships. This self-critical emphasis has worked to foreground the ideological determinants of post-colonial theory, but it can also obscure the political efficacy of western critical frameworks. By emphasizing postcolonial theory's complicity with global capitalism, such approaches are in danger of reducing postcolonial theory to an effect of transnational capitalism, thereby leaving us with no ground from which to criticize contemporary colonialism. In response to these concerns, this article examines Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's powerful rearticulation of deconstruction, Marxism and feminism, and its critical effectivity in the contemporary context of transnational capitalism. While Spivak's project has gained currency in a range of critical discussions which extend beyond her own geopolitical location — indicat...